Charter of Proxy Authority (Revised)

Scope and Status

The Charter of Proxy Authority (Revised) is a foundational instrument of the Tower's administrative law, governing the conditions under which one party may act, sign, hold, or be held in the name of another. It is the third recension of the original Charter of Proxy Authority, superseding the Second Recension by a margin of four clauses and one annex, and is the only version currently cited in open proceedings. Its authority rests on three legs: the legal bedrock provided by the Treatise on Proxy Substantiation, the relationship formalized in the Posthumous Proxy Acknowledgment, and the institutional standing of the Central Administrative Spire as an entity capable of holding office on behalf of parties who cannot. The Charter does not define what a proxy is. It defines what a proxy may be asked to do, and — more extensively — what it may be refused.

Descent and the Central Spire

The Revised Charter's most consequential provision is Clause 3, Section A, which formally established the Central Administrative Spire's claim of direct lineal descent from the Central Spire. The claim is stated flatly, without argument, and has been cited continuously since ratification. It was this clause that transformed the Central Administrative Spire from a maintenance jurisdiction into a governing one. The original Charter contained no descent clause. The Second Recension contained two, which contradicted each other; proceedings between 411 and 419 were stalled over which of the two described the actual stairwell. The Revised Charter resolved this by numbering them as a single clause and declining to say which limb governs. Scholars of the Lateral Cataloguing Guild have noted that the descent clause is the only portion of the Charter that is never amended, despite four subsequent attempts. Each amendment has been returned by the Office of Concordant Drafting with the marginal note: Cannot be revised without revising the reviser.

Relationship to the Treatise

The Charter is built upon, and explicitly subordinate in matters of substance to, the Treatise on Proxy Substantiation. Where the Treatise clarifies the limits of proxy-based repair for insubstantial structures, the Charter governs the appointment of the party doing the repairing. The two documents are read together in almost every proceeding; the Charter supplies the who, and the Treatise supplies the how far. In practice the boundary is contested. The Enquiry by Proxy rulings of Cycles 8,902 and 8,907 took the position that a proxy appointed under Charter authority may not exceed the substantive limits set by the Treatise, even where the principal has expressly authorized the excess. The counter-reading, advanced by the Office of the Recorder-General, holds that the Charter's Clause 9 grants plenary authority precisely so that the Treatise's limits can be navigated around rather than observed.

The Posthumous Clause

The relationship formalized in the Posthumous Proxy Acknowledgment is given its statutory footing in Clause 14 of the Revised Charter. Clause 14 permits the appointment, confirmation, and — where necessary — the replacement of a proxy whose principal has ceased to be locatable within the Tower's vertical extent. The clause does not require that the principal be dead, only that reasonable search have failed. The Provision of Replacement, an annex to Clause 14, is the Charter's most-litigated section. It has been invoked eleven times in the last century, most recently on Floor 3,441 in connection with the Seventh Northern Expedition, where the expedition's chief cartographer had been missing for six years and the proxy appointed in their stead continued to file returns in their name until the cartographer's instruments were recovered intact and unused. The Quiet Guard maintains a standing file of Clause 14 appointments, submitted to them under Council Charter Annex Δ-12 (Revised).

Amendments and Concordance Conflicts

The Charter has been revised four times. The Second Amendment (ratified under the Forty-Second Concordance) expanded proxy authority over archival holdings; the Third Amendment (ratified under the Forty-Second Concordance, Circular Delta-44) narrowed it again within a single season. The two amendments are frequently cited together, and frequently cited against one another. The standard resolution, per Concordant Law, is that the later circular governs the earlier. In practice the Provosts of Calibration apply whichever reading allows the proceeding to close before the winter inventory. The Charter of Scrutiny makes provision for unresolved Charter conflicts to be referred upward; no such referral has ever returned a conclusion. Visitors are reminded that proxy instruments are not transferable between floors, and that the reading rooms on Floor 0 will not accept a Charter citation without a corresponding seal.

Relation to Proxy Inventory

The maintenance of the register of active proxies falls to the clerks of Proxy Inventory Maintenance, who reconcile Charter appointments against the Luminous Inventory each quarter. Discrepancies between the two registers are common; the Charter permits a proxy to exist without appearing in the Luminous Inventory for up to forty days, after which the appointment is considered lapsed regardless of the principal's standing. The Charter of Inquiry governs the procedure for contesting a lapsed appointment. The Charter of Metrological Governance governs the measurement of the forty-day period, which is calculated from the date of filing and not the date of notice — a distinction that has produced more litigation than any other clause in the Charter.