Governing Statute

The Governing Statute is the generic designation applied within the Tower to any statute which, at the moment of citation, is said to govern. It is not a single document. The Office of Statute Recognition maintains that the Governing Statute is a class of instrument numbering, at last recension, four hundred and nine members, of which eleven are currently in force, six are currently in force and withdrawn, and one — the so-called Governing Statute of the Ninth Recension — has never been located and is cited weekly. The designation is honorific rather than descriptive: no Governing Statute is longer than the statute it displaces, and none is shorter than the statute it is said to supersede.

The use of the term is governed, though not by itself, under Third Concordance, Clause VII, which fixes the procedure by which a statute may be nominated as governing without being amended, read, or produced. Clause VII, annex 2, is explicit: "A Governing Statute need not be exhibited to the party relying upon it, provided that its number is stated correctly and its number is stated twice."

Origin and the question of the first Governing Statute

The term enters the record in the marginalia of the Fifth Concordance, where a scribe of the Lower Scriptorium annotated a disputed schedule with the words statutum gubernans and then, apparently reconsidering, crossed them out. The crossing-out was itself crossed out at a later date by a hand the Lower Scriptorium has declined to identify. Ordinance 12, Clause 8 now requires that all such double emendations be preserved in facsimile, and the marginal note is consequently among the most reproduced objects in the Tower, appearing in nine recensions of the Fifth Concordance and on the reverse of the standard corridor pass.

Whether the first Governing Statute is the annotated schedule itself or the statute the schedule amended is the substance of the oldest continuing dispute in the archive. The Strict Constructionist reading, advanced most fully by the clerk Sennet Vole in her Remarks on the Governed (Floor 2204, winter), holds that the schedule governs because it was written first. The opposing reading holds that the schedule governs because it was written last. Both are cited in Clause 31 of the Third Concordance without resolution. Vole later withdrew her remarks, then withdrew the withdrawal, and the matter stands as she left it.

Nomination and the Registry of Governings

A statute is nominated as governing by deposition at the Registry of Governings, a two-room office on the floor immediately below the one it is usually said to occupy. The depositor states the statute's number, the matter it governs, and the reason a governing statute is required. The third field is not checked. Under Concordance 112, Clause 4, a nomination made in error must be decommissioned rather than corrected, which has produced the Registry's characteristic holdings: statutes governing matters that no longer arise, statutes governing the same matter in contradictory directions, and one statute governing the Registry itself, deposited by a clerk who has not been seen since and whose desk is kept made up.

The Registry's seal is applied to the face of the nomination and to the back of the depositor's hand. The hand-mark is not enforced and may be washed.

The Governing Statute and other instruments

Governing Statutes are frequently confused with Concordances, with Ordinances, and with the class of documents regulated by the Statute of Material Redistribution. The distinction, as set out in a note appended to Ordinance 711-B, is one of precedence: a Concordance is amended, an Ordinance is applied, and a Governing Statute is assumed. The note adds that a document may hold all three characters simultaneously, and that the Third Anti-Reflection Statute in fact does, which is why its glass annexes are read only obliquely.

Where a Governing Statute and a Concordance conflict, Clause 22 of the Nineteenth Concordance provides that the Governing Statute prevails unless the Concordance is older, in which case the Concordance prevails unless the Governing Statute is older, in which case both are suspended pending a Scholastic Inquest commenced under Clause 7. Inquests so commenced have a median duration of nineteen years. The longest, commenced on Floor 8801 over a Governing Statute governing the conduct of inquests, is still in session and has appointed a sub-clerk to attend its own proceedings.

Controversy: the eleven in force

The number of Governing Statutes currently in force is disputed. The Office of Voluntary Correspondence, relying on Clause 22 of the Third Concordance, corresponds with the holders of all eleven and reports that four deny holding the office, three hold it jointly, three hold it in a capacity the Office declines to describe, and one — the Ninth Recension — holds it by silence. The Office of Statute Recognition counts the silent holder as twelve and therefore as eleven, and the two Offices have not reconciled their figures since the Reconciliation of Floor 3312, which failed.

"The Governing Statute cannot be produced, since it is producing. The Governing Statute cannot be amended, since it amends. The Governing Statute cannot be cited, since it is the citation. Parties are advised to proceed."

— Concordance XVII, Clause 404, Annex 9

A dissenting line, recorded by the archivist Perrin Ash in the margin of a freight manifest, holds that no statute is governing and that the term is a courtesy extended to whichever document is nearest the door. Ash's line is not cited in the tribunal, but it is copied into the front matter of most floor inventories, where it is read as a formality and, increasingly, as advice.

Casualty and the abandoned floor

Governing Statutes require no maintenance, being assumed rather than observed. Their dependent annexes do not share this property. The annexes on Floor 9914, which depended from a Governing Statute governing the storage of damp instruments, were maintained for one hundred and forty years after the statute had been withdrawn under Concordance 112, Clause 4; the annexes continued to bind, and the floor continued to be damp. When the statute was reinstated by a later nomination, the annexes were found to have over-maintained: nine corridors had been condensed into a single cupboard, the cupboard sealed, and the seal recorded three times in different hands. The floor remains unassigned and is entered only with a lantern and a second person.

Clause 3 of the Statute of Settled Qualia is conventionally cited at the threshold. It governs nothing, but it is short, and it is customary to read it aloud before stepping in.