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Nobody's complained about how I made that other bill open to citizen comment, so I'm doing it the exact same way!
Below, the text of my proposed legislation in full;

Title
1. This Act shall be titled as the 'Overhusen Line-Item Veto Act'.

Amendments
2. Article I, Section 8 of the Fundamental Laws shall be amended to read as follows:

8. The Overhusen shall vote to pass or veto the legislation upon passage by the Underhusen.
      (a) The Overhusen may, by a two-thirds vote, veto one or more Sections or Articles of legislation passed by the Underhusen, with the intention of passing the remainder of the legislation.
      (b) Those individual Sections or Articles vetoed by the Overhusen will be returned to the Underhusen, upon which the Underhusen may either accept this veto, or vote to override this veto via the mechanisms outlined in Section 9 of this article.

3. A new Section, numbered Section 10, is to be added under Article I of the Fundamental Laws, which is to read as follows:

10. If the Underhusen does not carry out an override vote within 5 days of a veto, whether this veto be by line-item or otherwise, they shall be considered to have accepted the veto.
      (a) This shall be considered to apply to all legislation prior to the passing of this amendment.

4. All subsequent sections shall be renumbered accordingly.

I'll note this is fairly germane to all citizens as this is an amendment to the Fundamental Laws, and so if it passes it will wind up on your next set of ballots, so do consider it appropriately!
Also, here is a link to the Storting discussion on the bill, because I made some arguments there that it would be somewhat silly to just copypaste here in this thread when I can just link the thread itself.

Ah clever, you've gotten me to quote the argument I'm responding to for you.

For those concerned about the value of adding Section 10, under our current laws there is no legal limitation on when, exactly, the Underhusen may 'be reintroduced in the Underhusen for the purposes of...overriding the veto'; someone with malicious and/or shenaniganrous intent could theoretically 'reintroduce', word-for-word, vetoed legislation from Underhusens long-past for override, rather than bringing them through the proper channels.
Yes, it would almost certainly be shouted down as ridiculous and outside the spirit of the law, but it would also be legal by the plain meaning of the law. Which is sort of the point of introducing a law that would make that illegal.
A legal argument might be that the Underhusen Procedural Rules require the bill to be 'reintroduced to the floor in accordance with Section 3', but as I've previously argued, there is no precise legal definition for what tabling a bill is, which is further muddied by its own subsection D - allowing tabled bills to be revived. The interpretation that could very well be chosen is that these were all tabled by default, but not, in any way, permanently shelved, and could be revived through the simple mechanism of a 'motion to revive' (as said in Section D.
I additionally make the totally unveiled threat that if Section 10 is deemed unnecessary, I will absolutely unearth and reintroduce legislation for override in subsequent sittings of the Underhusen, because I will either disable this tool of shenaniganry or use it myself, so help me god.

Lots of facetious (or malicious) acts are possible in the Storting under the law, they're just dumb and largely holdable in check by other Skrifa. This one I don't find particularly bad, because it requires a supermajority of the UH to go along with the actor.

From what I recall, 3d is from an era where motions to table were much more vote-like. I would imagine, given section 4, that bills from previous sessions of the UH could (and/or should) be able to be reintroduced at any time.

While you're bringing up an edge case here, I very much don't see it as a probable one, especially with other Skrifa to keep a malicious actor in check and the presence of a recall. An edge case which I find more probable is that the OH may change its mind on a bill, whether due to changing circumstances or by persuasion, after the five-day period, at which point the UH is unable to pass the bill without making arbitrary/unnecessary changes to it.

Would suggest defining what accepting the veto means, to avoid it from being possibly abused to silence proposals in the UH.

I don't see how your "threat" makes any sense at all. You're just saying you're going to spam-propose a bunch of facetious bills? Something that you can do regardless? And not just that, but bills which would require extra votes to pass?

Would suggest defining what accepting the veto means, to avoid it from being possibly abused to silence proposals in the UH.

Is 'one or more sections or articles' insufficiently clear? Setting a limit on the number or proportion of articles that could be line-item vetoed seemed unnecessarily limiting, considering just how short most of our legislation is. As-is, they already have the power to veto entire bills, so it's not as if they couldn't already 'silence proposals'.
Moreover, there's already a reasonably-self-evident plain meaning for accepting the veto - 'not holding a vote on it

I don't see how your "threat" makes any sense at all. You're just saying you're going to spam-propose a bunch of facetious bills? Something that you can do regardless? And not just that, but bills which would require extra votes to pass?

