status: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/#3848
(This document is informational only and contains no game actions).
=============================== CFJ 3848 ===============================
G. is a party to the Groucho Marx Club.
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Caller: G.
Judge: grok
Judgement: FALSE
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History:
Called by G.: 16 Jun 2020 22:51:31
Assigned to grok: 20 Jun 2020 00:24:39
Judged FALSE by grok: 27 Jun 2020 21:22:23
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Caller's Evidence:
On 6/16/2020 15:51 PM, G. wrote:
> I consent to the following contract, the Groucho Marx Club:
> {G. CANNOT become a party to the Groucho Marx Club}.
>
> I transfer 10 coins to the Groucho Marx Club.
Rule 2519/2 (Power=3)
Consent
A person is deemed to have consented to an action if and only if,
at the time the action took place:
1. e, acting as emself, has publicly stated that e agrees to the
action and not subsequently publicly withdrawn eir statement;
2. e is party to a contract whose body explicitly and
unambiguously indicates eir consent;
3. the action is taken as part of a promise which e created; or
4. it is reasonably clear from context that e wanted the action to
take place or assented to it taking place.
Rule 1742/22 (Power=2.5)
Contracts
Any group of one or more consenting persons (the parties) may
publicly make an agreement among themselves with the intention
that it be binding upon them and be governed by the rules. Such
an agreement is known as a contract. A contract may be modified,
including by changing the set of parties, with the consent of all
existing parties. A contract may also be terminated with the
consent of all parties. A contract automatically terminates if the
number of parties to it falls below one. It is IMPOSSIBLE for a
person to become a party to a contract without eir consent.
Parties to a contract governed by the rules SHALL act in
accordance with that contract. This obligation is not impaired
by contradiction between the contract and any other contract, or
between the contract and the rules.
Rules to the contrary notwithstanding, any change that would cause
the full provisions or parties of a contract to become publicly
unavailable is canceled and does not take effect.
The portion of a contract's provisions that can be interpreted
with reference only to information that is either publicly or
generally available are known as its body; the remainder of the
provisions are known as the annex.
A party to a contract CAN perform any of the following actions as
explicitly and unambiguously permitted by the contract's body:
* Act on behalf of another party to the contract.
* By announcement, revoke destructible assets from the contract.
* By announcement, transfer liquid assets from the contract to a
specified recipient.
Caller's Arguments:
I satisfied all of the requirements of R1742 for making a one-party
agreement (obviously I agreed with myself about it). To asset that I
CANNOT join is to assert that a contract can take precedence over R1742
in this regard.
Further, similar to the precedent of CFJ 7, the contract came into
existence by my agreeing to it (i.e. the contract clauses had no force
until immediately after I agreed). Once I agreed, they had force, but
saying I CANNOT become a party doesn't matter if I'm already a party.
(phrased that way,this might be a pretty trivial true, honestly).
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Gratuitous Arguments by Publius Scribonius Scholasticus:
Because this contract cannot have any parties, it cannot be a contract.
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Judge grok's Arguments:
I find CFJ 3848 FALSE.
3848 proposes a question of relative action speed--when do things take
effect? At what moment of ratification is a person held to the
obligation of the ruleset? There are two key preceding cases to help
clarify this issue.
First, CFJ 7 [1]. This recently-judged case explores an early event of
the ratification of the ruleset, where it was disputed whether
contradictory rules could be ratified at the same time. The judgment
found yes, as neither rule had any effect until ratification, and
neither rule had preceding effect to decide to the contrary. Using
this judgment as precedent, there is a ruleset-level path for the
Groucho Marx Club to both exist and for G to be a party.
However, the judgment is made murky by contract-specific relative
action speed arguments made in CFJ 1843 [2]. In this case, a player
attempted to call an equity case on a contract that did not exist,
then created the agreement and joined it retroactively. It's honestly
a very confusing case, but the Judge's arguments provide interesting
texture on how we apply action speed to contracts. The judge's
arguments define "joining" as "the moment the Agreement is justicable
and binding in Agora". While this specific statement is used to
outline the agreement-to-case timeline, the definition itself can be
extended. The judgment collapses unless you interpret that specific
judicial argument to mean there is a moment *during* the contract
consent process where the agreement is binding to the player.
I am conflicted as to which of these decisions is more valuable to the
gamestate as a whole. Functionally I think CFJ 7 is more useful, but
pragmatically I think CFJ 1843 lays out a more intuitive line of
gameplay specific to this contract attempt. Even though CFJ 7 is more
recent precedent, I believe the contract-specific language in CFJ 1843
makes it independently applicable precedent.
For these reasons, I find precedent in CFJ 1843 compelling. G. is not
a party to The Groucho Marx Club. As The Groucho Marx Club has zero
parties, it is not a contract.
Judge's Evidence:
[1] https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?7
[2] https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1843
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