[Discussion] Do we need an amendment for this?

[Flinn]

I'm genuinely not sure, so better to double check.

There's a clear mistake in the Constitution, about Censores, as it says:

Two Censors, appointed by the Consul, assist with Curial tasks and review referrals from Curial infractions.

That is not the case since long (see here), and even before than that since Order 66 amendment assigned the referrals review to Praefects (who later have been removed too as per the related amendment).

Now, I think it's pretty obvious that in between the various edits, that sentenced got messed up or anyways was not properly amended; we can live with that ofc, but it might as well generate confusion in the future in case no one "who knows" is around.

I would just move on and edit out the bolded part, and while I know that

⁸ The Consul may correct any spelling, grammatical, or formative errors in the Constitution or any Curial resolution. The details of any such changes must be recorded in the Amendments thread of the Tabularium.

I'm not sure whether any of those actually encompass this kind of edit. Here you can find a list of similar edits, for reference: the very latest of those seems to confirm that said edits can be made by the Consul without further consultation.

[Gaius Baltar]

You need to review the amendments that deal with the text and make the appropriate correction. I'm guessing the material in question should have been edited out sometime around the introduction of the Praefects.

EDIT: Well, after a quick review I see the text and it was part of the Preafect removal amendment. If so, then this was the intended role for the Censors after the removal of the Preafects.

[Amendment] Getting rid of the praefects

[Flinn]

EDIT: Well, after a quick review I see the text and it was part of the Preafect removal amendment. If so, then this was the intended role for the Censors after the removal of the Preafects.

[Amendment] Getting rid of the praefects

That is true, but after that, the Referrals have been removed, as I properly linked above (first link in the OP), so in case that is the amendment that needs to be reviewed. But again, if you look at that amendment (once again, the first link on the OP), you will see that nowhere seems to be appearing the sentence in question. I can't honestly reconstruct what happened.

That being said, the question here is (to make it simple): does a similar edit need an amendment or can the Consul just use their power to amend similar oversights like it happened in the past? Or to make it even simpler: can a similar edit be considered formative, considering that evidences have been provided that it is definitely an oversight from previous amendments?

ps. @GB, I got you are for the amendment route, noted.

[Akar]

I do not believe an amendment is required to correct that, though per the text of the constitution any such corrective formative changes must be recorded alongside actual amendment changes.

[Flinn]

I do not believe an amendment is required to correct that, though per the text of the constitution any such corrective formative changes must be recorded alongside actual amendment changes.

Indeed.

[Gaius Baltar]

Indeed.

I agree, an amendment is needed to deal with this phantom text. A proposed unlegislated correction of this text does not meet the current constitutional guidelines.

[Gigantus]

Let me see if I understood - this is about removing a inapplicable (irrelevant) text, made inapplicable\irrelevant by previous (the links) amendments?

In that case I agree with Akar (Gaius seems to oppose while agreeing?) regarding the approach to resolving the issue. An amendment to replace\remove would only be required if the text had any valid context whatsoever, which clearly is not the case. See also the last correction in the 'formative changes' post.

"...and thus this part of the Constitution was out of date. This has now been fixed"

[Muizer]

IMHO no amendment is needed. The amendment to remove referrals is clear in its intent. The remaining text fragment carries no meaning without it. It would be impossible to argue removing it as a 'formative error' amounts to 'abuse of authority'. Besides, if we were to have an amendment, we would have to consider what to do if it failed. Personally I have no idea, except we wouldn't any longer be able to shrug it off as clerical error.

[Flinn]

For the records, I'm keeping this here open because I plan, time permitting, to do those edits.