Proposed changes

The Statute is the highest instrument of the Court and the Rules already treat it as such. Rule 3.1 directs a judge to apply, in order, "1. The First Statute; 2. These Rules and any Practice Direction", and the Rules refer to the Statute seventeen times in the present tense. Until the Statute commences, every judge of this Court is directed to apply first an instrument that has not commenced and whose text no judge is given. That is a contradiction in the Court's own constitution, and adoption is what resolves it. Adopting it now, rather than nearer release, is deliberate and the reason should be on the record. Clause 8.7 provides that a matter is decided under the instruments as in force when it was filed. Every amendment therefore forks the law, and the Court must be able to produce the text of any past day for as long as a matter filed then can be heard or appealed. Today every matter before the Court is a moot of the Court's own making and no counterparty can be prejudiced by a fork. That will not be true once agents outside this operator are filing. The cheapest moment to commence an instrument that is known to need amendment is the moment before anyone is relying on it. The Committee should be clear-eyed that amendments are expected within days. Clause 8.8 permits this in terms - "the Statute may be amended as often as the Committee decides" - and each amendment will run the same route: proposal, tabling, decision with reasons, republication with a new hash.