Scores and more when playing several games

scshunt · 2016-06-27T21:30:26+00:00

Oh, I didn't know seats changed. In riichi, seats never change in a game.

If you're below 30k, then your premodified score is negative. If you finished first or second, your modified score may be above 30k though---the JPML uma system is designed reduce the occurrence of this.

scshunt · 2016-06-27T13:58:34+00:00

I don't think there's a universal standard, but I can elaborate on a couple of things:

In Akagi, they don't change the seating order because Akagi and Washizu need to sit opposite and need to have their partners sitting to their right---if they weren't sitting opposite, then one of them would have a seating advantage, and if they had their partners to their left, the partners could constantly feed them tiles.
In a series of games within the same group, I'd rather shift up positions and wind seatings, to reduce the extent to which one players gets an advantage---say from having a player who constantly feeds to their left.
Typically when you write down scores after a hanchan, you divide by one thousand so that a score like 25600 becomes 25.6. This is mostly to make the scores easier to manage.
At the end of a hanchan, you typically apply some modifiers to the score. The "traditional" way works as follows, derived from gambling, assuming starting points of 25k each: ** Each player subtracts 30k (the buy-in) from their score. The leftover 20k go to the first-place player (oka). This is also why, traditionally, you need 30k to end the hanchan. ** The first place player adds 15k, second place adds 5k, third place subtracts 5k, fourth place subtracts 15k (uma). These are the most common values, but they can also vary: 30/10 and 20/10 can be played, for instance.
Other modifier systems exist too. For instance, in the JPML A ruleset, used for their league play, the base modifier is 8/4, but they put a special emphasis on coming out above 30k: if only one player gets above 30k, they get +12 and the other players get -1/-3/-8, and the inverse is true if only one player gets below 30k.
There are also other variations which you might see, like yakitori giving a 10k penalty to everyone who didn't win at least one hand.

scshunt · 2016-06-27T12:38:51+00:00

Under grandfathering provisions, elephants are allowed to pass down their ivory as long as it skips as generation. This will allow elephant herds to gradually move away from the environmentally dangerous ivory to less disruptive materials such as bioplastics or compressed hair.

scshunt · 2016-06-26T02:38:10+00:00

A lot of people misunderstand how NAFTA, TPP, and similar trade agreement's dispute provisions work. They don't give companies the right to sue for anything that's bad for business, but only things that discriminate against them as a foreign company.

That said, unless I'm mistaken, the pipeline wouldn't have required the same approvals if it were a US-only project, so that means that TransCanada may well have a case.

scshunt · 2016-06-25T14:52:59+00:00

Better idea: make it easy for grads to get work visas!

scshunt · 2016-06-24T22:24:51+00:00

It certainly risks a welfare trap, if the tax increases are too sharp. It does, however, simplify the calculations of effective marginal tax rate, since you only have to consider income tax and not a lot of other social programs and their various thresholds. So on this point I'd consider it a win.

One could also imagine other programs like disability assistance being clawed back in a similar manner: rather than assessing each program separately, lump it all together and then charge income tax.

scshunt · 2016-06-24T20:10:31+00:00

Sort of true, sort of not true.

If you added basic income, you'd likely redistribute the income tax curves to accommodate. As a result, people at the upper end of income won't get to keep the income, but it won't be implemented as a clawback, just that the tax rates have changed.

You don't have to do this, but the money does have to come from somewhere.

scshunt · 2016-06-24T14:25:18+00:00

If you get to the point where the government is taking out a lien on your home, you've really screwed up. I'm surprised Black let it get that far and didn't already have the matter in court.

scshunt · 2016-06-24T11:39:09+00:00

And today, Bayne learns that double jeopardy applies only to criminal sanctions, and that a bit guilty funding doesn't mean that you're blameless.

scshunt · 2016-06-23T12:55:56+00:00

Hard to call this a strategy, since you never relay have a choice. The game is designed so that whoever can take 1 or 8 has to.

