House of Cards: Proposals cannot rely on the existing resolutions to support it; it must be independent. However, repeals may reference other resolutions as an argument to justify the repeal.
House of Cards: Proposal mandates and operative clauses cannot rely on past resolutions. Resolutions may reference other resolutions to provide argumentative support.
I'd also like to change the rule name to 'Independence', but that is wholly cosmetic. EDIT: This is somewhat contingent on a different change, which would define the operative clause.
Foremost, some context. To quote Cardozo:
- Few rules in our time are so well established that they may not be called upon any day to justify their existence as means adapted to an end. If they do not function, they are diseased. If they are diseased, they must not propagate their kind. Sometimes they are cut out and extricated altogether. Sometimes they are left with the shadow of continued life, but sterilised, truncated, impotent for harm.
Rules derived by a process of logical deduction from pre-established conceptions of contract and obligation have broken down before the slow and steady and erosive action of utility and justice.
- It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.
- How is the House of Cards rule different in substantive legislation? If repeals have full ability to reference other resolutions, what is the difference between repeals and normal substantive legislation that justifies the difference in the application of the rules?
- Why should the House of Cards rule be applied on an 'any reference' basis when it can easily be applied on a 'dependent reference' basis with less restriction on the ability of authors to legislate, i.e. the purpose of the GA game?
- Why should reference of events which factually occurred in the past, the past being invariant, be impermissible, given the mutability justification?
- How should we deal with the problem that resolutions in the past (e.g. Protection of Sapient Rights) have already referenced repealed resolutions, and therefore, there is precedent for construction of resolutions in this manner?