Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber When John Stuart Mill said, "[i]t is not freedom to be allowed to alienate [one's] freedom,"[Note 6] he was defining freedom to be a continuing power, and his disagreement with those who would permit people to sell themselves into slavery, become drug addicts, or otherwise freely choose unfreedom, is not so much on the desirability of these acts as on the logic of self-application. The distinction is very useful, and by extension we may speak of self-embracing and continuing powers to amend. Self-embracing amendment power may amend, limit, or repeal itself, irremediably, while continuing amendment power may not apply to itself, at least to diminish itself irrevocably. Continuing omnipotence and amendment power are not maximally omnipotent, for there is one family of things they cannot do, namely, limit themselves, violate their immutable limitation and continuity, bind themselves for the future, and so on. But this should not lead us to think that continuing omnipotence and amendment power can augment themselves. For the only way to do that is (1) to repeal their limitation and become self-embracing, or (2) to become capable of repealing their limitation, which is already to be self-embracing. But these would contradict their continuing character and are impermissible for them.[Note 7] That is why this is the paradox of self-amendment, not merely the paradox of self- limitation. Because continuing omnipotence and amendment power can only affect themselves in ways that neither limit nor augment themselves irrevocably, they are restricted to relatively trivial acts of self-amendment. For example, an AC of continuing omnipotence could rearrange and renumber the articles of the constitution, including itself, without affecting the extent of its power (see Section 12.C). While continuing omnipotence cannot become self-embracing, the converse is not true. Self-embracing omnipotence can become continuing omnipotence and may even become "partipotence" or of merely finite power (see Section 11). It may seem that the distinction between continuing and self-embracing omnipotence solves the paradox of self-amendment (and the paradox of omnipotence generally) straightaway. Either the power of an AC is continuing or self-embracing. If it is continuing, then it simply may not amend itself to limit or augment its power; and if is self-embracing, it simply may. However, I will argue in Section 11 that the paradox reappears on each side of the distinction even when we are careful to avoid equivocation and keep the two senses of omnipotence distinct. C. Lawfulness of self-amendment At this point it is well to note that self-amendment is undoubtedly lawful in the United States. The federal AC has never been amended, directly or indirectly (Appendix 1). It may have been amended in more unorthodox and unofficial ways, depending on what is counted as amendment (Part Two). But by contrast, 47 states have histories of unambiguous self-amendment at the constitutional level, and in many cases more than one instance (Appendix 2). In one case (New Mexico) self-amendment was the result of pressure from the federal government. No state or federal court has explicitly upheld the permissibility of self-amendment, except in unfocused obiter dicta that simply state that any clause of a constitution may be amended, or that there are no implied limits on the amending power. No court faced the question directly because the constitutionality of self-amendment has never been challenged. Not a single act of self-amendment has been called contradictory or paradoxical, not by losing plaintiffs in court nor by scholars in journals (except by Alf Ross[Note 8]), and none has been struck down by any court for any reason. Many scholars have proposed and opposed self-amendment, but none of them has noticed a paradox or contradiction in the idea (Appendix 1). Opponents of certain proposed self-amendments either have not seen the apparently paradoxical nature of it, or have deliberately refrained from using it as a legal objection, despite their incentive to multiply arguments. I interpret these signs as proof that self-amendment is legal by most tests of legality, and illegal by none; it is commonplace; and if it is also paradoxical, then the paradox is legally irrelevant. To anticipate my conclusion, I will argue that the logical case that self-amendment is paradoxical is strong and resists all obvious solutions; but I will conclude that law can absorb and tolerate even a real (unsolved and undissolved) logical paradox because law is what is accepted as law, not a logical system afflicted with entangling content. D. Self-reference Ross objects to self-applicability on a second ground. Self-applicability is impossible without self-reference; and self-reference, he believes, is always meaningless. His primary argument against self-amendment is that it is self-contradictory. But that argument only applies to amendments that change the AC into a form inconsistent with the original form. Therefore, it does not forbid all self-amendment, but only all substantive or significant self- amendment. However, the argument from self-reference would apparently forbid all self-amendment. A sentence such as the Liar's, "This very statement is false," appears to be true if false, and false if true. This paradox can be avoided if we can say it is neither true nor false. To call it meaningless is attractive for that reason. But is it meaningless? The words "this very statement" form the subject of the sentence, but Ross argues that they do not denote anything. They refer to the string of words "this very statement is false," but that referent itself refers to the string of words "this very sentence is false," and so on ad infinitum. When we try to fill the subject of the sentence with meaning we find that it is an infinite and incompleteable task.[Note 9] Even though the string of words is an object of experience, and therefore an existing object fit for thought and, it seems, for meaningful reference, it violates a rule that Ross and others regard as a sine qua non of meaning: that the words describing the subject of the sentence be replaceable without loss by the name of their referent. "The third planet from the sun bears life" is meaningful under this rule because the words describing the 26