I will try to be brief and concise here. I am presenting facts for the sake of clarity. The goal of this topic is to generate discussion. It is not intended as a criticism to any council members.
As you can see here,
http://forum.shinobilegends.com/index.php/topic,8692.0.html, a decision was previously made in a 6:9 vote that council members can not judge biju matches.
At some point, this rule was forgotten and/or the new cohort was not made aware of it. Trev has judged many fights, and Shadow was the judge for at least one; a fight between Athos and Trev. I had forgotten about the rule myself, and seeing Trev and Shadow as judges never made me suspicions, I just ended up assuming council members were allowed to judge.
Athos had Shadow removed as the judge for his fight with Trev. Athos and Trev asked me to judge. I initially accepted. Before I had made any decisions, the thought occurred to me that it might be against the rules after all. I checked, and found the somewhat forgotten vote. Athos and Trev have now moved on to find a different judge so that I do not break any rules.
I messaged the council. Some confirmed that, to the best of anyone's knowledge, the decision that was voted on has not been changed. Others pointed out that council members have been serving as judges anyway, some stating that they personally do not mind.
I had voted that council members could serve as judges. Therein, I recognize that I am biased. However, I think if two people agree on a judge because they think that person is fair, then that's their agreement.
Acknowledging my own perspective, but also taking into consideration the variety of responses I received from other council members, I just wanted to bring this to light, and begin a discussion about whether we (as a community) think that council members should be prevented from judging or if the vote should be changed because people might prefer council members be able to judge.