Patroklos wrote:This all assumes he doesn't get off for various miscarraiges of justice anyway. I don't see how it can be legal for Mace to march into his sitting soverigns office with armed monks and arrest him without any word edgewise from any branch of government. Maybe if he was physically stopping a breach of peace like say Palpantine cutting down somebody with his light saber, but he was just sitting in his office.
Y'know, I really wish people would stop calling Jedi "monks". Monks don't actually control an energy field that allows them to do amazing thing like the Jedi can do. There is a tangible way to value a Jedi while there is none for a monk.
That said, they clearly have authority and jurisdiction to some degree to deal with matter of galactic influence and importance. I mean they automatically are commissioned as Generals in times of war and they seem to have a equal footing to some degree with the Senate. There has to be some level of authority there.
At that point Mace knew nothing about Palpantine being behind the CIS, and they only suspected Sith involvment in the assassination plot ealier, and again there is the issue of what Sith. Basically all Mace knew was that the Chancellor was practicing a religion he didn't like. It might be a very taboo religion and warrant removal, but not that way. I'd imagine it would be like finding out the President is a Nazi and he owns up to it. Its not illegal, but I he wouldn't last long and be removed quite quickly via the legal process.
Nope, at that point they knew damn sure there was Sith involvement. Even if you discount what Dooku tells Obi-Wan about a Sith in the Senate, they know for sure that Maul and Dooku were both Sith working for/with the CIS. And for fucks sake. The Sith is not just a religion people don't like. If that was all it was, why keep it a fucking secret? The galaxy may not remember as a whole, but there have to be records of what the Sith had done in the past, especially if you take the EU into account (which I hate doing) and people smart enough to keep the Jedi around clearly from that time.
And it would be in Germany. Why wouldn't the same situation apply in the GR where the Sith effectively were Nazis with real magic powers.
Of course Palpantine owned huge chunks of the Senate outright. A lot of people like to assume he is tricking everyone but he really needed sincere political support to accomplish his ends. I am sure he had as much or more legislative support via back room deals and dirt too, but to assume every Senator was either corrupt rather than actually believed in the New Order sincerely (that includes the population in general too) really cheapens Palpantine's accomplishment and makes him far less formidable as a villian.
Herein lies the problem. He probably did get a lot of legal legislation pushed through to empower him. In fact we know that from the movies directly. The thing is, if he is illegally in office or illegally acting as a Sith, it still wouldn't matter because you would still have to get the laws overturned and revoked. You now have what happened in
The Dark Knight.
"Ok, so your chancellor is the most powerful man in the galaxy, leader of the largest army ever assembled and he is secretly a Sith Lord that single handedly destroyed the Jedi, and your plan is to remove him from legally elected office? Good luck."
So then you have the problem of who is going to try him? Probably the Senate, of which at least half are either true believers or in the Chancellors pocket for the govenrment we see to function in the first place. Are the Jedi going to arrest half the Senate too? This is why I think the idea of the "Cloister Coup" is one of the only intelligent plot points to come out of the RotS. Whether the Jedi were right or not to the audience is irrelevant, what the Galaxy at the time saw was a religious order arbitrariy attempt to arrest and then kill their sitting soverign who enjoyed legitimate and in part altruisitc support from their democratic (at the galactic level anyway) Senate without providing any evidence or even explaination as to why. Some of that is due to Palpantine suppressing it after the fact, but it is as much a result of Mace jumping the gun as well. Would it have killed him to give Bail Organa a call or better yet bring him with him so a respected Senator might speak to what actually happened and lend some legitimacy to the arrest?
You really have to get away from the idea that the galaxy views the Jedi as a "religious" order at this time. People recognize them as an organization with real power both individually and as a whole when dealing with the galaxy. Even little slave kids on Tattooine know they are real and what they can do. And that is before the propoganda machine of the Clone Wars kicks in.
Also and Mace is counting on Organa (and the rest of the "2000") after the fact. Once Palpatine is dead, his power-base falls apart and anyone closely associated with him instantly becomes suspect. The Jedi are trusted pretty implicitly at this point and if they say we are just keeping the seat warm until someone is legally elected or appointed or article of succession kick in, they would probably be taken at their word. You also have to remember that Mace is also heading in there with the word of the Hero of the Republic at his back as well. Anakin's direct testimony and the actions of the Jedi in relinquishing power which I imagine would be quite quickly.
You also have to remember that Palpatine was operating under "emergency powers" and if the Jedi win the war, which they do without Order 66, not to mention without Dooku, Grievous and with Sidious suddenly vanishing, then there would be an election held to replace Palpatine anyway. They don't even have to move to enact anything as it was already ready to go. Bail Organa is the likely replacement as well.
And while a lot of people critisize the Order 66 thing about killing the rest of the Jedi as being something nobody would tolerate, it make sit a lot more likely that it will be tolerated if it is couched in the circumstances of an attempt to depose a legal and beloved leader in the middle of a war (and one he is about to win in the coming days to boot) with absolutely zero justification as far as anyone in universe can tell. Far more has been forgiven or accepted in real life over the centuries.
No Palpatine, no Order 66 to fret over.
In any case I don't think a trail would work until after the New Republic was formed. In Nuremberg Germany wasn't the sole state in existance with everything flowing through its system of laws. There was were the laws and procedures of dozens of other coequal political entities to draw from and whatever they decided to make up. Until the Formation of the New Republic the only laws you can use are either the Republic's whom Palpantine was in the process of making his own or the Empire that was his own.
No way dude. You are thinking about it all wrong.
This would be akin to Nazi Germany winning, then being overthrown by the Allies 30 years later. The idea that Hitler would let any evidence of war crimes survive is virtually insane. There couldn't even be a trial at that point because everyone involved with it would essentially be dead and there would be no evidence and all the rest of the world would probably have acquiesced to Nazi Germany in some way in either suing for peace or becoming outright allies. You would be putting Hitler on trial in the 80's with practically no evidence and half the world cooperating with him for 30+ years.
It's like Stark already said, it is just a massive show trial at this point where the sentence will be DEATH TO PALPATINE! no matter what.
