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:
“Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.”
—Han Suyin (b. 1917)
“There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely DESPERATE. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capitalism is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)