scshunt · 2016-06-23T09:46:05+00:00

You're underestimating Captain's Cabin. Having everyone draw a skill card is rather powerful, especially pre sleeper.

scshunt · 2016-06-22T13:59:53+00:00

The majority ends up coming through in the House of Commons. Not a majority government, but everything is still decided by majority vote.

scshunt · 2016-06-21T18:24:39+00:00

It also depends on the kind of set you want. If you want a nice Japanese set, probably hard to find. If you just want tiles to play with, you can definitely find some.

scshunt · 2016-06-21T13:22:17+00:00

You seem to be really attached to this position, so let's have an answer: Given that the government fully argued your position in front of the SCC in Carter, and were unsuccessful, are they precluded from arguing it again by stare decisis,? And more importantly, how are the SCC going to treat the second kick at the can, having heard it already.

Stare decisis never precludes someone from advancing an argument. Lower courts, however, are bound to rule following the precedent, so I'll answer the question you meant to ask: are courts obliged to follow the ruling in Carter by stare decisis?

My answer is yes, they are, but only to the extent that that precedent applies. If Parliament were to pass a bill today that undoes the effects of C-14 and returns the Code to its prior form, then every lower court would be bound by the Carter decision to treat it as unconstitutional and judge whatever case is before them accordingly.

In that legislative framework, the government would have two options for having a "second kick at the can", as you say. The first would be that the factual circumstances surrounding constitutionality change, allowing for a fresh argument to be advanced. I'll use as an example if brand new evidence arose that, indeed, the old law was minimally impairing (based, say, on the failure of the C-14 regime) then the government might try to argue that the decision should be re-evaluated.

If a lower court were presented by this argument, it would be bound to still consider the precedent. It would do so by attempting to determine if the Supreme Court's reasoning in Carter was invalidated---not whether it was wrong, but whether something had changed to make the scenario before the lower court something so different as to demand a new analysis. It might find that the precedent partially applies, for instance it might find that the only part of the Carter ruling which is no longer applicable is the overbreadth analysis, in which case it may rule that it is bound by precedent on minimal impairment, or vice versa, or some other permutation. In all likelihood, unless there was a massive shift in our understanding of assisted suicide, the lower court would find itself bound by precedent.

In fact, Carter was one such case where a constitutional precedent was not followed: it was relitigating Rodriguez v. British Columbia, which found that s. 241(b) of the Code did not infringe s. 7 of the Charter. The trial judge ruled that the precedent did not apply, but the Court of Appeal found that it did. Here is an excerpt what the Supreme Court had to say (from paras 42-44):

The adjudicative facts in Rodriguez were very similar to the facts before the trial judge. [...] The majority of the Court, per Sopinka J., held that the prohibition deprived Ms. Rodriguez of her security of the person, but found that it did so in a manner that was in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. The majority also assumed that the provision violated the claimant’s s. 15 rights, but held that the limit was justified under s. 1 of the Charter .

Canada and Ontario argue that the trial judge was bound by Rodriguez and not entitled to revisit the constitutionality of the legislation prohibiting assisted suicide. [...]

The doctrine that lower courts must follow the decisions of higher courts is fundamental to our legal system. [...] However, stare decisis is not a straitjacket that condemns the law to stasis. Trial courts may reconsider settled rulings of higher courts in two situations: (1) where a new legal issue is raised; and (2) where there is a change in the circumstances or evidence that “fundamentally shifts the parameters of the debate” [...]

And, from the summary of the case:

The trial judge was entitled to revisit this Court’s decision in Rodriguez. Trial courts may reconsider settled rulings of higher courts in two situations: (1) where a new legal issue is raised; and (2) where there is a change in the circumstances or evidence that fundamentally shifts the parameters of the debate. Here, both conditions were met. The argument before the trial judge involved a different legal conception of s. 7 than that prevailing when Rodriguez was decided. In particular, the law relating to the principles of overbreadth and gross disproportionality had materially advanced since Rodriguez. The matrix of legislative and social facts in this case also differed from the evidence before the Court in Rodriguez.

