Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber Of the three powers or properties, then, self-applicability is less important than acceptance and omnipotence in conquering immutability. Omnipotence and immutability may collide like an irresistible force and an immovable object, but the object moves when the "authority" behind the force can tolerate contradiction.[Note 22] If the irresistible force can enhance itself by self-application, then it may or may not reach a state where it can move the immovable object. In the legal analogue of these forces and objects, this is an empirical question on which history or experiment have more to say than a priori analysis. The transmutation of immutable rules is not merely academic. In 1965, citizens of Georgia challenged a state constitutional amendment that would consolidate several school districts and allow the officials of the school district to declare the effective date of the amendment. The delay in the effective date beyond the ratification date and the deference to school administrators in "realizing" constitutional law were not specifically prohibited by any language in the Georgia constitution, although there was general language to the effect that amendments went into effect when ratified. The Georgia Supreme Court held that if there was [a prohibition of such delay and deference], this amendment is the latest expression of the sovereign will of the people upon the subject and 'will prevail as an implied modification pro tanto of the former provision.' McCullen v. Williamson, 221 Ga. 358, 144 S.E.2d 911, 916 (1965).[Note 23] This suggests that even explicit language prohibiting such delay and deference could be overcome by an ordinary amendment through an AC not specifically self-amended for the job. The lex posterior principle is the universal solvent that helps new law overcome old prohibitions. Amendments that are prohibited by the constitution, the case seems to say, may be adopted anyway, since the act of amendment is the most recent, and therefore overriding, act of the sovereign. The prohibited amendments are only prohibited until adopted, since adoption occurs under a power that always supersedes the power of the prohibition. The prohibition may as well have been completely self-entrenched, since the sovereign apparently has the power to revoke all past acts and, more than that, to revoke them in the very act of violating them. But of course the outcome might have been different if the court had to face explicit prohibitory language, especially explicit self-entrenchment of the prohibition. The theory that the lex posterior principle allows certain violations to become valid law, or converts violations to amendments, is further discussed in Section 21.C. Can self-amendment allow an AC of continuing omnipotence to reach and repeal the continuing character of its omnipotence? Under the inference model, even allowing self-amendment, the answer is certainly not, for if anything is ultra vires for an AC of continuing omnipotence it is to undo its continuing omnipotence. Any attempt would be a nullity, not a valid amendment that might take priority over pre-existing rules under the lex posterior principle. But under the acceptance model, why not? There are reasons why not, but the final answer must be that the acceptance theory would allow it if properly accepted, which is an empirical question. One reason why this is not an easy question, even for the acceptance theory, is that while one generation may fully accept the abrogation of the continuing omnipotence of the AC and thereby allow itself to bind its successors (to bind them, it thinks, irrevocably), nevertheless future generations may refuse to recognize the abrogation or to recognize that they are irrevocably bound by prior generations in anything. One generation might accept a law which it believes it has made irrepealable, while the next generation might with equal authority accept its repeal. There is no reason not to call the law temporarily immutable, because when made, immutable rules were possible, not ultra vires; continuing omnipotence had been overthrown. All abrogations of continuing omnipotence carry this possibility of future reversal, and under the acceptance theory the abrogation may always be abrogated or the transmutation transmuted. The immutability of continuing omnipotence can only be transmuted by the adoption of a different immutable rule, and if the first can be abrogated by acceptance, then so can the second. The result is that the only immutable rule in a system of continuing omnipotence may be "repealed" by one generation, and in the next declared simply "violated" —under the acceptance model. Any supposed irrepealable law that one generation uses to abrogate the immutability of continuing omnipotence may be repealed by the next generation, proving to the repealing generation that the law was never immutable and the continuing omnipotence therefore never abrogated, or never abrogated irrevocably. No objective standpoint exists that could allow us to call the act of the second generation a violation or a repeal of an immutable rule; we will always be subject to the relativity of the two generations. What seems to one generation like the transmutation of immutability, may seem to the next like failure, or vice versa. Finally, it should be obvious that under the acceptance theory, acceptance itself has a kind of continuing omnipotence. Strictly speaking, acceptance is not a rule of change and therefore cannot be omnipotent in any way. But it is a source of authority for legal change that can tolerate or authorize any change of law whatsoever. No exception need be made for itself, for acceptance is not law and cannot be changed by changes of law. It is a social and historical phenomenon, and one of the virtues of Hart's acceptance theory is that it refuses to leave law magically divorced from social experience and grounds it firmly in the dynamic, contingent, historical reality of human decision, acquiescence, and practice. Acceptance may be considered sufficient to authorize any change of law without considering it to embrace a moral or legal right to revolt. Indeed, once the authority to change law is condensed into a right, all the questions of self-amendment arise. Can a moral or legal right to revolt to used to justify its own repeal? (See Section 18.) 48