====================================================================== CFJ 1065 "The Office of Speaker-Elect is not now being held in the normal fashion." ====================================================================== Judge: Vlad Judgement: FALSE Justices: Morendil (S), Steve (J), Kolja A. (pro-C) Decision: Overturn and judge TRUE Eligible: Andre, Blob, Calabresi, ChrisM, Chuck, Crito, General Chaos, Kolja A., Michael, Morendil, Murphy, Oerjan, Steve, Swann Ineligible: Vlad (Judge) Caller: elJefe Barred: On request: Vanyel On hold: Harlequin, Vir ====================================================================== History: Called by elJefe, 3 Nov 1997 08:02:34 +000 Assigned to Vlad, 6 Nov 1997 11:52:39 +0100 Judge FALSE, 12 Nov 1997 20:03:38 -0600 Appealed by elJefe, 13 Nov 1997 09:09:30 +0000 Appealed by Michael, 13 Nov 1997 09:27:24 +0000 Appealed by Gen Chaos, 13 Nov 1997 06:26:45 -0500 Assigned to Morendil, Steve, and Kolja A., 14 Nov 1997 07:32:55 +0000 Justice Kolja A.: Overturn and judge TRUE, 17 Nov 1997 14:29:43 +0100 Justice Morendil: Sustain, 20 Nov 1997 09:32:31 +0100 Justice Steve: Overturn and judge TRUE, 21 Nov 1997 14:08:39 +1100 ====================================================================== (Caller's) Arguments: Rule 1006: An Office must be held by a Player. Rule 790: The Winner of the Election shall hold the Office. This is a conflict. Rule 790 takes precedence, so Morendil (a non-Player) holds the Office of Speaker-Elect. Now: Rule 1006: An Officer is a player holding an Office. This is an explicit definition. There is no conflict with any other Rule, so the Office of Speaker-Elect is held by someone who is not an Officer (Morendil). Rule 790: An Office is held in the normal fashion only if held by an _Officer_ who was elected to it (among other things). The Office of Speaker-Elect does not satisfy this requirement. Therefore it is not being held in the normal fashion. ====================================================================== Judge's Arguments: Rule 1006 does clearly require an officer to be a Player. However, as has been pointed out, it is trumped in ths case by 760. It remains to be seen how this affects the readin of the rest of 760 An Office is "held in the normal fashion" if and only if the Officer holding that Office was elected to that Office and has neither resigned from it nor been retired or removed from it. An Office which is not held in the normal fashion is said to be held temporarily. I must disagree that this directly requires an Office to be held by an Officer to be held "in the normal fashion" It seems transparent that this is simply an assumption made by the Rule, not aware of the possible ramifications of the rest of the Rule. To interpret this implicit assumption as imposing any sort of requirement is, in my opinion, strained, particularly as the Rule still makes sense if we read Officer in the sense of "person holding an Office" rather than in the specialized sense used by 760, and since it is 760 itself that, elsewhere, defeats the definition that 1006 attempts to impose. This interpretation does least violence to the Rule. Vlad ====================================================================== Decision of Justice Kolja A.: I disagree that there is s conflict between 1006 and 790 here, as the caller of this CFJ claims. As the original judge of this CFJ also based eir judgement on the existence of such a conflict, I'll try to start all over again. If 790 said "if the _person_ holding that office...", this CFJ would obviously have to be judged false, because the further conditions given in 790 are all true for Morendil: e "was elected to that Office and has neither resigned from it nor been retired or removed from it." If 790 said "if the _player_ holding that office..." it would have to be judged true, because Morendil was not a player at the time when this CFJ was called. However, 790 does say "if the _officer_ holding that office...". I _suspect_ that the author of 790 is using "officer" as a simple synonym for "holder of an office" here, but this is not what counts for this judgement. What counts is that an officer is defined in 1006 as a _player_ holding an office. So at the time this CFJ was made there was no "officer" (in the sense of 1006) holding the office of speaker elect. Morendil was holding the office, but e was not a player and thus not an officer. Therefore, the first sentence of 790 was not true (although in a way the author of this rule probably never had in mind, but that is not the question here). Thus, the statement of this CFJ is true. I