Uh-oh, someone find the error in this, otherwise this would make
many legislative commands (proposals that change the gamestate)
over the past year and a half ineffective.
I'm researching this because I really, really dislike the retcon
in The Lady or the Tiger. (I'm uncomfortable being ordered to
perform an illegal action, if it turns out to be one).
proto-CFJ
Proposal 4882 (The Lady, or the Tiger?) can have no effect on
Goethe's registration status.
Arguments
R594/8, no longer in effect, contained the following text:
For the purpose of the Rules, the application of an adopted
Proposal is a legal procedure for changing Nomic Properties.
R594/9, enacted 20-June-2005, contained no such text (and R594 has
since been repealed). It was replaced with the following in R1483
and later moved to R106:
A proposal is a document outlining changes to be made to Agora,
including enacting, repealing, or amending rules, or making
other explicit changes to the gamestate.
However, this in itself does not, as the old text did, legally
authorize the adjustment of specific properties (regulated
qantities). Additional legal authority is required for
Proposals to function. For example, while this R106 text states
a proposal's purpose is to enact rules, other rules are still
required to explicitly enable the enaction.
No other rules explicitly enable the setting of regulated quantities
via Proposal. The ability of a Proposal to set regulated properties
in the gamestate relied on the old "legal procedure" language in
R594/8 (e.g. CFJs 1397-99).
Only one possible mechanism currently exists for legally changing
regulated properties, that is interpreting Proposals that attempt to
change properties as Legislative Orders for a recordkeeper and Players
in general to abide by the change. However, Legislative Orders are
invalid if they order an illegal action (CFJ 1385).
And specifically, I posit that to order players to abide by a change
which conflicts with another Rule is legal if and only if the rule
allowing legislative orders (R1891, power=1) has precedence.
Otherwise such an order is illegal.
Proposal 4882 orders players (under certain conditions) to act as if
a particular Cantus Cygneus action was valid. If this conflicts
with the current Rule text (and judicial interpretation of Rule
text) for Cantus Cygneus, it orders a conflict into existence.
Since the Cantus Cygneus rule (R1789) is of higher precedence than
R1891, the Cantus Cygneus rule has precedence. Therefore, if the
order conflicts with the Cantus Cygneus rule, it orders us to
perform an illegal action, and is an invalid order.
