spoon-discuss: Undecided and Refused rulings...

["Jonathan Van Matre" <JVanMatre@xxxxxxxx>]

> No, that's not what I mean at all. What I mean is that if the 
> rules say "A is a thingy", and we rule that that means the 
> statement "A is > 3" is undecided, then at a later time if 
> the rules say "A is 2. B is a thingy." the precedent would 
> apply to "B is > 3" being undecided, even though "A is > 3" 
> would no longer be undecided at that later point in time.

Yes, but what if meanwhile, after the A CFJ and before the B CFJ,
someone has introduced a rule that says "All thingys are < 3"?  Then,
the conditions that made the A CFJ undecidable have been remedied, and
the B CFJ can be decided.

My vision is that the Undecided ruling *is* a part of judicial
precedent, and *can* be consulted by a judge when making a ruling on a
similar or related CFJ.  But it shouldn't be game custom to refuse all
CFJs of a certain type just because a CFJ of that type was refused
before.

> > Just because something can't be decided now doesn't mean 
> the rules won't
> > make it possible to decide later.
> >
> Just so. But the circumstances that made it undecidable might 
> apply to something else.

And they might have been remedied, or altered.  I'll borrow an example
from the U.S. Supreme Court again.  They refuse to hear cases all the
time, for a variety of reasons, but there's nothing to stop them from
deciding to hear a case they've refused in the past 10 sessions, either
because the law has made it possible to decide the case, or just because
they bally well feel like it.  Granted, we're not in the real world, but
I think the same principle should apply.

--Scoff!