Energy
I was interested in compressed air technology when I first heard it was being used in taxis. I don’t know why this infrastructure has not been developed yet. The idea of having a clean way to store and transport energy that uses the air is ground breaking. It would replace… oh wait that’s probably why LOL
Compelling court attendance
I agree that making the party who leveled the charge pay in the case of innocence is a viable alternative to having the court pay it. Your method minimizes the chance of fallacious charges in the first place whereas the concept behind my way was that if the court has a financial incentive to make sure there is merit (witnesses, evidence etc.) to the charge before bothering to initiate force it would prevent a lot of cases that would go nowhere anyway. However, I assume there would be some standard of evidence necessary for a charge even to be considered unlike now where you can sue anyone for anything if you have the bread.
Politicians
I like the ad-hoc judge concept as it does make corruption mire problematic. Also, its good that you are building secession into the framework of your idea.
Jurisdictions
The concept of secession from seafaring jurisdiction might need some more development. I think the idea of making sure clauses cover this base from the start is the way to go. Forethought would prevent these types of conflicts form arising in most cases and the fact that we are even discussing this now is testament to that fact. Finding like minded people is indeed the most important step to take.
I wonder what options would be open to children, growing up in a jurisdiction that had laws they did not agree with, might have open to them. I mean, for many Americans, this is the problem. Their folks grew up in a place that had different moral codes and now we inherit it, but it is so hard to change the structure. I guess this just emphasizes why it must be much easier to nullify or revoke laws rather than instate them. Like you said, the answer would emerge with time.
Voting
Voting in the Modern era could be so much more efficient and secure. I was playing with a concept for secure voting that was very simple.
A person enters the booth, and they either present ID or eye or thumb scan. There are then 2 records of the vote made, one physical record in the machine in paper form and one PRINT OUT that the person takes with them. Now the printout has a randomly generated code on it that matches the machine vote. The code is going to be used internally and externally too activate an entry into a database.
We then set up a website available to everyone who voted. The people can then go home and enter their information onto multiple databases online that we share the results with. In theory, the manually entered codes that are on the physical printout should have the same results as the machine counted records. In this way there is essentially an official, and an independent count of the vote tally. Even if the officials miscount or mess up the vote, the codes on the vouchers can be entered into any number of online hosting services to see what the real vote tally was.
Its kind of like how you have a phone card and you can only use it if its activated.
Each voucher code is activated when a vote is cast and the vote is recorded and stored in a database and in physical form. People can’t just enter random codes. So online, all any voter had to do to verify their vote count is enter their voucher number and reference that data point in the database. It will have their biometric Data, so it can’t be forged, and also have a record of what they voted. As long as we made the database open after the vote, anyone could instantly run a site that could recount the vote based on voters just reentering their data and verifying the validity of their vote.
I like the idea of having a politician removed from office if they propose unpopular legislation, however, since anyone can put forth a law at any time, I don’t see where the politician would even fit in. ( as you can see, I don’t like politicians lol)
ConFed Military and FBI
OK, so the ConFed has a strong military and a FBI type force. Now you said it enforces the constitution against city states. Is it not plausible for companies to adopt rules that could violate basic rights and in this case could the city states or ConFed have jurisdiction? Or would this be a private property matter, where they can enforce whatever rules they want on their business property?
As for military funding, its seems like the method of funding might be dependent on the situation, which is reasonable. If a colony was in a high risks place it might have a different method of funding than a colony in the middle of nowhere. Indeed, defense itself in completely dependent on the threat, so it all gels well.
Law Making
The expiration of laws – this reminded me of the concept of Jubalee, where every x number of years all debts were forgiven to allow people to start again. Perhaps it can remove all laws except the Constitutional ones and force a revote BY THE PEOPLE to determine if they want to reinstate laws.
I had imagined a concept something like a reset vote, where if say 85% of the NON government employed people were tired of the government they could hold a reset vote. This vote would have all current reps removed and banned from public life for life. It seems harsh on the surface, but imagine if this were enacted today. You might actually get a quality new wave in and if not, at least they would be inexperienced and so ineffective for a little while.
As far as implementation good luck and I would be interested to see it implemented, especially any colonies further away from land where you have less of a chance of a State budging into your business.