On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 6:14 PM, Ed Murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Detail: http://zenith.homelinux.net/cotc/viewcase.php?cfj=1930 > > ============================== CFJ 1930 ============================== > > It is impossible for a player to become Referee within the > meaning of the public contract that is the backing document for > XP without failing to do something that its paragraph 8 > specifies that the Referee SHALL do in that situation, under the > current set of rules. > > ========================================================================
Proto-judgement: In CFJ 1659, it was found that a contract was necessarily bound to the definitions provided by the rules by the version of Rule 754 then in effect. Since then, we have added the phrase "by default" to R754 paragraph (2), but this does not necessarily mean that a contract is altogether free of rules-based definitions. A contract must indicate in some way that an alternate definition is to be used, or else the definition from the rules applies. The contract does not explicitly indicate any alternate definition for "rule", so any such direction must be implicit, to be gleaned from context. It certainly appears from context that the R2141 definition is not intended; perhaps the best indication of this is that the term's usage seems to fall more in line with the dictionary definition of "a prescribed mathematical method for performing a calculation or solving a problem." But this is not a clear criterion, as there are instances of the word "rule" in the ruleset that might be interpreted the same way, for example in R2154 in the phrase "quorum is the lesser of three and the number of active players (other rules on quorum notwithstanding)". Why should the Fight Arena's usage be granted non-default status, but not the usage in R2154? Proceeding from here, I find that the Fight Arena contract is neither explicit nor clearly implicit in substituting a non-default meaning for the word "rule". Goethe has advanced the argument that a modified noun is not necessarily an instance of the class of objects described by the base noun, for which e references a prior case in which a "limited executor" was found not to be an "executor". In that case, however, both terms were explicitly defined by the rules, so the phrase "limited executor" would be described more accurately as a compound noun than as the word "executor" with a modifier. In general, I think Goethe is correct -- petrified wood is not wood, for example -- but I can see no reason in this case to view the word "secret" as anything other than a plain adjective. Most tellingly, the same paragraph of the Fight Arena that requires the Referee to create a secret rule goes on to refer to it simply as a "rule". Accordingly, I find that the definition of the word "rule" in the Fight Arena contract is that provided by Rule 2141. By the arguments provided by the caller, I therefore (proto)-judge this CFJ to be TRUE. -root
