Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 3796 Assigned to omd
On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 9:25 PM Tanner Swett via agora-discussion
wrote:
> Would this ordinance have any "fighting chance" against the United
> States Constitution? One may say that yes, it would. After all, the
> Constitution is part of United States law, and the ordinance is also
> part of United States law. The Constitution claims precedence over the
> ordinance ("This Constitution [...] shall be the supreme Law of the
> Land"), but the ordinance also claims precedence over the
> Constitution. And there is (as far as I know) no "third law"
> explaining how to resolve conflicts between the Constitution and city
> ordinances.
Well, every new judge, lawmaker, and naturalized citizen swears an
oath to defend, not United States law as a whole, but the
Constitution. That oath can serve as the "third law", although I
don't think the existence of the oath is *necessary* for the
Constitution to win this hypothetical.
> But that's nonsense, isn't it? The Constitution is supreme, and other
> laws can't wrest this supremacy away from it simply by saying so. Or,
> at least, that's the conclusion we would like to be able to come to.
> And in order to come to this conclusion, we have to hold, as an axiom
> of law, that supremacy is "sticky"—if circumstances change such that
> two laws each claim precedence over each other, then the law which was
> supreme before the change remains supreme after the change.
>
> I think many would agree that the supreme law of Agora currently
> consists of those rules whose Power is 3 or greater.
I agree that supremacy can be "sticky", but I disagree that it exists
implicitly in Agora. The Constitution makes it quite clear that
normal laws have a second-class status, both with the supremacy clause
itself, and implicitly with the large number of clauses dedicated to
limiting what normal laws can do: enumerated powers, Bill of Rights,
etc. In contrast, all we have in Agora is a conflict resolution
clause, between rules that otherwise seem to be part of the same
document, the same "law". We say that Agora is defined by its
ruleset, or its Rules; we don't define it by 'its Rules of Power 3 or
greater', and then leave it to those rules to recognize any lesser
rules.
However, I was thinking of proposing an Agoran constitution as a fix
for the scam. It would basically just be taking a selection of
Power-3 rules and rechristening them 'constitutional articles' or
something, but then adding language saying the constitution alone is
the platonic successor of the prior ruleset, and the other 'rules' are
moved to a new, inferior status. It might also be an opportunity to
shake things up a bit, restyling so it feels like a proper
constitution...
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 3796 Assigned to omd
On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 9:25 PM Tanner Swett via agora-discussion
wrote:
>
> Gratuitous postmortem arguments on CFJ 3796:
>
> I don't think it's necessary to bring Rule 217 into this at all; scams
> of this type simply can't work. I'll explain why I think that.
>
> Imagine that the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan enacts an ordinance
> which states that, the United States Constitution notwithstanding, the
> ordinance itself is the supreme law of the United States and takes
> precedence over all other United States law. Further suppose that the
> ordinance contains sufficient language that it does not "leave
> anything out" in the way that H. omd says that Gaelan's rule does—the
> language of the ordinance is airtight and claims precedence in every
> necessary way.
>
> Would this ordinance have any "fighting chance" against the United
> States Constitution? One may say that yes, it would. After all, the
> Constitution is part of United States law, and the ordinance is also
> part of United States law. The Constitution claims precedence over the
> ordinance ("This Constitution [...] shall be the supreme Law of the
> Land"), but the ordinance also claims precedence over the
> Constitution. And there is (as far as I know) no "third law"
> explaining how to resolve conflicts between the Constitution and city
> ordinances.
>
> But that's nonsense, isn't it? The Constitution is supreme, and other
> laws can't wrest this supremacy away from it simply by saying so. Or,
> at least, that's the conclusion we would like to be able to come to.
> And in order to come to this conclusion, we have to hold, as an axiom
> of law, that supremacy is "sticky"—if circumstances change such that
> two laws each claim precedence over each other, then the law which was
> supreme before the change remains supreme after the change.
>
> I think many would agree that the supreme law of Agora currently
> consists of those rules whose Power is 3 or greater. Those rules have
> unlimited capacity to make rule changes and govern the game, and all
> other rules are subordinate to those rules. If a new rule is enacted
> which claims to be supreme over those rules, supremacy nevertheless
> "sticks" to the Power 3-or-greater rules and does not pass to the new
> rule without a particular reason why it should.
>
> —Warrigal, who, in the eyes of Agora's rules, is subordinate to all of them
Gratuitous postmortem counterarguments:
With the greatest respect for Warrigal, I opine that e is
misinterpreting the situation. I agree with eir example about Grand
Rapids, Michigan, I just disagree about the reasons why the
Constitution maintains supremacy, and I shall counter with another
fictional example.
