Editing Round 9/History (section)

=== The Judge ===

Reflecting the recent trend toward more textualist interpretations of the rules, the official position of Judge was created with the goal of centralizing and officializing legal interpretation. Random Internet Cat wrote the proposal (Proposal Duck Judy, 9 Feb 2021) and took up the position<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/812849254254903336</ref>. The Judge's rulings are stored on the wiki at [[Round 9/Rulings]].

{{Proposal Box
 | name=Duck Judy
 | text=
Enact a rule entitled Judges:

:There shall be a sole Judge, responsible for resolving rules disputes. If there is no Judge, any player can appoint themself Judge with the assent of two other players. An incumbent Judge can be removed with the assent of two players, but they should not be removed except for abuse of office. A person can cease being the Judge by publicly stating so.
:
:A request for justice shall take the form of a question or statement. The proper response to a question is an answer to that question, and the proper response to a statement is the truth value of that statement.
:
:Upon formal request by a person other than themself, the Judge shall, as quickly as possible, issue a response to the request. This response shall be binding only to the extent that it reasonably directly pertains to the request, and only to the extent that it does not blatantly and obviously contradict rules text.
:
:Judges may make rulings on the Metaruleset, but those rulings shall only be effective within the bounds of the round.
:
:Judge rulings can be overturned within 4 days of being made by a public vote of confidence; they are overturned if strictly more players vote in favor of overturning than affirming. An overturned ruling shall have no bearing on the interpretation of the rules or of the gamestate.
}}

Something notable about this proposal is the line "If there is no Judge, any player can appoint themself Judge,... but they should not be removed except for abuse of office." As it turns out, the appointed Judge was Random Internet Cat, an Agoran who was decidedly textualist when giving interpretations. Many people disagreed with this style of judgement, but there was no way to replace a judge for the purpose of shaking things up. This line had a profound impact on how the round continued on. It did not change the way we interpreted the rules wholesale, but it certainly accelerated our progression toward reading the rules as they were written.