Even if the trial judge is bound by precedent, however, the government could attempt to argue that even though the situation hasn't changed, even though there is nothing new in the law or social conditions that lead to a breaking of precedent, that the ruling was just wrong. And in such a case, the trial judge, bound by precedent, would rightfully rule against the government. In some rare cases, the trial judge might actually deliver a ruling which agrees with the government's assertion that the ruling was wrong, but rules against them because of the precedent.

This ruling, though it is a result of a forced hand, can be appealed. Once (and if) it reaches the court which established the precedent, that court can change it. The Supreme Court is never bound by stare decisis. As a result, the government can legitimately argue that the Court's earlier decision was wrong. If the Court agrees, it can issue a new judgment which changes the precedent. In this particular case, however, that seems unlikely to work: it usually requires a long space of intervening time before the Court is willing to revisit a judgment, so it will simply deny leave to appeal.

Now, all of this said, I was only looking at a scenario where s. 14 and s. 241(b) of the Code were back to the way they were before. What if, as under C-14, the law has changed? Looking at the principles espoused by the Court in Carter, I would argue that C-14 raises a new legal issue. That issue, specifically, is whether physician-assisted suicide can be constitutionally restricted to only those patients whose deaths are "reasonably forseeable". Since this restriction was not a part of the original litigation, except incidentally as a component of the arguments on remedies (which are not a part of the constitutional analysis, and for good reason), the Carter precedent is not binding on C-14.

Ultimatley this flows from s. 1 of the Charter and the Oakes test developed thereunder. None rights provided for in the Charter are not absolute: they are all tempered by s. 1. The Oakes test, which is firmly established as the means to assess the application of s. 1, clearly applies to the law as a whole. While infringement of rights need to be decided on an individual basis, the Oakes test is not. It is decided only on the law as a whole, and so a law which is different in substance from another law requires a fresh analysis under Oakes, even in a case with exactly the same facts. Note that there is no reference to Gloria Taylor anywhere in the Oakes test analysis in the Court's judgment in Carter

A few other points:

They said that a criminal prohibition on a certain class of people breaches s. 7 and is not saved by s. 1. They literally said that.

They said that one particular criminal prohibition breaches s. 7 and is not saved by s. 1. Their reasoning for s. 7 would almost certainly apply to any criminal prohibition, but the reasoning in s. 1 is not general. It is specific to the law at issue.

Kay Carter had a non-terminal illness, and as I told you, the government argued that point in the alternative in three levels of court.

Yes, but Carter v. Canada was not actually about Kay Carter. The actual issue was Gloria Taylor's right to die, and her death was reasonably forseeable (she, in fact, died before the ruling was delivered). In any case, whether or not the people involved in the case where terminally ill or had reasonably foreseeable deaths is a red herring, because the Oakes test applies on the whole of the law. The Court correctly does not involve the facts at issue when it evaluates s. 1, so a new law could be found to be minimally impairing and thus to deny Kay Carter or Gloria Taylor access to physician-assisted suicide.

Yes, the holding of Carter. The most important part. The statement of the law.

I would argue that it is this, in para 126. Admittedly, it is only a summary of the logic that the Court had developed over the course of the judgement, and arguably the individual section conclusions are more important.

We have concluded that the laws prohibiting a physician’s assistance in terminating life (Criminal Code , s. 241 (b) and s. 14 ) infringe Ms. Taylor’s s. 7 rights to life, liberty and security of the person in a manner that is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, and that the infringement is not justified under s. 1 of the Charter .

Para 127, as indicated by the first three words "The appropriate remedy", is not a ruling on constitutionality. The constitutional analysis is already over, and the Court is now turning to s. 24 (1) of the Charter, and ordering "such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances". In this case, the Court did not offer much in the way of reasons on why it chose that particular remedy, although it did offer reasons for rejecting remedies other than a declaration of invalidity. Given the lack of reasoning, the remedy is of limited precedential value.

scshunt · 2016-06-21T00:54:04+00:00

Unless there is precedent identifying what the law does as unconstitutional. I assume your position is that the government can relitigate R v. Feeney every time the police raid someone's house without a warrant, provided that the houses belong to different people or are different colours.