Mostly because if anyone at all seconds one of them and it went to vote, if it somehow achieved 4/5 votes (something I feel like I could effectively lobby for if it was a practically meaningless piece of legislation that highlighted what I perceived to be a glaring flaw in our present system), there is very much a case to make that this wouldn't be going to the OH - it would be considered an override vote and immediately enter into law.

I'm not sure 2b is very clear.

2. Article I, Section 8 of the Fundamental Laws shall be amended to read as follows:

8. The Overhusen shall vote to pass or veto the legislation upon passage by the Underhusen.
      (a) The Overhusen may, by a two-thirds vote, veto one or more Sections or Articles of legislation passed by the Underhusen, with the intention of passing the remainder of the legislation.
      (b) Those individual Sections or Articles vetoed by the Overhusen will be returned to the Underhusen, upon which the Underhusen may either accept this veto, or vote to override this veto via the mechanisms outlined in Section 9 of this article.

The OH would return the whole bill with their amendments made, rather than just the excised portions? Might just be me being daft but that confused me a bit.

I'm not sure how I feel in general about giving the Overhusen the ability to line-item veto. Political power in Wintreath is so heavily tilted toward the Crown already — elected Thanes work under appointed Jarls, appointed Peers can reject the work of elected Skrifa, and of course the Crown itself holds ultimate executive authority — that empowering the OH feels if anything like moving in the wrong direction.

No, it only returns the excised portions; everything else is entered into law.

I would like to define 5 days more clearly.

That seems reasonable.
Would something of the nature of 'Within 140 hours from when the Speaker of the Overhusen makes a declaration on the bill's passage or failure' be reasonable?

(I'm additionally building in some leniency, both because 1) time-zones are also a factor and 2) the 'plain meaning' might suggest that if the Speaker makes a pronouncement at 23:59 on the 1st of January, a reasonable interpretation would allow the UH to begin a vote at 17:30 on the 6th of January...and the human impulse to do so may also come into play if the Speaker made their pronouncement at 00:01 on the 1st of January, despite, in this latter case, being more than 120 hours after the announcement)

I think writing it out in either hours or days is acceptable. Court precedence (Chanku v Pengu) establishes that the interpretation of "days" is up to the Speaker, allowing some flexibility on whether calendar days or conversion to hours is used.

Would suggest defining what accepting the veto means, to avoid it from being possibly abused to silence proposals in the UH.

Is 'one or more sections or articles' insufficiently clear? Setting a limit on the number or proportion of articles that could be line-item vetoed seemed unnecessarily limiting, considering just how short most of our legislation is. As-is, they already have the power to veto entire bills, so it's not as if they couldn't already 'silence proposals'.
Moreover, there's already a reasonably-self-evident plain meaning for accepting the veto - 'not holding a vote on it

Sorry for the ambiguity, that was very much not the part I was referring to.

I meant the limitation on forcing the Underhusen to accept a veto - I think this needs to be defined as not voting on the original bill, otherwise we might see the Speaker abuse the clause to shut down any discussion on a bill which they personally didn't like and which was defeated in the OH which was then edited to be re-voted on.

I don't see how your "threat" makes any sense at all. You're just saying you're going to spam-propose a bunch of facetious bills? Something that you can do regardless? And not just that, but bills which would require extra votes to pass?

Mostly because if anyone at all seconds one of them and it went to vote, if it somehow achieved 4/5 votes (something I feel like I could effectively lobby for if it was a practically meaningless piece of legislation that highlighted what I perceived to be a glaring flaw in our present system), there is very much a case to make that this wouldn't be going to the OH - it would be considered an override vote and immediately enter into law.

Ah I see, you're perceiving it as an issue because the OH would not act as a check in this case. I think there is an debate to be had here on whether or not the UH should still be able to do such a thing across different times regardless, since the only way this would somehow become a problem would be if a supermajority of the UH began acting facetiously, and it could argued that the intent of being able to override the OH should be able to happen at any time without limit. (With any supermajority overrule, you could ignore the wishes of the OH by just proposing the law, getting it defeated, and then overruling it. Reviving an old defeated bill and pushing that through seems much less likely and probably has less practical potential for harm than that, which itself already seems unlikely, and to which citizens still have recourse such as recall.)

