Rule–Referent Principle

Canonical definition

The Rule–Referent Principle is the result that a rule is legitimate where the Content-Belief it rests on, that the conduct the rule reaches causes a Harm or raises the rate at which one occurs, has a live Referent in the conduct the rule reaches; where that Referent, or the rate in which it consists, is made known with the rule to the Individuals it binds; and where the rule is reviewed as that rate moves. A domain whose Referent has no joints, as human variation has none under the Diversity Referent, admits rules against carving and none that carve, and a domain in which no Referent is constitutively available, the aesthetic regime, admits no rule except where conduct in it reaches a live Referent elsewhere. The Principle follows from the Provenance Rule and its positive limb, under which a rule that names its Referent is a command whose provenance can be traced; from the Cost-Provenance Test, under which a rule whose Belief no live Referent governs draws the Cost of its maintenance from the Individuals it governs, as sanction; from the Punitive Inversion Principle, under which such a sanction raises every coupling it reaches; and from Referent Foreclosure, under which a rule whose Referent is a rate answers to the rate and not to the instance, and cannot show its own necessity from its own record. Three consequences attach. Being caught presupposes a rule, so a justice system that does not punish needs its rules more than a punishing one does. The duty to make the Referent known falls on the rule-maker as a condition of the rule's legitimacy and is not an exemption for the one who breaks the rule. A rule whose Referent has gone is repealed, a rule that is holding its Referent's rate down is kept, and the two are told apart by the rate across many occasions rather than by the rule's own record.