On Wed, 2014-10-22 at 21:41 +0000, omd wrote: > "Rules pertaining to" sounds right to me, but "people pertaining to" > sounds fundamentally wrong; this doesn’t change just because the rule > talks vaguely about entities.
Yes, totally agree! While pretending "pertaining to" meant "related to", I completely failed to maintain its distinct connotation. > E claims that “in order to play the game, players must be expected to > understand[] messages at the time they are sent”, but certainly we > want players to understand the rules at the time they play! Yes, at the very least, this stuff should have been qualified better. > If the rule were repealed before the judgement, intuitive sense says > it shouldn’t change anything. In the case that the rule is repealed, my recommendation is that judges must still be permitted to use new information to interpret the repealed text as it applied at the time of the action, and not be restricted to information available only when the text was first proposed or enacted. I generally agree with the criticism, though, even if I think that particular thought experiment is irrelevant. > However, I disagree that discussion *must not* establish custom > “before the first judicial test of the meaning of the term”; if it had > been six months instead of three weeks, I think discussion and general > playing-in-accordance would have a quite strong likelihood to > establish custom, precisely *because* it did not “explicitly address[] > the meaning of the term” (because the meaning was considered > inarguable). Again, totally agree. I had meant to add some qualifications (i.e. don't give judges cart blanche to invalidate any established interpretation by discovering a more reasonable interpretation), but apparently forgot. As I said in reply to ais523, this wording is just horrible. "First judicial test of the meaning" is not really what I meant -- if the first judicial test is months later, as you suggest, the fact that it is the first test is not too relevant. In this case, the current judicial process started almost immediately after the question arose, so this was the first reasonable _opportunity_ for a judicial test of the meaning. I think that's closer to what I meant to say. If players do not take advantage of this opportunity within a reasonable time, then, yes, too late!
