On 6/2/2020 10:53 AM, James Cook via agora-discussion wrote: > This topic has been bugging me ever since some recent CFJ > discussion(s) (don't remember which) in which authorial intent was > dismissed as irrelevant to the meaning of the rules, because it's not > explicitly mentioned in R217. I think that when R217 says "the text of > the rules takes precedence", it is requiring us to interpret the > meaning of the rules text, and it's possible for intention to enter > the picture there.
Can't remember the discussion, but IMO it's not because of R217 per se - the standard reason to ignore intent for legislation (in general, not just Agora) is that the rules are decided on by all the voters. If, in voting, I read something the author wrote, and interpret it a different way, and that matters for my vote choice, then there's no consensus intent that can be directly inferred from rules text - the author's intent is no more privileged than any other voter's intent at that point. Sometimes judges will go back to the conversations surrounding a proposal, and if there are conversations that provide evidence of intent then we can use that to a certain extent, as long as it shows "consensus voter intent" and not just "author intent". -G.
