Ed Murphy wrote: > Detail: http://zenith.homelinux.net/cotc/viewcase.php?cfj=2437a
The fundamental question here is whether or not R2160 was satisfied for the purposes of the actions Goethe performed. R2160 requires 4 conditions to be met to allow a player to perform the action, and I will evaluate each of these in reverse order. Condition (d) is trivially true; the Grand Poobah CAN make arbitrary changes to caste. Condition (c) is not relevant, the office was not at the time held by an active player. Condition (b) is satisfied by the office being vacant. Condition (a) is the only one to which debate can be raised. The question is whether or not the rules require the Grand Poobah to, after having possibly flipped BobTHJ's caste, flip a player's caste to Alpha? Now, a point of interpretation is important here. Condition (a) is worded in a way such that it is not clear as to whether or not the requirement is evaluated empirically or not - that is, without regards to changing circumstances. The Grand Poobah is required to, as soon as possible after the beginning of the month, make caste changes. Does this mean that a deputy, in performing the changes, discharges the obligation in such a way that Condition (a) is no longer satisfied? Agoran tradition is generally insufficient at providing a good ruling for this. In most cases, obligations for offices (and indeed, obligations generally) that authorize specific action authorize so as a part of the obligation - the ability to perform the action disappears as the obligation does. As such, condition (d) usually stops an attempt to deputize before condition (a) is tested. The Grand Poobah is a special case, as the action is always possible, but only to the holder of the office. There does, however, exist one useful bit of judicial precedent. In CFJ 2120, Judge woggle ruled that an obligation with a fixed time period is, if violated, converted to an open-ended one to allow the officer or a deputy to complete the action. Since deputization functions in a situation where the obligation exists, but not through the rules, it suggests that the correct interpretation of condition (a) is that it is satisfied whenever an obligation exists for the officeholder to perform the action, not just when the rules would require such an action to be performed. This leads to another question: did such an obligation exist that Goethe, through deputization, could fulfill? Initially, there most certainly did, but it is possible that the promotion of BobTHJ to Alpha discharged the obligation. It is also possible that since the obligation is tied to the officeholder, and not the office, the obligation was not discharged and remained, allowing Goethe to repeatedly promote players to Alpha. I refer to my arguments used in the prior judgment of this case. Condition (d) of R2160 states that a deputization can be performed only if the player could perform the action for which e is deputizing if e held the office. Now, if the obligation is a CAN and SHALL obligation - that is, one that provides the sole mechanism by which the action can be performed, then with obligations tied to a specific officeholder, we would find that the deputy, if holding the office, would not have the obligation and thus ability to perform the desired action. Since Agoran tradition shows that deputies can indeed perform such actions, the obligations must therefore be placed upon the office itself and not upon any specific player holding the office. I also note that Goethe may possibly not have succeeded in promoting BobTHJ to Alpha if the Grand Poobah is required to fulfill the obligations as a whole and not as units. This is a minor point, and utterly irrelevant to the case at large, since if that was impossible, then every subsequent flip to Alpha was also most certainly impossible. Based on this logic, I find that Goethe did indeed discharge the Grand Poobah's obligation to promote a player to Alpha and that as such e could no longer deputize for the office. I judge FALSE -coppro
