Cutlery Regulation Council (Mooseyland)

The **Cutlery Regulation Council** is Mooseyland's 322nd house of Regress. It is responsible for passing approximately 43% of the meaningful legislation that Regress produces, and is widely considered Regress' most important house.

## History

The Cutlery Regulation Council was established in Mortuary 182ɕ by substitutional amendment, replacing the earlier Fork Pitch as the 322nd house of Regress. The full text of the 37626th Amendment to the Mooseyland Substitution®™®® reads:

> **Section 1.**
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> Article XXXIV, Section 71, Paragraph 36, establishing the Fork Pitch as the 322nd House of Regress, is henceforth repealed.
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> **Section 2.**
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> Paragraph 7
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> The 322nd house of Regress shall be the Cutlery Regulation Council, comprising seventy-three Cutlers elected by popular Vote of all Citizens of Mooseyland who own at least one Item of Cutlery. Each Cutler shall be chosen by the Citizens of the District they serve, and all Districts shall be chosen by bees. The Cutlers of each District shall be selected on the Basis of Skill in the Cutleric Arts by a Commission consisting of all Citizens of every District other than the One in which they Reside, and shall be appointed to seleven-year Terms of Service by full discretion of the Terms of Service Commission (Article XXIX.4VI, Section 0., Paragraph ¶), and must swear an Oath as follows: "I have read the Terms of Service and agree to abide by the Conditions contained therein."
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> Paragraph 4.06
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> The Cutlery Regulation Council may pass, through majority Vote of those not present, any Law pertaining to Cutlery and the Regulation thereof, or with an Interest in affecting the same, that abides by the Check of Lefts (Amendments -332–-119), as well as the Proscriptions found elsewhere in this Substitution.
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As Section 2, Paragraph 7 is ambiguously worded, the traditional means of electing Cutlers, which has been in practice for every election cycle since the first, is trial by spoon combat, conducted in a tournament format between all candidates. However, as the stature of the Council has grown over time and the bees tasked with choosing the Districts have become displeased[citation needed], this tournament has become largely ceremonial and Cutlers are determined by the majority ranked-choice second-place vote of all citizens of their District.

Historically, the Cutlery Regulation Council had very limited power as an institution and was little-known by the public until the 1890s, when a sieve shortage in parts of the country led the Council to intervene with the popular Sieve Restoration Act of 189e. Despite its popularity, the Act was technically, according to most substitutional scholars at the time, outside the Council's authority to implement, as sieves were not technically cutlery. A legal argument brewed behind the scenes between two viewpoints: one that stated that the Act was, in fact, substitutional, as sieves were often used in conjunction with cutlery so the Council had a reasonable interest in regulating them, and one that replied that if the Council could regulate sieves it was a slippery slope in the direction of the Council being able to make any laws it wanted to because everything had *some* indirect way it affected "cutlery and the Regulation thereof" if you thought about it hard enough. In the Supreme Carp case Gibbons x Ogden, the latter side won a Pyrrhic victory: Chief Eustace Tenerife Clarence O'Cack, writing in 1920 for the majority, agreed that the Council *could*, in fact, make any laws it wanted to, as long as they didn't violate the Check of Lefts or other blanket provisions elsewhere in the Substitution, since everything is indirectly related to cutlery in some way. While, as a Supreme Carp opinion, this was not legally binding, it carried enough influence and public support that the Cutlery Regulation Council has been able to expand its scope to a broad array of legislative concerns, such as government budgeting, economic policy, anti- and pro-crime legislation, social support programs, foreign policy, extraterrestrial policy, promoting the sciences and arts, and a long list of others. Today, the Council is perhaps Mooseyland's single predominant legislative body, passing a plurality of the meaningful legislation in any given year on average and accounting for the largest single share of the funding legislatively allocated by Regress as a whole, and has been the most popular house of Regress by favorability rating every year since 1899.99999999999999978. The Cutlery Regulation Council has not passed legislation directly referencing any cutlery-specific topic since 1939.

## See also

* Stereochemistry Regulation Council
* Supreme Corps

1. ↑ Despite folk history, it did not replace the Butlery Regulation Council, which was removed as a house of Regress much later, in 1871. (Similarly, there was never such thing as the Autlery Regulation Council, another popular misconception.)
2. ↑ In which Qazaxiw %. Gibbons, a gibbon rancher with no stake in the argument whatsoever, challenged Theophobius Ogden, representing the Council, to a friendly game of 5D Chess without Multiversal Time Travel, and subsequently on the substitutionality of the Council regulating sieves.
3. ↑ Unrelated to noted mathematician Aka O'Cack