Valid rule interpreation RE: backcourt violation

[rwest]

Originally Posted by BadNewsRef

That is not necessarily a unanimous opinion.

The rules committee's job is to come up with the rules and inform the officiating community what they are. They go about this in one of several ways:

1. Rule Book
2. Case Play
3. Official Interpretations
4. Camps/Clinics

Sometimes the written documents don't agree. So my question is which has precedence? That's not always an easy question to answer. The front of the Case book states that the case play interpretations have the approval of the rules committee. That leds me to believe that they are just as authoritative as the rule book. So when a case play differs from the rule book what do we do? Some will suggest we use the rule book, some the case play. However, we don't know which is actually correct. They could have forgotten to update the rule book to reflect the changes made to the case play. Or they could have missed a case play that needed updating after making a rules change.

As an example from my ASA Softball Rule Book from a few years back. The rule on dropped third strikes was written poorly. It led the reader to believe that the batter couldn't run with two outs when 1st base was occupied. The actual rule is with 2 outs you can advance any time on a dropped third strike whether 1st base is occupied or not. However, the case plays and the official interpretations from the camps disagreed with the written rule. This is an example of where the case play took precedence over the rule.

However, when it comes to Official Interpretations, these often come out after the rule books and case books have gone to press. I believe this takes precedence over the rule book and case book. We may not like it and it may not agree with the rule book, but until the Fed or my state association comes out and says the interpretation is wrong, then I'd have to go with the Official Interpretation. The Fed needs to come up with a order of precedence so when these disrepancies come up, we know which one we should enforce.