[phew! I tried a few times on this one and lost steam - just gotta get it off my plate]. On Fri, 16 Nov 2018, D. Margaux wrote: > 3688 called by D. Margaux 11 November 2018, assigned to G. 11 November > 2018: "D. Margaux’s attempt to assign a judgement to CFJ 3672 was > EFFECTIVE." I judge CFJ 3688 as follows: I accept the Caller's arguments that e was Prime Minister at the time of eir attempted action, and thus generally able to issue Cabinet Orders, as there is game consensus and past practice that implies that e became PM successfully. But in attempting to assign CFJ 3672 to emself, e attempted to issue an order of Certiorari for a open CFJ that already had a judge (Trigon) assigned to it, so the focus of these arguments will be on what happens in that situation. Removing a judge from a case is a Regulated Action by R2125, as R591 enables its performance under certain conditions. This means removing a judge from a case (as per R2125): > CAN only be performed as described by the > Rules,and only using the methods explicitly specified in the Rules > for performing the given action. The invocation of Certiorari, as per R2451, is done by announcement as follows: > - Certiorari (Arbitor): The Prime Minister assigns emself as judge > of a specified open case. This does not "explicitly" remove the previous judge from the case. The Caller (in subsequent arguments) has suggested that the Rules' grammar and mechanisms around CFJs *imply* (without outright stating) that a case can only have one judge. Therefore (paraphrasing the Caller) if a new judge is assigned, the previous judge is removed by the "mechanism" of the new judge being added + grammar that implies there can be only one judge at a time. I find that this does not meet the standard of "described by the Rules" required for regulated actions. The "description" does not mention removal, and "adding a new judge" is not "explicitly" specified as a method of removing a previous judge. The "grammar" arguments for one judge per case are implications - the rules are silent on whether the previous judge is removed, so don't in any reasonable "description" of removal. Previously (CFJ 3488) we have found that judges are not removed from a case even if they cease to be players (they can still deliver their judgements as a non-player), so requiring a more explicit specification of judge removal is in keeping with precedent - if we don't let deregistration and lack of eligibility implicitly remove a judge, we wouldn't let adding a new judge implicitly remove a previous judge. So, whether or not D. Margaux became the judge via Certiorari, Trigon remains a judge of CFJ 3672. So, either (1) the case has two judges simultaneously, or (2) it is IMPOSSIBLE for a case to have two judges simultaneously, and since Trigon was already the judge and not removed, D. Margaux's attempt to assign it to emself failed. How to distinguish? Simply, if the Certiorari clause (R2451) has precedence over the "CFJ only has one judge" concept, then Certiorari assignment worked (overriding the "one judge" concept) and the case has two judges simultaneously. If "CFJ only has one judge" concept has precedence, then the attempt to invoke Certiorari failed. Unfortunately, the "only one judge" concept is not in a single rule, but an inference gleaned by looking over the grammar and mechanisms of several rules: R991, R591, and R911. Also, it's important to note that individual instances of grammar should NOT generally be sufficient to override explicit definitions: using "the" instead of "a" might be a mistake or historical artifact. So it is only if the full weight of implicit assumptions - both grammatical and mechanistic, imply singularity, that we would find that CFJs CANNOT have more than one judge at a time. So looking across the rules in question: R991 uses "its judge" which implies each CFJ has only one, but there are no procedural difficulties there if a CFJ ends up with two judges. R591 contains: > When a CFJ is open and assigned to a judge, that judge CAN assign > a valid judgement to it by announcement, and SHALL do so in a > timely fashion after this becomes possible. If e does not, the > Arbitor CAN remove em from being the judge of that case by > announcement Here, "When a CFJ is ... assigned to a judge" is singular, which implies that if a CFJ is assigned to 2 judges, then this condition isn't meant. Which would mean that a CFJ assigned to two judges couldn't be assigned a judgement. This would malfunction, and in particular prevent the CFJ from being resolved, violating the last paragraph of R217 - so there's a breakage in a high-level guarantee if the CFJ is found to have 2 judges. R911 contains: > - REMIT: The case becomes open again, and the current judge is > recused. Here, "the current judge" is singular, and what happens for 2 judges following a moot is unclear/broken. Overall, these issues, especially the one in R591, mean that a 2-judge assignment would be broken and not able to be judged - violating the high-level R217, which has precedence over R2451. Therefore, a case can have only one judge. Since Trigon was the judge, and not removed, the attempt at Certiorari simply failed, and D. Margaux did not judge the case. FALSE.
