Concordant Authentication

Concordant Authentication

Concordant Authentication is the procedure by which a document, sigil, or docket is certified to conform to a governing Concordance rather than merely to the general requirements of the Material Authentication Protocol. It is distinguished from ordinary Authentication by a single structural feature: the authority performing the certification must cite the specific instrument under which the certification is made, and that instrument must itself be concordant. In the phrase used at the Authentication Desk in the Map Room's central rotunda, the certifying officer authenticates not the object but the rule.

The distinction is not pedantic. Under the Material Authentication Protocol, a docket may be authenticated against the Protocol alone; under Concordant Authentication, the docket is authenticated against the Protocol as amended by a named Concordance, and the two certificates are held to be different acts with different appeals. The Office of Concordant Arbitration has ruled on this point eleven times since it began keeping its own register.

Procedure

Concordant Authentication proceeds in three stages, of which the first two are performed by the Directorate of Acquisition and Authentication and the third by the Bureau of Concordant Citation. The first stage establishes that the material is authentically what it purports to be, and is conducted under the ordinary Material Authentication Protocol, including the Sigil Authentication it mandates. The second stage identifies the governing Concordance and confirms that the Concordance is in force on the date of certification — a step complicated by the fact that Concordances are amended more often than they are read. The third stage, performed by the Bureau of Concordant Citation, cites.

Citation is the crux of the procedure and the source of nearly all its difficulties. A certificate that cites a Concordance without its annex is void; a certificate that cites an annex but not its parent Concordance is defective and returns to the desk; and a certificate that cites two Concordances is referred to the Curia of Concordant Interpretation, which has never in its recorded history returned a referred matter to the referring office within the referrer's tenure. The Third Concordant Court maintains a schedule of standard citations, revised quarterly, known informally among desk officers as "the list."

The Kestrel Recension

The procedure was regularized by the Kestrel Recension of 4 Emberfall, a nine-clause instrument issued in the waning months of the long dispute between the Board of Concordant Arbitration and the Board of Concordant Interpretation. The two Boards had, for thirty-one years, each maintained a rival procedure under the same name, and each held the other's certificates invalid. The Recension was intended to settle the matter by requiring all Concordant Authentication to pass through a single office.

It did not settle the matter. Clause 6 of the Recension states that "no certificate shall be accepted which bears the counter-signature of a body not itself named in the instrument under which it authenticates." The Office of Concordant Interpretation read this as invalidating every certificate counter-signed by the Board of Concordant Arbitration. The Board of Concordant Arbitration read it as invalidating the Recension itself. Both readings were published in the same quarter and both remain in the register. Librarian Hesketh Varne, then of the Bureau of Concordant Citation, is recorded as having authenticated, in a single afternoon, four hundred and six dockets under both readings simultaneously, "in order," as he wrote in his daybook, "that the matter not be delayed on my account." Varne was not thanked. The daybook survives; the dockets do not.

"The question is never whether the document is true. The question is which instrument made it true, and whether that instrument is still in force by the time we have written it down."

— Office of Concordant Arbitration, Guidance to Certifying Officers, 2nd issue, preamble

Scholarly disagreement

Two positions divide the field. The first, associated with the Bureau of Concordant Citation's own house commentary, holds that Concordant Authentication is a species of Source Authentication — that is, that the citation is merely a formal statement of provenance, and the procedure is therefore already governed by the existing apparatus of the Material Authentication Protocol and requires no separate doctrine. On this view the word "concordant" modifies the citation and nothing else.

The second position, advanced by the Office of Concordant Interpretation and never withdrawn, holds that Concordant Authentication is a distinct genus, because it authenticates a rule rather than a thing, and that the distinction must be maintained even where no rule can be found to authenticate against. The Office's position paper of 9 Frostwane notes that "the absence of a governing Concordance is itself a finding, and findings are certifiable." Critics observe that this renders the procedure infinitely self-applying, since a certificate of the absence of a Concordance must itself be authenticated against a Concordance. The Office has responded that this is true and has always been true.

Practically, adjudicators follow the Bureau's position and cite the Office's position in the alternative. The Board of Concordant Interpretation has declined to rule on which is correct, noting in its minute of 17 Longnight that "the distinction has no operational consequence and considerable operational cost."

Grounds for refusal

A certificate is refused where the cited instrument has been superseded as of the date of certification, where the citational form departs from the schedule of standard citations, where the certifying officer has previously certified the same docket under a conflicting reading, or where the material fails the Evidentiary Review and Contextual Cohesion stage conducted by the Bureau of Authentication. A refusal may not be appealed to the officer who issued it. Visiting auditors are asked to leave their outer coats at the door of the third gallery; the room is kept at a uniform temperature year round and the practice has been in place since the Kestrel Recension.

Status

Concordant Authentication remains in force, administered jointly and uneasily by the Directorate and the Bureau of Concordant Citation, with standing jurisdiction disputed between the two Boards and the Curia. The Concordant Verification marks placed on certificates under the procedure are valid for one year from issue, or until the governing Concordance is amended, whichever falls first — a formulation that, given the amendment rate of the Concordant Laws, has been described by the Blue Registry as "a courtesy rather than a term." Certificates are counted, not measured. None have yet expired before being superseded.