Editing Judicial governance (section)

=== Overview ===
Under DGF, anyone can appeal to a DAO to redress any perceived injustice by posting a [[Judicial governance proposals|judicial governance proposal]] in the Forum. This leads to a review of the current state of REP holdings and may lead to REP redistribution by the mechanisms discussed in this section.  

A basic example of perceived injustice includes punishing actions that had previously been rewarded in the past, but are now perceived as harmful to the DAO. For instance, if a [https://www.reddit.com/user/Ursium/comments/wp561e/explaining_the_dao_one_last_time_an_open_letter/ corrupt smart contract] was accidentally instituted in a DAO with a bug that siphoned REP tokens to the perpetrator, then Forum revaluation can be used to remove those tokens from the perpetrator and burn them. A second basic example of injustice is the opposite: when a past action was not properly rewarded, but later the DAO recognizes it was valuable. Then new REP tokens can be minted and donated to the hero. 

Each DAO records its history in its [[Forum]], which is a collection of posts linked by weighted references. Together with the initial values of the posts (as determined by the Validation Pool that [[Validation Pool#Mint new REP|mints the REP]] for each post), the references determine the overall REP distribution in the DAO, i.e., the distribution of power. This second type of judicial governance, Forum revaluation, redistributes power from one post to another. This redistribution is achieved by making a new post which has new references to the posts which need to be revaluated. If the new post is validated and supported by REP-weighted democracy through the Validation Pool mechanism, then the redistribution is achieved. 

Since the Forum is technically a WDAG (weighted directed acyclic graph), judicial governance is technically the process by which the WDAG is reweighted. This judicial governance mechanism is necessary for instituting an evolutionary structure which converges on ever greater security. 

Judicial governance in a DAO is fundamentally a matter of approving token ownership in the DAO. The more visible, secondary function of judicial governance is the review of REP token accounts. Judicial governance allows a DAO to re-evaluate REP holdings by slashing accounts that were later determined to have harmed the DAO, or augmenting accounts that had a later positive affect.

Inasmuch as business and social decisions are inevitably flawed, this function is necessary for the long-term stability of a DAO. It is necessary for a mechanism of review to exist. However, in a healthy DAO it will rarely be used, compared with the other two branches of government.

Reputation tokens should be slashed for two basic reasons: first, when members violate explicit protocols, even though the violation was not detected by automated executive policing; second, when members betray the more abstract values the DAO shares which have not been explicitly encoded in automated protocols--[[transcendent values]]. Judicial governance also allows more accurate accounting of power after a DAO updates its values or protocols. Judicial governance is therefore fundamental in incentivizing members to behave well, because if it is functioning properly, judicial governance imbues REP tokens with some of the crucial qualities that characterize authentic reputation: future-orientation and non-fungibility.