Essay:Unwritten rule

An unwritten rule is a bureaucratic interpretation of written rules. In many cases, these unwritten rules militate against the spirit of the written rules. For example, ballot access is sometimes denied on the basis of unwritten rules such as those requiring that a signature be legible (even if accompanied by a legibly printed name); that petition sheets be sequentially numbered; that dates be written correctly the first time, without any strikeouts and corrections; and that petition circulator signatures not "appear to be initials." In the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there are unwritten rules that all prison administrative remedy requests and appeals must be on carbonized forms rather than photocopies of those forms and that appeals of disciplinary hearing outcomes must be accompanied by the hearing report. A failure to abide by these rules results in the request's or appeal's rejection.