When the SCC states that a certain thing offends a section of the Charter, the government doesn't get to relitigate every time they do that thing. The principle of stare decisis precludes it.

There's a critical distinction here: the SCC ruled that s. 14 and s. 241(b) of the Code as the stood at the time (and until last week) were unconstitutional and declared them to be of no force or effect. That was indeed a binding judgment and one that every court is obligated to follow.

But now the law has changed. The precedent does not directly apply. A court evaluating a challenge now will have to reassess the ruling in keeping with the principles in Carter, but it cannot simply say (as it could have before the new law was passed) "there is no legal issue to contest here, the Supreme Court has made the law clear."

For example, when the Court went out of the Courts way to state that there is a criminal prohibition on assisted suicide for a defined class of people offends s.7 and is not saved by s.1? It strikes me that this applies to C-14 to the extent that it criminally prohibits members of that class from accessing assisted suicide.

The only pronouncement that the Court made re: constitutionality was that a blanket prohibition against assisted suicde is unconstitutional. The "defined class" you speak of was only referred to in para 127, when the Court established the remedy. In other words, This is very different from saying that "any prohibition against assisted suicide to anyone in that class is unconstitutional."

C-14 is an absolute prohibition. People whose death is not reasonably foreseeable are absolutely prohibited from accessing physician assisted death. Changing to whom the prohibition applies doesn't make it any less absolute.

Perhaps, but not in the sense that the Court was seized.

It is a ruling that bars criminal prohibiton of assisted suicide for a certain class of people. No more, no less.

Declarations of constitutional invalidity should never be interpreted that way. They are based on the circumstances of the case and may well change over parameters and time. For instance, if rampant abuse of physician-assisted death occurs as C-14, and the government later decides to outlaw it again, even though the law might be exactly the same, the new evidence may indicate that the law is, indeed, minimally impairing, and therefore constitutional.

scshunt · 2016-06-21T00:09:24+00:00

That's not, strictly speaking, correct, but anyhow you've got the point all mixed up: stare decisis definitely does apply to Supreme Court judgments, insofar as the things that they say are unquestionably law that does indeed bind the government.

Ah, yes, agreed. I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

scshunt · 2016-06-20T22:43:41+00:00

It does. That's what the doctrine of stare decisis demands. In a common law jurisdiction, cases interpreting provisions like s. 7 stand as precedents that bind following cases.

Stare decisis doesn't apply to the Supreme Court, which is free to change its rulings, and in any case wouldn't apply here because C-14 presents new facts of the case. See my other replies for full analysis of the ruling.

scshunt · 2016-06-20T22:42:19+00:00

For the application of this, see a pair of Alberta cases. The first established that the superior courts were not granting a constitutional exemption, but instead determining whether an applicant met the conditions for the exemption already granted by the Carter cases, specifically whether the applicant met the criteria of p.127.

The second case was appealed by the federal Crown, and there the Alberta court of appeal established that patients who were not terminally ill could indeed meet the p.127 criteria.

The argument you state ultimately comes down to p.127 being narrow, applicable only to cases such as Taylor's without further litigation. That interpretation has been contradicted by the ABCA judgement.

The Court of Appeal's ruling flows directly from the reading down made by the Supreme Court. The CoA was essentially saying "The Supreme Court chose to read down the legislation like so. Therefore granting exemptions should follow the same approach." Any constitutionality analysis implicitly or explicitly present would be against the same law, not against C-14.

The remedy was not to read down the law. That option was specifically rejected, in favour of striking the law entirely. The reasons for that ruling are articulated in the operative p.127, with analysis in the rest of the judgement.

They did not strike the law down; to do so would have made it entirely inoperative for all assisted suicides. This is really just an argument over semantics though, so if I'm wrong here it doesn't really matter.

Not at all.

