Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber My use of the acceptance model in this essay, as noted, departs from Hart's in some particulars that are relevant here. I have assumed that the outcomes of procedures validated by the rule of recognition may be invalid if not accepted and, on the other side, may be valid so long as they are accepted even if the rule of recognition was violated, the procedures were defective, or the outcome contradicts its authority. I have assumed that acceptance does not merely validate the rule of recognition, and some otherwise unauthorized judicial decisions, while leaving the rest of the legal system to operate under a Rossian inference model. I have assumed that the curative powers of acceptance may intervene at every stage and provide legal authority for self-contradictory entities and procedures, defective operations, skipped steps, and an infinity of other anomalies that strict compliance with rules would not permit. From this basic model of law we must conclude that the effect of injustice on the validity of an amendment or new regime is a matter of contingent history. They may be accepted or not depending on a host of variables such as the perceived need for order over justice, the rhetorical effectiveness of those promising to deliver justice, the packaging of the unjust law, false consciousness in the population, the power of the beneficiaries of the unjust law over its victims, the ratio of beneficiaries to victims, and so on. But I insist that, while unjust laws and changes in law may be legal or valid by virtue of both acceptance and preexisting rules of change,[Note 64] legitimacy may be lost or diminished by an unjust change of law that lessens the people's ability to change the law in the future.[Note 65] In this sense the people's acceptance is a source of authority with continuing omnipotence both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively, the people and the laws are powerless to limit irrevocably the power of acceptance to validate law. Normatively, an unjust legal impediment to the people's continuing power to change law weakens the legitimacy of the system of law to that extent.[Note 66] Notes 1. One might argue that actual legal systems depend on, or inevitably embrace, at least a few principles of "natural law" or morality, and that the latter are absolutely immutable. For example, one might argue that not even revolution can change the rule that the people have a right to revolt (see Section 18), that promises should be kept, that self-defense excuses homicide, and so on. For the view that natural law is absolutely immutable, see Gaius, Digest, 7.5.2.1; Justinian, Constitutio Dedoken 18, Constitutio Tanto 18, Codex 1.17.2.18; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, 97, 1 and 1. See also E.K. Williams, "The Unalterable Law," Canadian Bar Review, 17 (1939) 551-57; Giorgio Del Vecchio, "Change and Permanence in Law," The Jurist, 18 (1958) 18-38; Charles E. Whittaker, "Immutable Moral Values," Texas Bar Journal, 27 (1964) 597-604; and David Daube, "Greek and Roman Reflections on Impossible Laws," Natural Law Forum, 12 (1967) 1-84 at p. 23. For the opposite view see Karl Kreilkamp, "Dean Pound and the Immutable Natural Law," Fordham Law Review, 18 (1949) 173-203; and Richard B. Hall, "The Alterability of Natural Law," The New Scholasticism, 55 (1981). For the view that legal principles in Dworkin's sense may survive revolution, see J.M. Eekelaar, "Principles of Revolutionary Legality," in A.W.B. Simpson (ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, Second Series, Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 22- 43. 2. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, Oxford University Press, 1961, at p. 146. 3. These formulations are not synonymous with the claim that omnipotence is "infinite" power. The power to authorize an infinity of rules —one plausible reading of "infinite power"— may be incompetent to authorize a particular rule, or even a particular infinity of rules. As Cantor proved, not all infinities are equal, and even among equal infinities some are proper subsets of others. The formulation I prefer is that omnipotence is unlimited rather than infinite power, except that continuing omnipotence is limited in its power of self-limitation. The negation of omnipotence, however, is captured equally well for most purposes by the phrases "finite" and "limited" power. 4. J.L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, 64 (1955) 200-12. 5. These terms are somewhat rare in the United States but common in Britain and its other former colonies and dominions. See e.g. Hart, op. cit. at pp. 146ff, and D.V. Cowen, Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Entrenched Sections of the South Africa Act, 1951. See also George Winterton, "Can the Commonwealth Parliament Enact 'Manner and Form' Legislation?" Federal Law Review, 11 (1980) 167-202. 6. Hart, op. cit. at p. 70; R.D. Lumb, "Fundamental Law and the Processes of Constitutional Change in Australia," Federal Law Review, 9 (1978) 148- 84 at p. 180. 7. Hart, op. cit. at pp. 146-47. Hart denies that parliament binds its successors equally in the two cases. "Parliament has not "bound" or "fettered" Parliament or diminished its continuing omnipotence, but has "redefined" Parliament and what must be done to legislate." Ibid. at p. 147. In the passage following this quotation Hart admits that "binding" and "redefining" one's successors cannot be kept rigidly distinct. 8. Hart, ibid. at p. 146. 9. The classical statements and sources of this axiom are well collected by Ilmar Tammelo, "The Antinomy of Parliamentary Sovereignty," Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, 44 (1958) 495-513. See also O. Hood Phillips, "Self-Limitation by the United Kingdom Parliament," Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, 2 (1975) 443-78. 10. Note that binding one's successors or oneself implies self-embracing power but not necessarily self-embracing omnipotence. This distinction will become important when we ask whether a self-embracing omnipotent entity can repeal or destroy itself (Section 9) or change itself into any other entity (Section 11). 54