Corporate Court
The Corporate Court is an international regulatory power akin to the UN of the old world. Although it has limited direct powers, the Corporate Court is composed of representatives from the Big Ten , so rulings made in the court are generally treated as law. The Court generally positions itself as the one entity to which megacorporations are bound to, although in practice most also respect national governments due decrees from the Court itself.
Structure
The current court is composed of thirteen justices elected from the Big Ten. Each justice serves for six-and-a-half years, with their terms staggered so that a new election occurs every six months. Justices are allowed to serve as many terms as they can get re-elected, but each corporation witholds the right to withdraw their justices at any time.
A special commission is formed every six months to vote on new justices. This commission is composed of two representatives from each of the Big Ten, but their votes are not equal. A complex formula is used to decide how many votes each representative is worth which generally scales with the relative power of the backing corporation. One extra clause also states that at least one justice from the original Big Seven must have a seat on the Court at all times. Corporations that joined the Court afterwards are always able to lose their seat. A corporation must already have AAA status before attempting to get a justice elected onto the Court, but AA and lower corporations are allowed to bring grievances to the Court.
Founding Date
2011
Alternative Names
Inter-Corporate Court (2011-2023)
Location
Controlled Territories
Laws of the Coporate Court
Since the Corporate Court isn't technically a legislative body, it cannot pass formal binding laws. There is, however, a consistency to how the Court tends to rule on the cases brought before it, so a few psuedo-laws are upheld by the megacorporations:- Don't Go to War: The Corporate Court never makes rulings on subtle interactions between corporations, but tends to dissuade corporations from going to outright war. Anything that has the potential to upset the balance of the Big Ten is usually condemned by the Court, usually on the side of the defender. As such, most corporations prefer to work in the shadows when dealing with each other.
- Don't Overthrow National Governments: Since the advent of extraterritoriality, corporations have overtaken national governments in political power. That said, national governments till handle civil work that the bigger corporations don't have time to deal with. As such, the Court tends to rule in favor of protecting national governments from fully collapsing, although they don't tend to side with them when it comes to limiters on power.
- The Offender Is At Fault: If a corporation damages the assets of another corporation, the offender is held responsible for any compensation for losses. The exception to this rule is that the defender must be able to prove that the offender was indeed responsible for alleged crimes. If no evidence can be produced, the Court does not make a ruling.
Corporate Classifications
The rules for when a corporation can start calling itself a megacorporation tends to get hazy; if you call your company a megacorporation and don't get shot for doing so, it's probably a megacorporation. To properly manage corporations though, the Corporate Court started using a classification system. The size and complexity of a corporation is measured and ranked using this system, and what amount of influence a coporation has can then be determined by their ranking.- Unranked: A corporation with no rank is limited in power to a single country, or more often a single region or city. The Corporate Court does not interact with unranked corporations, as they are too inconsequential to impact the wider corporate playing field. Some countries, such as Tir Tairngire and Aztlan, require that corporations must be unranked to operate on their soil.
- A rank (Multinational): Corporations that reach A ranking have a presence in multiple countries and have shown a fair bit of potential. The Corporate Court hears cases from A ranks rarely, and often with heavy tolls collected. Reaching A rank is usually the biggest hurdle for a company; they're now big enough to be valuable, but not necessarily stable enough to survive. Corporations that reach multinational status often favor their home country, in exchange for increased benefits there.
- AA rank: This rank signifies that a corporation is worthy of extraterritoriality status, officially making it a megacorporation. AA corporations get a lot more influence with the Corporate Court, although they get no formal representation on the Court itself. Since they have no direct presence on the Court, they are just as susceptible to manipulation by the Court as lower rank corporations.
- AAA rank: Only the Big Ten get to call themselves AAA corporations. What signifies a Big Ten worthy corp, however, gets a bit circular. It mostly comes down to confidence; a Big Ten corp has a seat on the Court, which happens if they have enough influence to garner a seat, which happens if they confidently declare themselves a AAA corp, which happens if they can defend that claim. Only the biggest powers can pull of joining the AAA rank megacorporations.
As an anti-corporate news agency, KSAF has little lost love for the organization that keeps the corporations from killing each other. That said, one of the main reasons KSAF can operate as it does is because the Corporate Court sees KSAF as valuable. When KSAF uncovers a corporate conspiracy, the Court can use that intel to get ahead of public reactions and KSAF's reports are usually more accurate than the Court's own intel.
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