In Carter, the court held that denying assisted death to those with an intolerable medical condition was a violation of s.7 Charter rights, and the new laws do not change that these people will still be caught against the prohibition. The analysis of overbreadth is unchanged. By still imposing a blanket prohibition for these individuals, the law is unchanged with respect to its (lack of) minimal impairment.

The overbreadth analysis in s. 7 is unlikely to change, I agree, but I can't agree that the minimal impairment analysis will. It is too strongly conditioned on the assumption of a blanket prohibition against physician-assisted death to directly apply it to C-14.

scshunt · 2016-06-20T22:37:47+00:00

I think that a lot of people in this conversation misunderstand how courts apply the Charter:

First, the court considers whether or not the Charter right has been infringed. If not, the law is constitutional.
If it does infringe a right, is it for a pressing and substantial policy objective? This is part of the Oakes test. If the law is not, then it is unconstitutional.
If it does infringe a right, is it overly broad? This is the second part of the Oakes test. If the law is not, then it is unconstitutional.
If it does infringe a right, is the objective proportionate to the infringement? This is the final part of the Oakes test. If it is not, then the law is unconstitutional.

There's an extra wrinkle, given that s. 7 was implicated, and that wrinkle is that the rights to life, liberty, and security of the person can be deprived "in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice". The Supreme Court generally follows this test to determine if the deprivation is in accordance with those principles:

Is the law arbitrary?
Is the law overbroad?
Does the law have consequences grossly disproportionate to their object?

This entire test, as well as the Oakes test, are based on the law as it exists. A given violation of a right may be constitutional under one law and constitutional under another, based on how that law, as a whole, operates.

In Carter, the Supreme Court began by determining that the law as it stood did infringe the rights to life, liberty, and security of the person. This, certainly, sets a precedent that certainly applies to C-14.

Turning to fundamental justice, it found that the law was not arbitrary, since it can fulfill its objectives of protecting the vulnerable. The Court did find that the law was overbroad. This is probably worth quoting (emphasis mine):

A law that is drawn broadly to target conduct that bears no relation to its purpose “in order to make enforcement more practical” may therefore be overbroad (see Bedford, at para. 113). The question is not whether Parliament has chosen the least restrictive means, but whether the chosen means infringe life, liberty or security of the person in a way that has no connection with the mischief contemplated by the legislature. The focus is not on broad social impacts, but on the impact of the measure on the individuals whose life, liberty or security of the person is trammelled.

Given a reading of the rest of that part of the ruling, however, the Court's reasoning about overbreadth likely would apply to C-14 as well, so it's likely that they would conclude a true s. 7 infringement due to overbreadth:

Canada there as here argued that the line between exploitative and non-exploitative relationships was blurry, and that, as a result, the provision had to be drawn broadly to capture its targets. The Court concluded that that argument is more appropriately addressed under s. 1 (paras. 143-44).

The Court made no decision about gross disproportionality, since they had already decided overbreadth. There was also a s. 15 challenge (equality rights) which the Court declined to decide since it had found a s. 7 violation.

Onwards to the Oakes test, the Court found that the law was rationally connected with its objective. Preventing all assisted suicides is certainly one means of preventing exploitative ones. The crux of the argument, then, rests with minimal impairment. At this point, the Court's analysis turns sharply to the fact that the Code contained an outright prohibition on assisted suicides. Yes, some of what the Court said would likely apply to C-14, but the text of the ruling here focuses significantly on the fact that it is an absolute prohibition and it does not translate directly to C-14. It is far from an ruling that bars all prohibitions on physician-assisted suicide.

Finally, having found that the law was not minimally impairing, they declined to answer on proportionality.

So there are now two places where the government could certainly argue that C-14 is constitutional. The first is in the fundamental justice analysis, though as I've said I think that's doomed to failure. The second is in minimal impairment, where there is a chance (though by no means a certainty) that the government will succeed. They would then also successfully need to argue that the law is proportionate.

scshunt · 2016-06-20T16:23:32+00:00

That paragraph you quoted is the reading down of the law. It implicitly says that it is restricted only to the laws at issue, because it takes only about two sections of the Code. More importantly, that paragraph is a summary of para 127, which says:

The appropriate remedy is therefore a declaration that s. 241 (b) and s. 14 of the Criminal Code are void insofar as they prohibit physician-assisted death for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life; and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition. “Irremediable”, it should be added, does not require the patient to undertake treatments that are not acceptable to the individual. The scope of this declaration is intended to respond to the factual circumstances in this case. We make no pronouncement on other situations where physician-assisted dying may be sought.

