Hi Charles
Some perspicacious comments, as ever. Thanks.
cfwahl wrote:In making interpretations concerning elements of the class (closed) rule, the TC has quite a latitude of action ...
Erm, not really. In principle, an interpretation is supposed to be a circumscribed and limited "clarification", because it is not allowed to change a rule, "effectively" or otherwise:
RSD Regulations wrote:... interpretations shall not be used to change an existing rule.
Where they're operating in this spectrum depends, of course, on your individual point of view. Even something like correction of a "typo" (ahem) may seem natural and obvious to some, and appear to be active revisionism to others.
Indeed! This is something that the class is getting to grips with, but where a rule needs to be changed, there is a separate mechanism to do this, and it doesn't use an interpretation to do it. It is possible to have an "emergency" class rule change for those urgent situations where this seems desirable.
1. Can interpretations by the TC be checked or overturned by some other body or authority (short of an outright change in the rules)?
Well, for the IOM class, the process leading up to an interpretation involves quite a bit of checking and consultation, particularly now that we have the World Council, an independent Technical Sub-Committee, and an effective communications medium in the IOMICA Web site. But, an interpretation, once issued, is as firm and as fixed as any class rule.
2. Should the interpretations by the TC be codified within the rules (or at least attached to them), so that a person seeking guidance does not have to search rules text and then review texts of all the various interpretations? Some interpretations are made void by changes in the rules, including simple changes involving section renumbering; while other interpretations endure, I suppose, through successive versions of the rules. At the very least, there should be a document (preferably indexed by subject matter of interpretations) that is kept current, and lists the current effective interpretations. If this exists, I don't know where to find it. The ISAF-RSD site simply lists documents in reverse chronological order, but there's no document of the type I'm describing.
All previous interpretations are cancelled every time a new Class Rules document is issued. The latest Class Rules are dated May 2003, for example, and so every interpretation prior to May 2003 is null and void:
RSD Regulations wrote:... rule interpretations shall have the status of a class rule and shall remain valid for a maximum period of 2 years or until superseded by a class rule change
The idea of issuing a new set of class rules is, partly, to collect together all existing interpretations and straighten it all out again. The limit of two years on the life of an interpretation is to, erm, encourage the class to update its class rules properly and in a timely manner.