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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3226243" data-attributes="member: 42582">When it comes to playing a game, unanimity among the players is necessary. It's only when the game rules become an abstract intellectual pursuit that unanimity is optional. But this is not the primary purpose of game rules.By "clarity" I intended clarity of assertion, not clarity of reasoning. No, the FAQ is not transparent, and is opaque, when it comes to reasoning. So are many judicial decisions. But that is not their point. Their point is to answer, not to explain.I would also add that I did not praise the FAQ. I argued that the suggestion that it has greater significance than a mere data point is not absurd. I elaborated on, and defended, the points that some earlier posters had made, that its virtues consist not in correctness but in authority and stipulated resolutions to disputes, because what is wanted in rules disputes is not reasoning but resolution. To point out these virtues is neither to praise it nor condemn it; it's simply to describe it, and explain how it can play a certain role beyond that of mere data point.I don't know how many statutes or cases you read on a regular basis. I'm also not as familiar with American as English and Australian law, particularly when it comes to state and local jurisdictions, so it may be that drafting and/or judicial practice is very different from your Federal practice and from Anglo-Australian practice. But with many of the cases and statutes I read, it makes no sense to talk in any definitive way about what the law is until the authority tells you.I invite you to look at the following text, which is the standard statutory definition in Australian law of "terrorist acts": <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/tpa2003396/s4.html" target="_blank">http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/tpa2003396/s4.html</a>. If you look at it, I'll think you'll see that we just can't know what are the limits of behaviour that can constitute terrorism under Austrailan law until an authority - in our case, the High Court - tells us what some of those words and phrases mean, and how their interaction in the total definition is to be made sense of.This is nothing to do with tyranny versus revolution - it is the inevitable consequence of using natural language to specify complex norms that are to be applied in an indefinite and unpredictable range of circumstances.Many game rules are no different in respect of their indeterminacy. Hence the utility, if one wants to game with others according to rules, of an authority.</blockquote>

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