On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 10:34 AM Jason Cobb via agora-discussion <agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote: > > On 1/8/20 12:08 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-discussion wrote: > >> Each officer has the power to, with notice, issue a memorandum, > >> which shall consist in a public document and shall, once issued, > >> have the power to resolve bindingly any matter within eir official area > >> of > >> concern, insofar as that memorandum is neither arbitrary nor capricious. > > > Actually, does this need to specify that the memorandum takes effect in > order for it to change the gamestate? Otherwise, it's just something > capable of changing the gamestate that doesn't actually do it.
I think what's being keyed off here is the "resolve" in R217's "formal process to resolve matters of controversy". Colloquially, we map that R217 "formal process" onto CFJs, but that's not the only means - for example a Proposal is a formal process to resolve a controversy (via a vote) and it could be argued that ratification is as well. So saying that a memorandum generically "resolves" things is likely too generic, especially because it's not clear what "bindingly resolve" or "power to resolve" means in a CFJ context - i.e. does a judge have a "power" or "binding" ability to resolve given that e can be overruled? (I don't think so - CFJs are purposefully toothless. So is a "binding" as described more like a CFJ, or a ratification?) A possible way forward is to say that officers may issue memoranda, and then add to R217 that "the current officer's memoranda" is part of the consideration for rules interpretation (somewhere alongside the "past judgements" part, though some refactoring of R217 may be needed to get in concepts like arbitrary and capricious). This would also have the feature of making an officer's memoranda an election issue. There should also be a way for a Player who's not the officer to "request a memorandum" or for a judge or Arbitor to say "you know what, this CFJ should be the subject of a memorandum let's get the officer's take first and I'll only overrule that if it's ridiculous". A super-lightweight may might be to say that the Arbitor SHOULD assign CFJs pertaining to an office to that Officer and that judges SHOULD seek the officer's opinion. (But where's the fun in that - we want administrative law, and we want it... well, we want it with 7 days public notice following a comment period...). -G.
