College of Sanyal

Named after an esoteric name for the god of law and order, the College of Sanyal was the primary legislative body for most of the history of the elven empire. It was originally developed as an organization who would gather information from around the eleven empire and use it to propose policies for the emperor to enact. its members were wealthy elves who would apply to serve, and initially were vetted by the emperor or his personal retinue. As they had no actual legislative power and were simply instructed to create and debate on policy proposals few joined, and while prestigious the positions held little power. Gradually this changed. After the college was in place for a while ambitious elves realized that if they wished for certain policy to be enacted, getting it proposed by the college could in fact be more effective than the old ways of directly petitioning the emperor. Appointments were for life, but during this early period appointees had few actual duties besides research and debate. The debate was especially prioritized, and very complex etiquette was developed around the formal debates held almost constantly at the college. Members would develop wild proposals simply to debate them, and with the number of proposals rising rules were enacted to determine what proposals would actually be presented, based on their performance in debates. This created an environment of intense political conflict between members jockeying to have their proposals presented and block their rivals proposals. Despite, or perhaps because of, this intense conflict the proposals were increasingly well researched and presented, and the emperors began to rely more and more on them, creating less and less of their own policies. Eventual the proposal for the college to appoint its own method crossed the emperors desk, leading to a complete revolution in how members were appointed. Rather than being individually vetted, applicants were tested in various subjects, especially debate. The final test was to present a proposal to the college, which was successfully completed without violating the debate rules. This was extremely difficult, as over time the rules simply grew in complexity. These debate rules dealt with speaking times and the structure of arguments, but also with logical fallacies and the type of evidence that could be presented, an what qualified as sufficient evidence, and rules often varied based on the categorization of the policy being proposed. An applicants proposal did not need to actually be approved, only successfully completed, and having this initial proposal pass was a highly prestigious achievement. Once admitted a member of the college would participate in debates, creating new proposals(often in small groups), and playing demon's advocate to other proposals. Which proposals were selected became a strict process, not decided by general vote but by success on various criteria, and of proposals that successfully were debated the once to be passed on to the empire were selected to fill various quotas. This means that for its duration the college was almost continually pumping out legislation, except for a small number of crises which resulted in no proposals being successfully debated for a few years.