Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber the case, in light of stronger precedents, and these arguments were persuasive to a good number of people either in fact or pro forma.) The decision might even be taken to repeal the old rule pro tanto. Similarly, in international customary law there may be a dearth of custom on a certain question, but the little that exists might all point in the same direction. An act that departs from that custom may for that reason be a violation or the beginning of a new custom. When an act with law-making effect in the present violates laws made by similar acts in the past, then it is not a crime, a delict, or nullity; it is an amendment or repeal. It is a repeal because the act that made it is a rule of change for laws of its type, just as common law decisions may repeal rules of common law, custom- making acts and trends may repeal customary law, statutes may repeal statutes, and constitutional amendments may repeal constitutional rules. This is contingent, however, not necessary. It just happens that in our legal system every law-making power is also an amending power or rule of change for the type of law it makes. Conceivably a judge could create common law rules but not amend them; indeed, many who insist upon unwavering adherence to precedent forget that stare decisis permits occasional change and repeal of rules. This rule, then, that all law-making powers are amending powers for the type of law they make, should only be applied where there is a history of application. It should not be used, except by analogy, to conclude that an AC cannot make an immutable self-entrenchment clause, because we just do not have enough case law on the question to know. The principle is not an a priori truth. Even if a constitutional rule is completely self-entrenched, and even if that rule is the AC, the entrenchment clause may be repealed under the acceptance model. The desire for repeal will itself contribute to the climate of acceptance, even if it is not officially incorporated by rules to indulge all presumptions favoring amendments ratified by the people. If the people want to repeal the language entrenching their AC so that they may amend their AC, they will do so. The only criterion of the legal validity of their act is the procedure outlined in the AC to be disentrenched, although a judge could validly appeal to the language of the entrenchment clause. The entrenchment clause forbidding certain amendments, including its own amendment, can prevent only inference-like legal change, not other types. The verdict of the principle of non-contradiction, without more, is even less relevant than the judgment of a law professor in a journal article. Legislators, judges, and voters may take it into account, but need not, and probably will not. This is especially likely if the judgment of some formal logic is not articulated by a participant but left to frown on history from ideality. Linder believes that entrenchment clauses that limit the AC, not by entrenching the AC itself but by purporting to make other constitutional rules immutable, may both be repealed and, if not repealed, ignored and left unenforced by courts.[Note 21] He focuses on the strong, traditional policy in the United States against allowing one generation to bind its successors irrevocably, and believes that a court could justifiably cite this policy (or cases that cited it) in upholding amendments that violated or repealed limitations that purported to make themselves immutable. This policy is sufficiently close to "traditional judicial considerations" that it would not undermine judicial legitimacy to the same extent as a direct appeal to acceptance or "purely political considerations."[Note 22] This part of Linder's conclusion is attractive, but is weakened by the fact that he assumes without question that entrenchment implies self-entrenchment, that self-entrenchment clauses must be immutable absent judicial nullification or nonenforcement, and that all self-limiting self-amendments must be prohibited as immutable. Moreover, he is moved to find an implied limitation against immutable amendments on grounds of democratic policy and values, but must make his limitation immutable. He does not consider the question whether democracies are best served by the people's self-embracing or continuing omnipotence. He is right that immutable rules are fundamentally undemocratic, but that proposition must be qualified by how we answer the question whether (one generation of) the people's will should prevail even when it wants an immutable rule. What if the entrenching language is more explicit and prohibits not only amendment of the entrenchment clause itself and its underlying rule, but specifically prohibits the attempted repeal of the entrenchment clause? Again, under the inference model this would more than suffice to prevent a valid attempt at disentrenchment, but under the acceptance model it matters not. A judge could certainly enjoin the attempted amendment or its vote of ratification, and in that case we would not face the problem of an amended prohibition of an attempted amendment. But if things got as far as a completed amendment, then a court could nullify the amendment or let it stand, under the acceptance model, with equal validity. She could appeal to democratic values as a justification for disentrenching the immutable limitation on the amending power. The same values would justify her in heeding the manifest will of the people who ratified the amendment more recently than they ratified the immutable limitation. Or she could appeal to the same democratic values for the opposite result, and choose to enforce the people's self-paternalism by deferring to their earlier judgment that subsequent generations might adopt bad amendments in a wave of hysteria. An AC that prohibited even the attempt of amendment may be likened to a will with an in terrorem clause. An in terrorem or forfeiture clause in a will says that any beneficiary who contests the will's validity (say, to cut out another or to invalidate the will and take a bigger cut under the intestacy laws) will get nothing under the will. When enforced, in terrorem clauses only deter those who think they might lose the contest, for if the will is invalidated, the in terrorem clause is invalidated too. When one aims at a king, one must not miss. In terrorem clauses are incomplete, mediate self-entrenchment devices. They do not totally prohibit contests that might change the will so much as raise the price or risk of trying. They are mediate by applying to the whole will, not merely to themselves. While they purport to penalize all contests, they are almost never read to penalize successful ones. Occasionally they do not even penalize unsuccessful ones; courts in some circumstances allow beneficiaries to challenge wills with in terrorem clauses, lose, and still take their designated share of the testator's estate. The rationale is that the testator's wish in her will to avoid the expense or trauma of a contest, or to avoid posthumous loss of reputation, should not prevent good faith contests designed to reveal fraud, coercion, or undue influence. A person who schemed to make the will in the first place, and 65