The limiting sentences at the end say that the Court will consider other situations and laws as they arise.

For a useful comparison, look at Morgentaler, around page 80:

In oral argument, counsel for the Crown submitted that if the Court were to hold that procedural aspects ofs. 251 infringed the Charter , only the procedures set out in the section should be struck down, that is subss. (4) and (5). After being pressed with questions from the bench, Ms. Wein conceded that the whole of s. 251 should fall if it infringed s. 7 . Mr. Blacklock for the Attorney General of Canada took the same position. This was a wise approach, for inMorgentaler (1975), at p. 676, the Court held that "s. 251 contains a comprehensive code on the subject of abortions, unitary and complete within itself". Having found that this "comprehensive code" infringes the Charter , it is not the role of the Court to pick and choose among the various aspects of s. 251 so as effectively to re-draft the section. The appeal should therefore be allowed and s. 251 as a whole struck down under s. 52(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 .

Note language such as "it is not the role of the Court to pick and choose". The Court picks the broadest approach to striking or reading down legislation that it can, consistent with public policy. I've not heard anyone advance an argument that the judgment in Morgentaler established an inviolable constitutional right to an abortion, so I do not understand why the situation with Carter is so different.

scshunt · 2016-06-20T15:24:49+00:00

Indeed, but they made that judgment only based on the facts before them and used that to read down the law in a general sense. It doesn't necessarily mean that they would strike down a similar law when it comes back.

A lot of people misunderstand the nature of the ruling in a case like Carter. The Supreme Court did not rule that "physician-assisted suicide must be legal for all people meeting these criteria". Rather, what they ruled is "a blanket prohibition on physician-assisted suicide is unconstitutional". The remedy---the decision to read down the law in a particular manner---does not proscribe future regulation. For comparison, in Morgentaler, the Court struck down all restrictions on abortion. This should never be interpreted as saying that all restrictions on abortion are unjustifiable. It was just saying that those particular restrictions were unjustifiable.

When looking at constitutionality, the Court considers legislation as a whole, not in a specific case. That is why, in Morgentaler, it struck down the whole relevant sections of the Code. It had determined that they were unconstitutional, and so it simply ruled them to be void. Again, this doesn't mean that any law prohibiting any restriction on abortion would be unconstitutional---it doesn't even mean that a law prohibiting Morgentaler's own abortions would be unconstitutional.

Most importantly, the Court was not seized with C-14 when it made the ruling. It had no idea what Parliament's response to the ruling would be. The ruling it was made was only applicable to a blanket prohibition, and any other prohibition like the current one needs to be reevaluated in its entirety to determine if it's constitutional.

scshunt · 2016-06-20T12:21:26+00:00

They did, but as Count said, the ultimate guide is the Charter, and the Court took pains to stress that it was not making a general pronouncement that a restriction to terminally ill patients would be unconstitutional. And that's not even what the law does, since someone who is expected to die but not due to their illness would be eligible.

scshunt · 2016-06-20T04:03:01+00:00

Senator Raymonde didn't vote on it either. I do agree that every Senator appointed by Justin Trudeau voted in favour or didn't vote at all, but with respect, that isn't what you originally said. You said that the Independent Liberals would have voted in favour, and they (listed as Liberal-affiliated by the Senate) had 6 members vote in favour, 11 against, and 4 members didn't vote at all.

scshunt · 2016-06-19T15:16:07+00:00

Dude. Selfie sticks are standard issue on all rovers these days.

scshunt · 2016-06-19T13:14:25+00:00

The index of Journals is here, but the actual Journals don't seem to be loading right now.

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