Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber amendment of a supreme and omnipotent rule of change (see Sections 8 and 12.B). For the same reason I will consider only changes that make the changed rule inconsistent with its original form (see Section 12.C). Whether it matters that the inconsistent new amendment or self-limitation is revocable or irrevocable will be addressed in Sections 8 and 11. B. Primary and secondary rules The term "rule of change" is borrowed from Hart (93-94). Hart conceives law to be the union of primary and secondary rules. Primary rules impose duties on people to behave in certain ways, whether they want to or not (78-79). They create obligations (89, 91) and pertain to action, behavior, and physical movement (79). Secondary rules, by contrast, confer powers and pertain to the primary rules (79). They confer public power, such as the power to legislate, and private power, such as the power to enter contracts and dispose of property through will (79). They create (and are created by) a class of officials who execute public power (113). Hence they also aid the legal system of which they are a part by permitting it to solve problems, without unlawful or alegal manipulations, that arise from the use of primary rules. For example, primary rules do not themselves determine who, if anybody, is to enact, record, enforce, interpret, adjudicate, apply, or alter them, or by what procedures these tasks are to be performed. Primary rules may exist in written or unwritten form, but in either case they do not themselves declare which versions are authoritative, what is to be done in case two or more primary rules conflict, or exactly which utterances or traditions are to count as primary rules that create obligations. Secondary rules that provide conclusive methods for ascertaining what things are primary rules and which primary rules take precedence over others are called rules of recognition (92-93). Rules that permit and structure the process of enacting, altering, and repealing primary rules are called rules of change (93-94). And rules that empower some people to make authoritative determinations of departures and violations are called rules of adjudication (94-95). These three types exhaust the realm of secondary rules for Hart. Rules of recognition create a system out of an otherwise disunited congeries of rules (90, 91, 93, 106, 113, 118, 228f) and prevent debilitating uncertainty as to what is law and when we are obligated and at risk of sanctions (92). By providing rules of priority, when needed, the rules of recognition also create a hierarchy of rules. Rules of change allow adaptation to changing conditions and prevent all the ills of a static legal system (93).[Note 10] By centralizing the imposition of sanctions, rules of adjudication prevent the violent and inefficient diffusion of energy in self-help (95, 221). Societies may in fact exist without secondary rules, but they would for that very reason be primitive (89). Indeed, the development of secondary rules "is a step forward as important to society as the invention of the wheel" (41). A peculiarity of Hart's theory that strikes one immediately is that the secondary rules apply only to primary rules and not also to themselves and one another. Yet rules of recognition must occasionally be changed and adjudicated, rules of change recognized and adjudicated, and rules of adjudication recognized and changed. More to the present point, rules of recognition must be recognized, rules of change changed, and rules of adjudication adjudicated. The self-application of the rules of change will concern us exclusively here, although the possibilities of paradox and contradiction in the self-application of rules of recognition and adjudication should not be overlooked. For none of the three types of secondary rule does Hart explicitly affirm or deny the logical or legal possibility of self-application. Hence, whichever path we take will supplement Hart.[Note 11] The dilemma may be restated partly in Hart's terms. What rules of change, if any, permit and structure the process of the change of the existing rules of change? Especially, what rule of change, if any, can authorize the change of the supreme rule of change to a form inconsistent with its original form? The existing supreme rule of change is either self-applicable or it is not. (1) If it is self-applicable, then it is apparently self- contradictory in the manner of a self-limiting omnipotent being (see Section 5). (2) If it is not self-applicable, then it must either be immutable, or mutable only by "tertiary" rules or by extra-legal means. By analogy to Hart's distinction between primary and secondary rules, one might postulate rules which apply to the secondaries, called tertiaries, and rules which apply to the tertiaries, called quaternaries, and so on.[Note 12] Immutability and revolution are not the only alternatives to one who denies self-applicability: one may postulate a tertiary rule of change which authorizes the amendment of the secondary rules of change. On this branch of the forking path one must ask whether a tertiary rule of change can exist if the secondary rule is, ex hypothesi, actually supreme. In any case, the tertiary rule of change would replicate the dilemma perfectly, for it itself would either be immutable, or mutable only by self- application, by revolution, or by a quaternary rule, and the quaternary rule likewise, and so on to an arbitrary halt or an infinite regress. Several horns of the dilemma may be removed for various reasons. But before pruning, the dilemma (tetralemma) breaks into four paths: Supreme secondary rules of change are either (1) immutable or mutable. If they are mutable, then it is by means of (2) higher rules of change, (3) self- application, or (4) extra-legal means such as revolution. If they are mutable by higher rules of change, then those higher rules replicate this tetralemma at their own level, and so on ad infinitum. The dilemma may be simplified if we eliminate two possibilities. First, we should eliminate the possibility of extra-legal or revolutionary change of the rules of change, if only because we want to explain the phenomenon of their legal change. For the legal change of supreme and inferior rules of change does occur (see Section 5.C and Appendix 2). Even if their extra-legal change occurs as well, the explanation for the latter cannot, and need not, be stretched to cover the former. 17