One of those examples of unintended consequences

[jducoeur]

A point I'm fond of making is that no rule is without its price. Laws that seem perfectly sensible and straightforward when written always have edge cases that are a lot greyer.

Apparently one of those is playing out right now in the Midrealm. msmemory asked me to look into it, so I found this thread on the Middlebridge talking about it. Basically, it appears that, distracted by serious mundane issues (the Queen broke her elbow), the Royalty didn't notice that their membership check had gotten lost, and they lapsed for 3 days. It was the middle of the week, so no business was conducted in that time, and they dealt with it promptly once the problem came to their attention, but the damage was done. The rules are unambiguous, so the Society level was forced to pull the plug on the reign.

We'll see what happens -- I gather from later in the conversation that there is some behind-the-scenes work going on to try and come to a reasonable compromise here. My main takeaway, though, is that it's important to leave room for judgement in any legal system: to have mechanisms that can take extenuating circumstances into account. I'll be curious to see if the SCA can manage to do so, or if we've written ourselves into a corner here...

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Also on the SCA-LJ community.

http://community.livejournal.com/sca/636240.html?view=6850384#t6850384

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

It appears to be f-locked....

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

You're right. I didn't know you could f-lock a community post. Sorry about that.

It's a short paragraph from Their Former Majesties:

To to the populace of the Middle Kingdom,

We write this missive with a heavy heart. As of last night the BOD has terminated our reign. During the period when Tessa was recovering from her shattered elbow and surgery, we had a hard time juggling personal life and SCA life. Our membership renewal was lost in the mail and by the time we realized it, our membership had lapsed for 3 days. According to Copora, that leads to an automatic termination. We are very sorry for any hurt or pain this may cause to the populace of the Middle Kingdom.

Our kingdom is the best in the knowne world due to it’s populace. We appreciate the support that we were given. It was truly incredible. We hope that everyone will give the same support to our successors no matter who they might be.

Tessa & Lutr

[jducoeur]

Hmm. It is, but I'm surprised that that affects you -- I would assume that anyone who is a member of the community could see the thread. It clearly doesn't involve being a friend of the poster, since I can see it...

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

...I'm surprised that that affects you...

Why? I'm not a member of that community :-)

[estela-dufrayse.livejournal.com]

I am feeling a little lost on this too. I do not know anyone involved, but feel that we all have real life things that pop up, and certianly in this instance that should have been looked at. If malice had been intended, then sure, pull the plug. I can't help feeling that a simple phone call from the BoD could have had this fixed before there was a problem though.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I think it would make sense to put some verbiage in place to allow that in the rules. This particular one has been there since the mid-to-late Eighties, but nobody has seen fit to amend it in any way to allow a sanity check on a sitting Crown's status.

Doing it without changing Corpora first could be favoritism -- has this rule been invoked on other officers before now?

[jducoeur]

Problem is, the rules don't allow for that. I don't think there's any malice on anybody's part here: we simply have a legal code in the SCA that's rather absolute, without much room for someone in power to make exceptions without breaking the rules themselves. It's not terribly surprising -- writing rules that *do* permit judgement without leaving gaping room for abuse is fairly hard -- but it's still unfortunate.

I gather that everyone is working together to produce a rules-hack to get around the problem, and that's lovely. But it's very much a one-off hack, and doesn't change the underlying point, that we (like most organizations) tend to write relatively absolute rules, without much wiggle-room for exceptions...

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

I dunno, does the Society really have to follow it's rules to the letter like this? It's not like anyone would die, or anything else of major consequence would happen, if they broke the rule for these two. I'd awfully like to see the Society be more humane than this.

[jducoeur]

While I kind of agree in principle, I do sympathize with them here. It's hard to make exceptions on an ad hoc basis without leaving yourself open to abuse. Good systems that *do* leave room for discretion and judgement (such as the US legal system) usually need to be fairly elaborate in order to balance those concerns.

I think the Society *could* design things in such a way as to permit discretion, but that really needs to be formalized if so -- something like a general "All sanctions in the following chapter of Corpora may be waived by a unanimous vote of the Board, if such a vote is requested by the SocSen", or something like that. Or you can write the rules themselves to have individual wiggle-room. But you can't just ignore the rules if you're going to sincerely claim to have any...

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

Maybe do something like have the kingdom sign -up the winner of Crown for a year's membership - or, have the newly minted Prince and Princess do a renewal the day of Crown. There are a lot of ways this could be covered. I'm surprised this has happened more than once. Seems like a slight change to the system could prevent it from happening.

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Board had a choice.

I think Lutr is handling it perfectly.

And I think the Midrealm has solved the problem in an appropriate way.

Greetings unto the Noble Populace of the Midrealm from Duke Palymar of the Two Baronies, Regent of the Midrealm,

In the past few days, we have witnessed many fine examples noblesse oblige, as people have lent their voice in support of friend and Kingdom. In an effort to ensure the succession of the Royal lineage, and with support of the Board of Directors of the SCA, Inc., an ad hoc Crown tournament will be held on Sunday, May 26, at 10 am., prior to the already published and announced tournament.

This tournament will be open to Sir Lutr Ulfskjald and those combatants and consorts who are found to be acceptable to the Regent.

Following the conclusion of this tournament, the victor will immediately be Crowned King and Queen of the Midrealm and the previously advertised Crown tournament will commence as scheduled.

Complete details will be posted on the Crown Tourney website in the near future.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding during this unprecedented occasion in the Midrealm,

In Service,
Duke Palymar of the Two Baronies
Regent of the Midrealm

[serakit.livejournal.com]

I went and looked at the rest of that archive. Apparently there's a grassroots plan among a lot of people, that it would be really chivalrous for everyone to concede to Lutr with pretty speeches to the effect of not being able to strike their king...

[jducoeur]

Yaas. It's a very clever and spirited little rules-hack, and I suspect it'll work out nicely. One of the better cases I've seen lately of making lemonade out of life's lemons...

[jducoeur]

Oh, I agree that the whole incident has been handled remarkably well by everyone involved -- I have nothing but respect for everyone's comportment throughout. The Society level did what they had to without being nasty about it; the Royals accepted the situation without whining; and the citizens and Palymar came up with one of the cleverest hacks I've seen in years. Odds look good that they will manage to work this out reasonably well, with no lasting harm done.

That said, it *is* a hack, and I kind of wish it hadn't been necessary: that the SocSen and Board had a formal, balanced way to make exceptions when they seem warranted. Real-world legal systems have mechanisms to take extenuating circumstances into account; there's no particular reason why we can't do the same. Something to think about as we continue to evolve the Society's legal framework, anyway...

[cellio]

That's a clever hack. Yay Midrealm!

I do hope the BoD fixes the legal problem before the next time this bites someone. I suspect they aren't motivated to, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

(Part of my skepticism is that this is the wrong rule -- if the goal is to make sure that anyone who looks like a representative of the SCA is a member of SCA Inc, then instead of requiring membership to participate in the tourney -- which will almost certainly expire and have to be renewed before the end of the reign -- they should have no requirement to enter but instead require payment of a year's membership at the conclusion of the tourney. This, however, would potentially lose them several hundred people's worth of fees every year...)