No, it only returns the excised portions; everything else is entered into law.

Then I really don't like this, and I would point out again that political authority is already heavily concentrated with the Crown without effectively giving it the power to amend and approve legislation.

Then I really don't like this, and I would point out again that political authority is already heavily concentrated with the Crown without effectively giving it the power to amend and approve legislation.

I feel like I should stress that the Overhusen already has the power to approve legislation, so this isn't a dramatic expansion of its existing powers; in my view, it is providing them a scalpel to excise the parts that don't pass muster, rather than swinging a greatsword because it's all they've got and killing the entire bill.

I meant the limitation on forcing the Underhusen to accept a veto - I think this needs to be defined as not voting on the original bill, otherwise we might see the Speaker abuse the clause to shut down any discussion on a bill which they personally didn't like and which was defeated in the OH which was then edited to be re-voted on.

Ah. I hadn't considered that possibility, which probably indicates how seriously our previous Speakers have taken their jobs (which is further boosted by my thought process in writing this, which was to assume that I would always have the votes on my side and then see what I could do if I put my mind to it). Perhaps changing it to read, say, 'make a motion on it', rather than 'actually carry out the override vote', so that the Speaker can't quietly torpedo legislation by Mitch McConnelling it.

Ah I see, you're perceiving it as an issue because the OH would not act as a check in this case. I think there is an debate to be had here on whether or not the UH should still be able to do such a thing across different times regardless, since the only way this would somehow become a problem would be if a supermajority of the UH began acting facetiously, and it could argued that the intent of being able to override the OH should be able to happen at any time without limit. (With any supermajority overrule, you could ignore the wishes of the OH by just proposing the law, getting it defeated, and then overruling it. Reviving an old defeated bill and pushing that through seems much less likely and probably has less practical potential for harm than that, which itself already seems unlikely, and to which citizens still have recourse such as recall.)

Yeah, it's honestly largely a revival of my old 'we have never properly defined what it is to 'table' a bill' argument; as is, I saw an opportunity to effectively revive that argument (even if I've never actually used 'table' in the legislation, largely because I figured that might constitute dictating UH procedure) and close what I saw as a potential loophole at the same time. If it doesn't seem like That Big A Deal, then I'll see if I can't convince anyone to revive a couple old bills with me; I'm reasonably confident at least one or two people will be willing to Play Along To See What Happens in the same vein as the fun old times of Doc vs Doc.

I'm not sure how I feel in general about giving the Overhusen the ability to line-item veto. Political power in Wintreath is so heavily tilted toward the Crown already — elected Thanes work under appointed Jarls, appointed Peers can reject the work of elected Skrifa, and of course the Crown itself holds ultimate executive authority — that empowering the OH feels if anything like moving in the wrong direction.

The wrong direction...I hope I don't have to give you of all people the speech on the benefits of monarchy and how democracy in NationStates is both overrated and fake. v_v

That being said, I'm ambivalent on this one. I can't actually recall a time where it would have made sense to strike certain sections and carry the rest into law. I'm not saying there's never been a case, but usually when there's a problematic section it's required modification, not deletion...I imagine in most cases it wouldn't make sense to pass a bill without all of its parts without creating holes in the legislation that may or may not be corrected in the future.

Perhaps a compromise between Moot's view and the (I believe) intended purpose of an Act like this would be something along the lines of the following:

• A Bill is proposed in the Underhusen, goes to vote and is passed.
• The Bill arrives at the Overhusen, and issues are discovered.
• The Overhusen modify the Bill to rectify for these concerns and sends the updated Bill back to the Underhusen.
• If the modified Bill is deemed suitable, it goes straight to a vote in the Underhusen, with no debate period required. Normal due process then follows.
• If the modified Bill is deemed problematic, it goes back to debate stage, and normal due process is then followed.

A returned Bill goes straight to a vote thread, wherein if no member of the UH states they wish further discussion a simple majority sends the Bill back to the OH for final approval.

If a single member of the UH states they have an issue, even if the amended Bill has reached majority, it must go back to the discussion stage.

