The supremacy of CfJs is something that we seem to take for granted but which isn’t actually true. This allows a quorum of Wizards to make the gamestate whatever they like, if they are unopposed, which is probably as good as we can do (if an unopposed quorum of wizards are total a***wipes then we have bigger problems).

The reason this adds the text to the ruleset twice is so that the core rules provide the actual mechanism for enacting overriding changes, while the appendix provides the legitimation for doing so.

as CfJ already have the ability to change any aspect of the gamestate or ruleset and I can’t think of a situation where waiting 12 hours would be a major problem.

No, that’s not true, at least as far as I can tell. CfJs (along with proposals) have the ability to change any aspect of the gamestate or ruleset so long as those changes don’t conflict with existing rules, which is a pretty important caveat.

If a CfJ, say, tries to put the game into a state that is illegal according to a dynastic rule, it is not valid. Since CfJs are intended to remedy exceptional or ambiguous gamestates, it is important that they have the ability to render otherwise illegal gamestates legal.

Actually, this is something that I think we also assume proposals can do, but I’m not totally convinced they can. I’ll have to reread those rules later.

So far as I read the rules, the only things which currently limit what sort of changes CfJs can make to either the gamestate or the ruleset are Tags and Gamestate Tracking, specifically the clauses about not being able to change the categories of posts and the part of numbers and variables about setting numbers to illegal values.
I don’t see any prevention about making otherwise illegal gamestates with CfJ. Since Dynastic rules can’t overrule a CfJ and the part of enacting it includes the clause about updating the ruleset/gamestate, I don’t see where “so long as those changes don’t conflict with existing rules” comes into play. Sure there could be a core/appendix/special case issue, but those are few and far between and even if it were a problem, you could get the same end result by changing whatever is causing the problem within the ruleset.

The entire point of this proposal is future-proofing against very tricky future situations, really, so the fact that this isn’t presently applicable doesn’t concern me.

well i’m not concerned about tricky future situations, especially when CfJ can reset the gamestate to an earlier point in time.

Glad you brought that up, because I had some similar thinking, supposing that precedence somehow meant CfJs hadn’t power to alter rules up the totem pole. But now I agree with card, CfJs can do enough. Don’t fix what ain’t broke. 

What’s a situation where we’d need this?

If a CfJ is making a gamestate change which is illegal under the ruleset (giving everyone three tangelos when the rule says they can only carry two), it doesn’t seem meaningful to talk about priority - when the CfJ is over, we’re left with some gamestate which contradicts the ruleset.

If it’s taking an otherwise illegal action (removing a player’s hat when a rule says “hats cannot be removed by any means”), that seems like something an existing CfJ can and should make a deal of dancing around (rewording the clause before removing the hat, etc).

If it’s making a ruleset change, we can use the regular prioritisation rules to see what that means when the dust clears.

I’m going to have to stay out of this one, it’s making my head spin.

s/k