Continental Decree

  

Continental Decrees are legislative acts of the highest institutions of the United Commonwealth, especially the Council of People's Commissars and the Presidium, which represents the National Congress when it is not in session. The Decree evolved from the pre-Continental executive order in the United Commonwealth, which were directives issued by the President of the United Commonwealth that managed the operations of the federal government. The Continental Decree was first popularized by Aeneas Warren, who insisted a number of popular decrees during the Continental Revolutionary War and upon the creation of the Continental States. Many of these early decrees are often grouped together as the "Revolutionary Decrees", although some were temporarily withdrawn under the leadership of Seamus Callahan. After its high degree of use in the early half of the century, the Continental Decree largely fell out of favor after the death of Callahan, as the United Commonwealth transitioned toward producing legislation from the National Congress instead of in the form of an edict.

History

Revolutionary Decrees (1917-1923)

The Continental Decree has its origins in the outbreak of the Continental Revolutionary War. In May 1917 a series of women-led protests were carried out in the city of Chicago, calling for labor rights and progressive reforms in the Federalist state government. The march galvanized public opinion in the city, and although it failed to sway federal opinion, it led to the revolutionary Chicago Assembly issuing the "Decree on the Rights of Women" on 20 May, which granted universal suffrage. This decree would later be retroactively recognized as a decree of the United Commonwealth. The Continentalist Party adapted the edict into their platform and pledged to uphold universal suffrage, later codifying the decree as the law in all territory held by the provisional government. Aeneas Warren was supportive of the measure, writing in 1919, "it is necessary to be socialized and for women to participate in common productive labor. Then woman will be the equal of man." That year the first woman was elected to the provisional congress, Helen Ellis. Following the creation of the American Constituent Assembly during the early years of the revolution, the Continentalist Party issued a series of "fundamental decrees", beginning with the "Decrees on the Establishment of the Workers' Government" (February 1918), which established elected workers' committees for the running of factories, created a national minimum wage, and instituted an eight-hour working day.

A Continental pamphlet explaining the metric system, 1920

The next several years saw a number of decrees issued by the provisional Landonist government, which primarily focused on social and cultural aspects of the emerging state. Following the passage of universal suffrage, additional provisions were made establishing equal inheritance, divorce rights, and other rights for women. In 1919 the United Commonwealth became the first country to legalize abortion, although it was later banned again from 1932 to 1950 at the behest of Seamus Callahan. Decrees banning marital rape (1922), establishing maternity leave and child-care centers (1923), and the codification of the Equal Rights Amendment (1924) soon followed. The later granted equal legal rights to all Continental citizens regardless of sex. After 1917, homosexuality became de facto decriminalized by the Continentalist Party's discarding of the pre-revolutionary legal code. Homosexuality was formally legalized in 1922 as part of the passage of Landonist Law, however, laws differed in Okaloosa, and the treatment of homosexuals remained mixed in practice overall. A number of decrees would focus on the subject of standardization. In 1920 the country formally adopted the metric system nation-wide. Daylight savings was abolished, and the country was converted to a single time zone. More controversially, the Gregorian Calendar was replaced the following year by the Continental Calendar, which sought to create a streamlined, uniform system. In 1922 the decree on the dismantling of pre-revolutionary monuments was passed, which created a committee so assess all monuments, memorials, statues, and public works of art for Continentalist values, with those deemed reactionary or counterrevolutionary being removed from public viewing. The following year a decree on the registration and protection of monuments and artwork was created, which entered a number of private collections into public trust.

One of the most controversial decrees of the period would be the "Decree on Special Field Order No. 15", which ordered that a version of William Tecumseh Sherman's Special Field Orders No. 15 be implemented. Specifically, the order granted the state the ability to confiscate property owned by major landowners in the South and redistribute it to black Continentals. Taking effect in late 1920, the decree led to the confiscation of nearly 90 million acres of land, and exacerbated the ongoing war in the region. The decree would be one of many part of a series of land distribution and collectivization efforts, which also contributed to the Great Famine of the mid 1920s. Under Warren, this policy had been that of a temporary expedient deemed necessary to win the war and aid in the recovery of the south, but to Callahan this was distasteful, as it compromised the Landonist vision, and gave new economic power to previously disenfranchised black populations. Harry Haywood, who became the first paramount of Okaloosa after the war, saw the land redistribution as a net positive and a necessary step toward the modernization of the south and toward the protection of the revolution, as he harkened back to the memory of reconstruction. Seeing the violence being carried out in the name of redistribution, the Judicial Commissariat of the United Commonwealth issued a decree in 1922 condemning extrajudicial killings.