therefore judge to overturn the original judgement and deliver a new judgement of TRUE. ====================================================================== Decision of Speaker Morendil: To begin with, let me note that both Caller and Judge appear to be in agreement that a conflict between Rules 790 and 1006, with 790 having the higher precedence, results in a situation where a person who is not a Player may under some circumstances come to "hold an Office". Further, the Courts have not at this time been called upon to examine this issue, which I will therefore not adress. The Caller's opening remarks constitute, in my opinion, an unfortunate restatement of the two key provisions of Rule 1006, which I will therefore quote again : An Office is a position of authority or responsibility established by the Rules and held by a Player, who is called an Officer. At any time, an Office is held by exactly one Player; if no other Rule directly or indirectly specifies which Player holds an Office, it shall be held by the Speaker. Both of these provisions would in their own right prevent a person who is not a Player from acceding to the "position of authority or responsibility" that we know as an Office, or from being conferred "whatever duties, responsibilities, or privileges" the Rules assign to such a position. The Caller's restatement of the first of these provisions, as "An Officer is a Player holding an Office", is in my opinion unwarranted. It is logically equivalent to "All Officers are Players who hold an Office", whereas the actual wording is logically equivalent to "All Players who hold an Office are Officers", two statements which are definitely not equivalent to each other. The Caller would, in light of the foregoing, have us read Rule 790 in a manner slightly different from its actual wording; would have Rule 790 interpreted to mean An Office is "held in the normal fashion" if and only if the Player holding that Office was elected to that Office (...) I agree that this wording would require us to conclude that a person holding an Office could not be said to hold that Office "in the normal fashion". However, Rule 790 does state "if the Officer holding that Office", etc. In normal circumstances, we would look to Rule 1006 to determine which person this is referring to. However, while Rule 1006 does give a definition of the term "Officer" that is useful whenever the situation is such that an Office is held by a person who is a Player, that definition most certainly does not apply to non-Players. Therefore, and this is the crucial point, Rule 1006 is silent as to whether persons who hold an Office and are not Players are "Officers". The Caller's undue emphasis on the use of the word "Officer" in Rule 790 is thus misleading; the question at hand must be resolved by an appeal to Rule 1006, not 790, and, that Rule being silent on the issue, by appeal to the standards listed in Rule 217. It is this Justice's opinion that "Officer" is an adequate, sensible label to refer to a person holding an Office, for want of a more appropriate label, and that its use in this context is consonant with the traditions of Agora. I therefore have no reason not to Sustain Judge Vlad's Judgement of FALSE. ====================================================================== Decision of Justice Steve: In the matter of the Appeal of the Judgement of CFJ 1065, I overturn Vlad's Judgement and find the Statement TRUE. Judge Vlad erred in law in asserting that R790 does not require that an Office be held by a Player in order that it be held in the normal fashion. The language of R790 is very strong: the construction used is 'if and only if', the language of necessity and sufficiency. An Office is held in the normal fashion if and only if the Officer holding that Office was elected to that Office. Since R1006 defines an Officer as a Player, one is forced to the conclusion that a non-Player holding an Office cannot be an Officer. Since Morendil, a non-Player at the time this CFJ was called, was holding the Office in virtue of the high precedence of R790, I conclude that Morendil was not then an Officer. I also reject the Michael's suggestion that R790 implicitly defers to R1006 and so avoids conflict with it, and affirm with the Caller the conflict between these two Rules. This conflict arises almost inevitably from the hole left in the Rules concerning Candidates for Election, and the Winners of Elections, which does not prevent a non-Player from continuing as a Candidate in and Winning an Election. ======================================================================