Subject: acka-research Digest V4 #132
From: [email-masked]
To: acka-research digest users <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 00:00:05 -0400 (EDT)

acka-research Digest	Tuesday, July 27 1999	Volume: 04  Issue: 132

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From: [email-masked] (John Bollinger)
Subject: Re:  Acka: Proposal 4275
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 15:27:23 -0400 (EDT)

From Proposal 4275:
>
>{{[Expecting the cortex to agree on reasoning is time consuming; this
>changes it so that the justices need only agree on the verdict.]}}

I disagree with the premise.  During my time as a Justice I generally
found that the time-consuming part of the deliberations was not coming
to agreement on the reasoning but coming to agreement on the verdict.
Indeed, the bulk of the reasoning was generally worked out in the very
process of agreeing on the verdict.  Verdicts were renderred quickly when
agreement came quickly, and the typical cause of eggregiously untimely
decisions was Judicial negligence -- not Judicial deadlock.

Moreover, I found that the process of coming to agreement on the verdict
and reasoning was extremely valuable.  In the first place, the deliberation
process generally did a good job of exposing flaws in the Justices'
reasoning.  Sometimes the exposure of such flaws caused one Justice
or another to change his opinion.  In the second place, having more than
one viewpoint on the matter often broadened the deliberations for all
parties involved -- it was not uncommon for one Justice to bring up an
angle that the other had completely ignored, for instance.  In the third
place, to the extent that judicial reasoning may to some degree establish 
implicit game custom, it is desirable to have a single, coherent position
when possible.

I should also point out that if the Justices can agree on the verdict then
it is trivial that they can agree on reasoning, in the sense that they can
write "either by reasoning X (favored by Justice 1) or by reasoning Y (favored
by Justice 2) the verdict is Z."  There is more than one appeal verdict in
the archives that relies upon that scheme to a greater or lesser extent.

What really caught my eye about this prop, though, was the following line:

>  Note that the Cortex
>or Court need not, and encouraged not to, reach internal agreement on
>the reasoning.

The Cortex or Court is _encouraged_ not to reach internal agreement on the
reasoning?  Even if I were to accept the general framework proposed here
(which I like less and less the more I think about it), and even if I
interpret it the way I think it is intended rather than as it is written,
that directive is wholly out of line.  The Court coming to agreement
improves the quality of the justice dispensed and provides a generally unified
interpretation of the rules.  To say that these benefits are unnecessary
is perhaps negligent, but to say that they are undesirable is downright
destructive.

ThinMan
Bronze Torch holder
Justice emeritus

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From: Towsner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re:  Acka: Proposal 4275
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 15:34:02 -0400 (EDT)

>I disagree with the premise.  During my time as a Justice I generally
>found that the time-consuming part of the deliberations was not coming
>to agreement on the reasoning but coming to agreement on the verdict.
>Indeed, the bulk of the reasoning was generally worked out in the very
>process of agreeing on the verdict.  Verdicts were renderred quickly when
>agreement came quickly, and the typical cause of eggregiously untimely
>decisions was Judicial negligence -- not Judicial deadlock.
	I can't speak in general, but I know that CFCJ 179/180 was held up
for several months by a dispute over the reasoning, not the verdict.

>>  Note that the Cortex
>>or Court need not, and encouraged not to, reach internal agreement on
>>the reasoning.

	I didn't phrase this perfectly.  My intent was to discourage
Justices from reaching a decision but waiting to release it until they
reach an agreement on the verdict.

--
-Henry Towsner

	<[email-masked]>

	Thank heavens, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and
enjoy it.
		-Logan Pearsall Smith

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From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re:  Acka: Proposal 4275
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 22:50:15 -0400 (EDT)

I agree entirely with ThinMan on P4275. I remember there was a case that
Alfvaen and I judged where we initially thought we wer ein agreement on
the verdict. But then I had some doubts while working on the reasoning.
Alfvaen changed my mind... but in the meantime I had changed his. This
process repeated itself over about a week. Every day, we would send each
other an email presenting some problem with the other's position, every
evening, we would read the each others responses and reach agreement, only
to discover that we had found some new issue on which we now disagreed. It
was strange, but it also illustrates ThinMan's point that the process of
settling on the reasoning is often an important part of determining what
the verdict should be.

And while it almost goes without saying, I feel like stating the
obvious... the reasoning is often much more important than the verdict.
What good is it for us to know that something is TRUE, if we cannot reach
a definitive agreement on how that truth impacts the game?

Vynd

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End of acka-research Digest V4 #132
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