I wish to call for judgement on the following statements:
- The selection of Terry Boon to judge J(19) was not valid, and the penalty for his failure to deliver judgement should not be imposed.
- The selection of Terry Boon to judge J(19) was not valid, but the penalty for his failure to deliver judgement should nevertheless be imposed.
- The selection of Terry Boon to judge J(19) was valid.
Rationale: In the selection of the judge for J(19) (concerning whether Puppets could enter Suspended Animation), Death (a Puppet) was selected as Judge. The Speaker decided that Death could not serve as Judge, and went on to select Terry as Judge (explaining what had happened).
Judgement was promptly called on whether Puppets could serve as Judges, and Helen Broadie (in J(20)) ruled that they could. In particular, this meant that Death was a valid Judge when first selected.
Terry failed to deliver judgement within the required period (due chiefly to his not realising that there was a CfJ which he was expected to judge...)
Because of J(20), Terry Boon should not have been selected to judge J(19). I therefore believe that (1) is the correct choice. However, there may be more general issues connected with retrospectivity and penalties, which is why (2) is included. I do not believe (3) is correct, but include it for the sake of completeness.
The Judge selected was Nick Fortescue.
It seems to be the case in nomic that anything which happened not according to the rules was deemed never to have happened (how could it, the rules would have been broken). As the selection of Terry as Judge was not according to the rules, (from J(20)) it clearly never happened, and so no penalty should be imposed.