Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber Finnis is the only commentator to appreciate that the time-based objection ignores Ross's insistence that no valid rule can authorize any rule inconsistent with itself.[Note 21] This principle applies (for formalists) regardless of the events that temporally intervene between the rule of change and one of its products, such as the repeal of the rule of change in self-amendment. Ross was worried that the believers in self-amendment not only believed in the valid derivation of norms inconsistent with the source, but also in the transtemporal validation of rules. Finnis coined the term "transtemporal validation" to designate the sense in which the old AC continues in force to validate its successor.[Note 22] Those who believe in it appeal to the validity-bestowing power of a repealed and invalid rule, as if the old AC arose from the grave in rarefied form to support the validity of its successor. Because Ross believed that no conclusion remains established unless its premises remain true, he ascribed the doctrine of transtemporal validation to all those who believed in self-amendment, overlooking that they might justify self-amendment by a source of authority external to the constitution, such as acceptance, consent, or military power, or a source heedless of the death of the authority, as under the procedural model. Ross denied that transtemporal validation could occur, and accused proponents of self-amendment of presupposing it. Finnis apparently agrees with Ross on both counts, and therefore favors a Hartian (acceptance) solution precisely because "in Hart's analysis...the transtemporal validation of basic rules, relied on by Kelsen and recognized as troublesome by Ross, is simply and silently omitted."[Note 23] Hart avoids the necessity of transtemporal validation by denying that all rules are validated by antecedent rules. Some rules, on the contrary, are validated directly by present acceptance.[Note 24] Hart also rejected transtemporal validation explicitly in his later essay:[Note 25] Ross's argument, he wrote, is "questionable" to the extent that it relies on the statement that a derivation of a new norm presupposes not only the validity of the superior norm but its continued existence after the creation of the new norm. The solution provided by the acceptance theory does not require the denial of transtemporal validation, although every rule validated by acceptance makes that rule's transtemporal validation unnecessary. I will argue in Section 14 that some rules that authorize their own repeal may be considered to persist afterwards in order to confirm the fact of repeal, and that this sort of transtemporal validation may be accepted. Indeed, in Section 21 I will argue that any absurdity that can be accepted in the rigorous sense can be law. Finnis, in short, did not have to deny transtemporal validation in order to deny Ross, but neither on the other hand did he have to concede that all proponents of permissible self- amendment, except possibly Hart, require transtemporal validation. Ross avoids transtemporal validation and self-amendment by deriving the authority of the amended AC from a postulated tacit, immutable rule superior to the constitution,[Note 26] not from the old AC. I have argued (in Section 6.B) that this is ad hoc and fictitious. Indeed, Ross only gets into a position from which ad hoc and fictitious remedies will suffice because he has insisted on judging law by the principles of formal logic, a course not justified by any legal principle but only by the pretension of formal logic itself to rule the world. Raz answers Ross, not through the time-based objection, but by arguing that self-reference is unnecessary in self-amendment, and in any case is not meaningless or problematic. Moreover, if Ross would have us avoid self-reference, then we will face many more difficulties interpreting law than we now face. For the avoidance of self-reference leads to crude paraphrases in which at least two rules are needed to transcribe one, and even then do not capture the original sense perfectly.[Note 27] Marshall objects, quite rightly, that if some new AC cannot become valid because it cannot be derived from its predecessor, then it is not at all clear how the present AC could have become valid.[Note 28] Ross would answer that the tacit transcendent rule validated the current AC. But in Ross's formulation of the terms of that tacit rule, it applies only to AC's that already exist and point to their successors; it does not apply not to unstructured amending power in constitutional conventions or in the people creating the first AC. We can trace the authority of the current AC back a few constitutions, but then Ross would leave us without an answer. But this is damaging to Ross's position, for if the endpoint AC had no authority, then its offspring have no authority. This is a variation on the argument that Ross commits himself to an infinite genealogy for every valid legal system. Hoerster has several arguments against Ross other than the time-based argument. First, he argues that there is no contradiction in the Rossian inference because the old and new ACs equivocate on the word "constitution". The old AC authorizes amendment of the constitution that contains it, while the new AC authorizes amendment of the different constitution that omits the old AC and contains the new.[Note 29] This argument is specious and self-defeating. If the equivocation is admitted, then the inference is still fallacious, though now for equivocating. On Ross's inference model, the conclusion is still far from established. But the equivocation may be avoided by implied adjustments to meaning or explicit rewording, even if the appropriate rewording occurs in no actual AC. If the rules in the constitution other than the AC are called set S, then the AC may be read to say, "this AC authorizes amendment of set S and this AC." The new AC could be read to authorize the amendment of set S and the new AC, eliminating all equivocation. Hoerster also objects to Ross's tacit, transcendent rule because it always authorizes amendment of the AC, when in fact the people may wish to amend it to give it a continuing omnipotence that would resist some amendments.[Note 30] Or, the immutability of the tacit, transcendent rule prevents the immutable self-limitation and self-repeal of the AC, and therefore does not capture the legal possibilities inherent in self-amendment. He also objects that if a nation amended its AC every generation for 100 generations, without reference to such a tacit, transcendent rule, then that nation cannot be said to defer to such a rule, or such a rule cannot be said to govern the amendment of the AC. He rightly notes that Ross would not allow 100 generations of acceptance and usage to cure an original defect. Ross and other formalists must worry that an unknown defect buried in the past makes the present AC and entire legal order illegal. 78