Powers
Notable among the Hall's powers is its ability to elect the Amyrlin Seat. The Hall may choose any woman who can channel to be the Amyrlin, though historically it has tended to be conservative in its choices, with recent Amyrlins being mature women, strong in the One Power.
The Hall may also depose an Amyrlin Seat. There appears to be a precedent that the Hall should only depose an Amyrlin for a serious offence under Tower law or for gross misgovernment, but no legal requirement that a specific offence be proven.
The Hall also has a general legislative power. It can make laws and formulate policy for the White Tower and Aes Sedai, and presumably also for the city of Tar Valon.
It is possible that, when there is no Amyrlin Seat (i.e., between the death or deposition of one and the election of her successor), the Hall also carries on the executive government of the Tower.
A declaration of war by the White Tower requires the lesser consensus, which is twelve Sitters standing for the declaration.
Read more about this topic: Hall Of The Tower
Famous quotes containing the word powers:
“... when I exclaim against novels, I mean when contrasted with those works which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination.For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers ...”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (17591797)
“And as the sun above the light doth bring,
Though we behold it in the air below,
So from th eternal Light the soul doth spring,
Though in the body she her powers do show.”
—Sir John Davies (15691626)
“For human nature, being more highly pitched, selved, and distinctive than anything in the world, can have been developed, evolved, condensed, from the vastness of the world not anyhow or by the working of common powers but only by one of finer or higher pitch and determination than itself.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (18441889)