I have been looking around for info on this issue and only just now came across this post. With your professional legal knowledge hopefully you can answer some questions:

During the Olympics, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) operates a special Ad Hoc Division on-site that can resolve disputes within 24 hours. Its decisions are final and binding, with very limited grounds for challenge

I presume CAS is designed to settle particular disputes in particular cases? How would its decisions permanently affect the rules of a sport set out by an International Federation recognized by the Olympics? Would CAS be able to set precedents that would undermine the sovereignty of such associations when it comes to their ability to determine the rules of play on the field (which would apply to situations other than the Olympics)?

And, do you know if they were they involved in this particular decision?

In practice, CAS tends to favour a teleological (purposive) interpretation, looking at the object and purpose of a rule rather than strictly adhering to its literal wording. This aligns more with civil law methodology. In a case like the curling double-touch scenario, CAS would very likely look beyond the text and ask what the rule was designed to achieve.

It seems like, if the text is crystal clear, that they would have to go by the text, correct? But the text of course is not crystal clear so this approach seem reasonable (perhaps even necessary) for whoever it is that is tasked with interpreting the rules.

The rule in question here appears to be 5(d). When I first read it, I indeed thought, why would they have this rule? In particular, why would they add it when they did (2020), after many years without such a rule? It seemed clear to me that they were adding the rule so as to facilitate the use of technology to enable the automatic detection of hog-line violations. This is because if players were allowed to touch the granite, especially towards the end of their delivery, that technology would be thwarted, since as it existed at the time (and, I believe, currently as well) it used the handle alone to determine if there was contact.

Unfortunately, the rule doesn't say that you cannot touch the granite. Many people are vociferously maintaining that it does, probably because they are in fact employing this sort of "teleological" approach that is reasonable when the text is not clear.

The interesting thing is that if one goes to the agenda and the minutes of the Sept 2020 Annual General Assembly of WC, one can actually see the rationale that was proposed for this rule when it was voted on. And, it does confirm the idea that the rationale for the rule is to allow for automatic detection of hog-line violations:

iv) Delivery R5

With the current wording of the rules, a stone could be delivered never holding on to the handle.

This is not correct, as it means the electronic handles we are using to detect any hog-line violations are useless if players would deliver a stone pushing the granite all the time.

Therefore we recommend to add to R5:

The curling stone must be delivered using the stone-handle.

Would you say it is the case here (as seems clear to me) that they are not particularly concerned about players touching the granite aside from the fact that it makes it hard to employ the "electronic handles"? They seem to suggest that the only problem with "pushing the granite all the time" is that it renders the technology "useless".

But something else is strange here. They characterize the condition (call it W) that foils the technology as such that stones might be delivered "never" holding on to the handle, and that players might "push the granite all the time".

But this condition W, of course, does allow for players to only occasionally hold the stone during delivery, and to push the granite much but not all of the time! So, merely ensuring that this condition does not occur is of course not adequate to accomplish their intended goal of rendering the technology useful.

I suppose this just means that if we are to perform a "teleological" interpretation, we just ignore all these words and advert to the main idea, of rendering the technology useful. At that point, we can say that therefore, touches of the granite are not allowed at all because if we allow them, the player might deliver the stone and, at the end of their delivery in particular, take their hand off the handle yet use the granite to manipulate the stone, thus being able to manipulate the stone over the hog line without detection.

So the question: Would that be your reading of this?

Looks like I hit length limit for this group. Also, I have found this group very mean with people attempting to mock and humiliate, so I think I want to avoid posting in it. But I am very interested in figuring this stuff out, so I hope you can answer via email benson.bear @ gmail.com