This would be true if failing to perform The Ritual was itself harmful (malum in se). However, it is wrong only because the rules say so (malum prohibitum), and I see no reason why we should extent their prohibition farther than they explicitly do so. It is also a principle of American criminal law that if the statue is ambiguous it may be void for vagueness, so this law, which doesn’t make it clear who is responsible, should be too vague to impose a criminal penalty.
-Aris On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 9:20 PM D. Margaux <dmargaux...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Jun 3, 2019, at 11:47 PM, Aris Merchant < > thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Under the present conditions, > > however, each player can quite reasonably claim that someone else should > > have performed The Ritual, and that it wasn’t *their* fault that it > wasn’t > > performed. Unless the rule explicitly states that the responsibility > falls > > on each player jointly and severally (i.e. it’s each player’s > > responsibility to see that The Ritual is performed), there is no way to > > prove from the text of the rules involved that this should be the case. > > I am delighted that you raised the idea of joint and several liability! > That analogy occurred to me too; I didn’t mention it in my proto because > it’s not a rules based concept. But it did perhaps influence my thinking > somewhat. > > This Ritual stuff seems interestingly analogous to a specific situation in > which American law generally *does* recognize joint and several liability: > it is the situation where multiple careless or bad actors, each acting > independently of one another, are each an independent legal cause of the > entire harm that is suffered by the wronged party. For example, imagine > that an elderly person walking on a sidewalk is carelessly bumped into the > road by a distracted pedestrian, and that the elderly person is then struck > by a speeding and reckless drunk driver, and e suffers very serious > injuries. The distracted pedestrian and the drunk driver each were legal > causes the entire harm—if either of them had been acting with due care, > then the elderly person would not have been struck by the car. And the > harm to the elderly person cannot be apportioned in any principled way as > between the two wrongful actors. So American tort law holds them both > jointly and severally liable, even though each of them individually would > have caused NO harm if the other had not ALSO independently been acting > wrongfully! See Restatement (2d) of Torts § 879 (“If the tortious conduct > of each of two or more persons is a legal cause of harm that cannot be > apportioned, each is subject to liability for the entire harm, irrespective > of whether their conduct is concurring or consecutive.”). > > The Ritual strikes me as an analogous situation. Each player’s inaction is > a cause of the harm, and the harm that was caused cannot be apportioned > among the players in a principled way. As a result, it is not unjust that > each player is considered liable for the entire harm (jointly and severally > as it were), even though (as you said) “each player can quite reasonably > claim that someone else should have performed The Ritual, and that it > wasn’t *their* fault that it wasn’t performed.” Same with the distracted > pedestrian and the drunk driver—each of them could say that the other > should have done the prudent thing to avoid the accident, and that “it > wasn’t their fault” the injury occurred. > > Here, each individual player should have done the prudent thing and > performed the Ritual, and the fact that no other player performed it does > not absolve the others of their moral responsibility. (I suppose that point > goes to rebut the supposed injustice of holding people liable, rather than > for whether they violated the Rules.)
