Pemblish Constitution

The Pemblish Constitution is an 'unwritten' constitution, which is to say that it is not comprised of a single document.

It is instead formed from four main sources:

1. Statutes (Acts of Undercourt, Orders-in-Council, Charters, Bylaws etc.)
2. Judicial Precedent (Legal cases)
3. Convention (Custom, practice and tradition)
4. Treaties and Treatises (Formal agreements with other nations, and influential academic texts).

These four primary sources make up the laws and customs by which the country is governed, including how the government is structured and operates, how it is legitimised, how it can govern, and what its relationship is to the people is, pertaining to the previous points.

## Government Structure

#### The Cabal

Government is headed and directed by the Lord Protector and his Cabal (formally His Lordship's Cabal), a select group of government ministers appointed by the Lord Protector to head various government Offices of State. The decision-making body's affairs are overseen by the Cabal Office, headed by the Lord Protector themselves.

Ministers can be appointed from both the Upper and Lower Houses of the Undercourt. By *convention,* there tends to be an equal split of appointments drawn from both houses. However, in *practice*, the most important ministerial roles continue to go to appointees from the Upper House - primarily due to the cronyistic nature of the Upper House, whose members are drawn primarily from the Lords Prosaic, and that House's role in appointing the Lord Protector from among its own members.

The Cabal is governed by a policy of 'collective responsibility', whereby Ministers - colloquially known as 'Caps' among the civil service - are obliged to resign from the Cabal and their ministerial role if they wish to object to a Cabinet decision, or otherwise publicly criticise its operations.

#### Offices of State

The Offices of State, overseen by Cabal Ministers, are the top-tier bodies which implements policy. Each Office is tasked with overseeing a specific sector of public administration. In addition to being managed by a Minister, each Office will typically contain a number of Subordinate or Junior Ministers, who either oversee a specific sub-domain within the wider sector of administration, or chair an ad-hoc or permanent Special Committee set up to address an issue falling under the Office's remit.

In addition to the various ministers, Offices of State will predominantly be made up of Civil Servants - veteran bureaucrats who are hired, rather than appointed or elected, to conduct research, develop government policies further, and implement said policies.

There are currently 11 Offices of State within the Pemblish government, including:

* Cabal Office
* Goldhord
* Guild and Charter Office
* Office of Agriculture, Industry and Development
* Office of the Court of Diplomats and Trade
* Office of Freeholds
* Office of Intelligence
* Office of Peerage, Expenses and Ministerial Code
* Office of Public Works
* Office of Relative Stability
* Strategium.

### Undercourt

The Undercourt is the collective term referring to the two legislative chambers which propose and vote on policy in Pem, and which serve to represent the interests of their constituents.

## Statutes

During the monarchies of the Lesser Kingdom, power was divided between the Mayors and Guild Councils of their respective freeholds, and the elected Crown.

Due to the elected nature of the monarch at this time, most power by convention lay with the freehold governments, leaving the monarch to be mostly a figurehead.

 Wrong wrong wrong wrong needs reworking. >>>During the monarchy of the Greater Kingdom, power was consolidated into the Crown and its Privy Council (a prototypical forebear of His Lordship's Cabal). Law was administered by royal decree, through statutes known as Orders-in-Council.