Overrules Block

Where Is It?

The Overrules block is located in the exceptions drawer of the Blawx toolbox.

What Does It Do?

The Overrules block is used to specify that a specific conclusions reached by one section of law overrules a conclusion reached by another section of law.

Technical Details

The Overrules block is a statement block, and can be stacked with other statement blocks. It accepts two internal inputs, both of which are expecting a statement selector or variable representing the defeating or defeated section. It also accepts two internal statement stacks, both of which should have a single statement block, indicating the defeating or defeated conclusion, as applicable.

Overrules blocks are "semantic sugar" for a rule that if the the conclusion in the defeating section "holds", the the conclusion in the defeated section is "defeated". For this reason, an overrules block cannot be used in the conclusion of a rule, and should only be used in a Fact block.

Tips

The overrules block should be placed at the location in your code that corresponds to the location in your law where the defeating/defeated relationship was set out in the text (if any). For example, if you have the rules:

1. By default, blue.
2. Despite 1, red.

... then the overrules block would go in section 2, to encode the words "despite 1", which indicate that the conclusion in section 2 defeats the conclusion in section 1.

If the section and conclusion of the defeating or defeated rule do not match correctly, the overrules block will not work. Note also that overrules blocks create rules that conclude that something is defeated. Defeats are only checked by attributed rule blocks that have "subject to exceptions" selected, or rules that explicitly check for defeats using the "defeated" block.