Subject: Re: Proposal for an IESG Statement on Editorship and Authorship

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 11:18:16 -0500

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 06:22:29PM -0500, Paul Hoffman wrote:
> Given that a logical reading of 2418 can go either way, it would be
> really nice for the IESG statement to clarify how they believe their
> statement is in conformance with 2418. (It would be even nicer if
> 2418 was actually revised, but that doesn't seem imminent.)

Sorry to come back to this so much later.

What is the threshold at which revising 2418 becomes not nice, but
needed?

If we actually need a revision of 2418, then I hate to say it, but we
ought to _do that_ rather than dancing around with half-measure
clarifications that will just be yet another chink in armour into
which the chronic complainers will stick their considerable array of
pointy objects.

If we really _don't_ need a revision of 2418, then I wonder whether
publishing a clarifying note helps.  If there were an appeal of a
specific case that were to provide the opportunity to expand with a
set of clarifying principles, then it seems to me that might be a
better opportunity to do so.  Otherwise, it would appear to me that
the note invites the obvious question, "Why isn't this a revision of
2418 with the consensus needs entailed by such a revision?"  In
addition, offering interpretations with reference to a specific case
leaves the flexibility in place for future cases that are completely
unlike the specific case under consideration.  (This is really why
jurisprudence works the way it does: arguments from analogy always
depend on similarity, and if there are more differences than
similarities then the jurisprudence fails.)

I'm not really a fan of strong and explicit foundation rules: I long
thought (until the British Parliament actually suspended its own
excuse for existence by broadly eliminating _habeas corpus_) that
Canada made a mistake chucking over tradition in favour of the 1982
Constitution.  But if we're going to have hard rules, I question why
they should come down as interpretive notes without context and
without public debate.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.