1.
Ross notes that “The main argument relied on by all my critics is that,
when the sequence of time is taken into account, there is no
contradiction between art. 88 and art. 88': art. 88 ceases to be valid
law from the moment, art. 88' comes into force.” Why isn’t that enough
to solve the paradox?
2. This is what Peter
Suber, in his PARADOX OF SELF-AMENDMENT §6.B (1990), has to say about
Ross’s solution to the paradox:
He does not justify the principle
except as a principle of logic, in which guise it is unassailable. If
the richness and historical contingency of the world of law does
contain rules that permit the derivation of conflicting rules, then
Ross has adopted a principle that prevents him from seeing that fact
and that actually requires him to deny it. He is guilty of the
arrogance of a priori thinking about an empirical subject. There are no
errors in his reasoning, only in his choice of premises, and in his
presumption that what logic forbids, law must forbid. If the existing
legal rules seem to permit what logic forbids, then the philosopher or
logician is within her rights to complain and to suggest what seem to
her to be improvements. But if she is bent on explanation, then the
makeshift of a tacit, transcendent, immutable rule, universal across
all systems, authorizing exactly what must be authorized, is comical
and unscientific, blind to the legal concept of legal validity.
Is Suber right? Does Ross appeal to a “tacit, transcendent, immutable rule, universal across all legal systems?”
3.
Are there other cases that area analogous to the paradox of
self-amendment - that is, cases in which an empowered lawmaker seeks to
change its empowerment?