Back in the early days before the Constitution, the city of
Shortsightedness, Rhode Island, had an independent streak (for reasons
that will be apparent to anyone who knows the founding story of Rhode
Island). Shortsightedness was so independent that, upon its founding,
it passed an ordinance to the effect that "the ordinances of the city
of Shortsightedness shall be the supreme law of the land, and the
people of the city and the judges thereof shall be bound by those
ordinances and only those ordinances, and no other law shall be
binding upon the city or the people or judges thereof".
At the time of its founding, the city of Shortsightedness was not
bound by any other legal document, because a royal charter had not yet
been issued for the colony of Rhode Island. When the charter was
issued, it did not ever claim supremacy over the ordinance, and the
issue never arose. The people of the city of Shortsightedness
contributed taxes to the Rhode Island Colony, always taking care to
tell the tax collectors that their compliance was purely voluntary,
and that they were not bound by the laws of the Rhode Island legi
doslature. The tax collectors laughed and took the money.
When the Constitution was ratified by Rhode Island, the city of
Shortsightedness was bitterly opposed. Having just rebelled against a
king, they had no interest in a new "federal government". When the
first federal taxes came around, they refused to pay. They pointed out
that under their ordinance, which long predated the Constitution, they
were not bound by federal law.
Under Warrigal's stickiness theory, it's clear what happens next.
Shortsightedness is right. Its laws are supreme, because, having never
abandoned their supremacy, they retain it. Under our actual theory,
things are different. If the city tried to present its arguments in
court, they'd be laughed out of the courtroom. The reason the
Constitution is binding is not that it is senior in age, it is that it
represents a magical and legally omnipotent force, the Supreme Will of
the People of the United States. The Supreme Will of the People of the
United States does not care about the puny ordinances of the puny city
of Shortsightedness. Those laws are irrelevant before its grandeur.
The reason the ordinance of Grand Rapids,
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 3796 Assigned to omd
Gratuitous postmortem arguments on CFJ 3796:
I don't think it's necessary to bring Rule 217 into this at all; scams
of this type simply can't work. I'll explain why I think that.
Imagine that the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan enacts an ordinance
which states that, the United States Constitution notwithstanding, the
ordinance itself is the supreme law of the United States and takes
precedence over all other United States law. Further suppose that the
ordinance contains sufficient language that it does not "leave
anything out" in the way that H. omd says that Gaelan's rule does—the
language of the ordinance is airtight and claims precedence in every
necessary way.
Would this ordinance have any "fighting chance" against the United
States Constitution? One may say that yes, it would. After all, the
Constitution is part of United States law, and the ordinance is also
part of United States law. The Constitution claims precedence over the
ordinance ("This Constitution [...] shall be the supreme Law of the
Land"), but the ordinance also claims precedence over the
Constitution. And there is (as far as I know) no "third law"
explaining how to resolve conflicts between the Constitution and city
ordinances.
But that's nonsense, isn't it? The Constitution is supreme, and other
laws can't wrest this supremacy away from it simply by saying so. Or,
at least, that's the conclusion we would like to be able to come to.
And in order to come to this conclusion, we have to hold, as an axiom
of law, that supremacy is "sticky"—if circumstances change such that
two laws each claim precedence over each other, then the law which was
supreme before the change remains supreme after the change.
I think many would agree that the supreme law of Agora currently
consists of those rules whose Power is 3 or greater. Those rules have
unlimited capacity to make rule changes and govern the game, and all
other rules are subordinate to those rules. If a new rule is enacted
which claims to be supreme over those rules, supremacy nevertheless
"sticks" to the Power 3-or-greater rules and does not pass to the new
rule without a particular reason why it should.
—Warrigal, who, in the eyes of Agora's rules, is subordinate to all of them
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: Fwd: [Arbitor] CFJ 3796 Assigned to omd
On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 2:09 AM omd wrote: > This leaves the text as "inconsistent", and Rule 217 informs us to > augment it by the usual factors. In this case, "game custom" clearly > supports higher-power rules taking precedence over lower-power ones. > So does "common sense": the ruleset as a whole is clearly designed > with that expectation, This isn't motion-worthy or anything, but it's worth pointing out that if "common legal definitions" are used, you get the opposite conclusion. At least in the U.S., standard interpretation (e.g. of constitutional law) is that later amendments overrule earlier ones in a conflict.
