Clarifiers' Guild

The Clarifiers' Guild is the chartered body of certified interpretive functionaries from which the Ordinance Clarifiers are drawn, and the corporate holder of the guild's seat on the Inter-Guild Logistics Nexus. It is not to be confused with the Sub-Guild of Clarifiers, which is an organ of the Fifth Scribe's Guild concerned with implements under Ordinance 22; the two bodies share a name, a building on the eighth contiguous block, and an argument. The Guild's chief charge is the production of certified glosses on unresolved or contradictory provisions, deposited with the Central Registry of Ambiguities and cited throughout the Tower as Clarifications.

Establishment and seat

The Guild was chartered under the Ninth Concordance, Annex 6, which fixed its complement at three hundred and eleven certified Clarifiers — a number retained for reasons no surviving recension explains, and defended each decade against proposals to round it. Its seat occupies floors 412 through 419, a contiguous block over which the Guild's jurisdiction runs without interruption. The block is bounded above by the Deferred Annexes and below by a stairwell that has been closed since the winter of 14 El. 3 on grounds of a draft; the closure notice remains posted and the door remains bolted.

Membership is by certification following examination in Interpretive methodology, the standard text being the Analects of the Second Readers. Candidates are examined on the resolution of provisions that contradict one another, and separately on the writing of a note explaining, without irony, why the contradiction persists.

The Doctrine of Proximate Authority and its limits

The Guild's reach is governed by the Doctrine of Proximate Authority, which limits Clarifiers to specific Ordinances and to contiguous blocks of floors. In practice this means a Clarifier certified for the Ordinance of Fluid Jurisdiction may issue a binding gloss on floor 413 and no opinion whatever on floor 420, even where the two concern the same pipe. Where a matter crosses into another block, the Clarifier files a Petition of Proximate Assessment, and where the outcome is anticipated before it is decided, a Petition of Anticipatory Holding approved by a panel of three.

"A Clarifier stands where the Ordinance stands, and no further; the floor beneath him is his floor, and the floor beyond it is another's, however near."

— Ninth Concordance, Annex 6, clause 4

The Soporific Spore ruling

The Guild's most cited instrument arose from the Soporific Spore Incident of floor 388, when a Clarification was sought on whether a sealed chamber that had ceased to change could be said to be pending. The ruling introduced the Doctrine of Apparent Progress, holding that a subject under Metric Dissipation may be treated as advancing where the record of its advance is advancing. The Guild has defended the doctrine in four recensions and has never quite explained it.

Dissenting members of the Dialectic Guild have argued for two centuries that the doctrine proves too much. The Guild's standing reply, recorded in its Reply Book under the hand of Clarifier Ovin Marsh, is that the objection is filed in the wrong block.

Dispute with the Sub-Guild

The long quarrel with the Sub-Guild of Clarifiers concerns the word clarifier as applied to an implement. The Guild holds that a device bearing the name performs interpretive work and must therefore be certified; the Sub-Guild holds that a device performs no work and cannot be. The dispute was referred to the Margin Commentators Guild for comment, which returned forty pages finding both positions sound. It has since been carried in alternate years before the Reflector Guild and the Glasswrights' Guild, neither of which has produced a finding, and the question of precedence under Form Ω-7a remains open.

Relations and records

The Guild maintains a standing delegation to the Inter-Guild Logistics Nexus, where it votes on the routing of documents and abstains on the routing of persons. Its relations with the Guild of Engineers Circular 77-12 are warm; with the Guild of Groundskeepers, cordial but procedural, owing to a disagreement about the moss on the eighth-block parapet, which the Guild considers a record and the Groundskeepers consider a maintenance matter.

The Guild's archive occupies floor 416 and is administered by two keepers and a copyist. Visiting Clarifiers may consult the open shelves on presentation of a certification token. Tokens are not required on the fifth day of the week, provided the visitor signs the outer register and does not reshelve anything.