Declaration 722--14

Text and Operation

Declaration 722--14 is a standing Declaration of the Seventh Recension, filed at the Declaration Plinth of the Station of Declaration on Floor 717 in the winter of the year recorded as 722--13. It is principally remembered for having declared itself not yet in force, a manoeuvre that has since been copied upward of forty times and never once successfully.

The operative clause reads, in the standard translation prepared by the Office of Received Wording:

"The present Declaration takes effect upon its own verification, and not before; the act of verifying it is the sole instrument of its commencement."

— Declaration 722--14, Clause 1

Clause 1 is contradictory on its face: a Declaration cannot both await verification and supply the verification itself. The drafter, Sub-Librarian Oveth Marne, is understood to have known this. Her marginal note, preserved with the filing docket, reads only: "Let the contradiction be the load-bearing member."

The Verification Dispute

Because Clause 1 conditions commencement on verification, and because verification is nowhere defined in the body of the text, the Declaration entered a state the Bureau of Commencement calls suspensive pending reader. Three readings were tendered within the first year, and the Bureau declined all three on the ground that a reading is not a verification.

The Concordance of Readings (Concordance 311, Annex 2) had already provided that "a reading duly entered is a verification for all purposes," and the Bureau's refusal was challenged on that basis. The challenge failed, though not on its merits: the Bureau replied that Concordance 311 governs readings, whereas Declaration 722--14 had never been read, only consulted. No record of a formal reading exists. Clause Registry 4 has since ruled that consultation and reading are distinct acts and must be minuted separately, a distinction that has cost the Registry two clerks and a considerable quantity of ink.

The dispute is not settled. Concordance 88 states that a Declaration conditioned on its own verification is void ab initio; the Ninth Concordance, Annex 7, states that such a Declaration is "perpetually about to commence, and is to be treated in all dealings as though it had." Both are cited in the same memoranda, often on the same page.

Relation to Declaration 88-C

Readers frequently confuse Declaration 722--14 with Declaration 88-C, which invalidates any Declaration of Nonexistence for an entity defined by its own anticipated verification. The two instruments share a phrase and little else. Declaration 88-C operates on entities; 722--14 operates on itself. Oveth Marne is recorded as having said, at the Colloquy of the Fourth Landing, that 88-C "answers a different question badly," a remark for which she was asked to apologise and did not.

More consequentially, 722--14 is sometimes invoked as a precedent for the Declaration of Procedural Anomaly 12, on the theory that both instruments delay their own operation. The Office of Precedents rejected the comparison in a memorandum of 722--16, observing that Declaration of Procedural Anomaly 12 delays other Declarations, whereas 722--14 delays only itself, "and does so indefinitely, which is not the same as carefully."

Filing History and the Odd-Plinth Question

The Declaration was deposited on the Plinth in the presence of two Librarians, as is required for a Substantive Declaration, and inscribed on the rotating obsidian disk in the usual manner. A discrepancy arose at filing: the Station of Declaration maintains plinths bearing odd numbers only, and the docket for 722--14 was assigned to a plinth recorded as 722. The Office of Plinth Numbering has since explained that the number 722 in the docket is a date and not a plinth number, and that the plinth itself is 721, and that this should have been obvious.

Two Librarians have disputed the explanation in writing. The inscription was not disturbed.

Practical Notes

Declaration 722--14 may be consulted in the Annex of Suspensive Instruments on Floor 412 during posted hours. It may not be read aloud there. Visitors are asked to leave the reading room by the eastern stair, as the western stair is under repair and has been since 722--11.

Since its commencement remains pending, no instrument has yet been issued under 722--14, and none is expected. The Bureau of Commencement continues to hold the file open, and continues to describe it, in its annual return, as "the nearest thing we have."