This would prevent a surge in the number of amendments (as Doc's idea would require in order to add changed sections back to laws that otherwise passed) whilst allowing for quick revisions where necessary. It shouldn't really be necessary, as for the most part our UH take their roles seriously and work diligently to ensure Bills go to the OH in the best condition possible, but it's nice to have a little bit of reassurance built in for that one in a hundred case.

The issue I find with that is that the Overhusen can both make suggestions in the Citizen Discussions and has a standing invitation to bring up any concerns in the #storting Discord channel (which is why it's a singular Storting one, not two separate #underhusen and #overhusen channel).
It's not as if we're enforcing a strict separation, that OH members can't post in Citizen Discussions or talk about legislation in any capacity (after all, the Monarch, a member of the OH, semi-regularly proposes UH legislation).

I mean, long-run I'm down for the OH having the capacity to amend laws, because that's a great way to render the Underhusen irrelevant, burn it down, then frolic in the ashes, but I can't imagine Charax or anything who thought like him would be incredibly stoked about giving them even more power than my current proposal.

Alright, so here are my thoughts on this amendment. I'm heavily against it.

First off, the amendment needlessly complicates the legislative process and introduces a change that has almost no purpose what-so-ever. Usually a bill does not fail in the Overhusen for a singular section or clause that would otherwise be removed, and if there is a singular section it is usually best to rework it. Further, this increases the likelihood of an override -- which is meant to be rare. This complication goes against the intention for the design of our Bicameral Legislature as it is, which is that full bicameralism is too complicated and that as such we simplified it and made the Overhusen represent the Monarchy instead of giving the Monarch a direct voice.

Next the concerns over the possibility of an override of a past veto is not grounded in any reality. The reality of the situation is, is that the expiry of the past term necessitates that any matters before the Storting must necessarily expire as well, except for where otherwise stated. This is seen in the consideration of bills between terms, in which a bill that did not make it through the legislative process by the end of the term has expired and must be reintroduced within the Underhusen and the process restarted. While this is not explicit procedure, it has been procedure for the course of Wintreath's History (6+ years) and as such is something I consider to be effective law. As such, this would necessarily extend to the ability of veto, as both Procedure requires that all matters not entirely handled by the end of a term expire, and within the intention of the usage of that power. Furthermore, this has been borne out in procedure -- where laws that were vetoed were directly reintroduced the next term if they didn't act in the past session, and that the few attempts at override that we have occurred within the same session.

Finally, on the matter of the Overhusen discussion and debating a bill, there is a provision within the Procedural Rules of the Overhusen that has never been used (and I've been an advocate of bringing it into common usage) in that the Overhusen may actually debate and discuss proposals in tandem with the Underhusen.

Also the concept of 'UH Legislation' is faulty because all Legislation -- excepting Procedure for the Overhusen -- must start within the Underhusen and no where else.

Ah I see, you're perceiving it as an issue because the OH would not act as a check in this case. I think there is an debate to be had here on whether or not the UH should still be able to do such a thing across different times regardless, since the only way this would somehow become a problem would be if a supermajority of the UH began acting facetiously, and it could argued that the intent of being able to override the OH should be able to happen at any time without limit. (With any supermajority overrule, you could ignore the wishes of the OH by just proposing the law, getting it defeated, and then overruling it. Reviving an old defeated bill and pushing that through seems much less likely and probably has less practical potential for harm than that, which itself already seems unlikely, and to which citizens still have recourse such as recall.)

Yeah, it's honestly largely a revival of my old 'we have never properly defined what it is to 'table' a bill' argument; as is, I saw an opportunity to effectively revive that argument (even if I've never actually used 'table' in the legislation, largely because I figured that might constitute dictating UH procedure) and close what I saw as a potential loophole at the same time. If it doesn't seem like That Big A Deal, then I'll see if I can't convince anyone to revive a couple old bills with me; I'm reasonably confident at least one or two people will be willing to Play Along To See What Happens in the same vein as the fun old times of Doc vs Doc.

My point is that even if you got a few people to go along with you to frivolously pass an old bill, that doesn't practically demonstrate the presence of any flaws. All you've shown is that you can frivolously pass a piece of joke legislation if you convince other people to go along with you, which is obviously allowed. There is no loophole still, because the system is designed with other Storting members in place to keep a check on malicious actors.