Liaison Amp Arbitration

The Liaison Amp Arbitration is the standing procedure by which disputes between guilds are settled through the joint presentation of Guild Liaison Amps before a seated arbiter of the Bureau of Guild Liaison Amp Compliance. It is distinguished from ordinary liaison procedure in that the Amp is not merely displayed but argued with — held, turned, and struck against the arbitration rail in a sequence of prescribed attitudes, each of which constitutes a formal claim. The Arbitration is not a court and issues no verdicts; it produces Determinations, which are binding on the parties and unenforceable everywhere else.

The procedure is governed principally by the Third Concordance, Annex 4, and by the standing instructions of Annex Kappa, whose relation to Annex 4 is discussed below. Filings are received on Floor 122, Annex Kappa, in the rail chamber adjoining the Bureau's scriptorium. The rail itself is a single hematite bar, 2.4 metres, worn to a visible concavity at the midpoint since at least Year 61.

Origin and establishment

The Arbitration was not created by any single instrument. The Master Ledger of the Chronological Compliance Bureau records the Bureau of Guild Liaison Amp Compliance's establishment in Year 43, and the earliest surviving rail entry is dated Year 44, Day 112, concerning a disagreement between two weaving charters over the seating order at a joint assembly. The entry is three words long: "Struck. Settled. Both." Later recensions of the same entry supply the guilds, the arbiter, and the sum, none of which appear in the original hand.

For the first sixty years the Arbitration was conducted on whatever rail was available, and the resulting Determinations are difficult to reconcile because the strikes were not. The standardisation of the rail — its length, its alloy, and the requirement that it be cast in one piece — followed the Year 103 Adjunct ruling, which held that a determination struck on a joined rail was severable at the join and could therefore be appealed in parts. No joined rail has been used since.

The attitudes

An arbitration proceeds through seven attitudes, performed in order, each held for a count of nine. The attitudes are named rather than numbered in Annex 4, though the Bureau's clerks number them anyway, and the numbering differs between the northern and southern scriptoria.

• Presentation — the Amp is raised level with the brow and rotated once.
• Recension — the Amp is laid flat; the arbiter reads the opposing charter aloud.
• Counter-recension — the Amp is laid flat and turned to face the respondent.
• Qualification — the Amp is held at the shoulder and not moved.
• Attrition — the Amp is struck once against the rail. This is the only strike.
• Custody — the Amp is surrendered to the arbiter and returned.
• Release — the Amp is lowered. The Determination is read within the count.

The single strike is the whole of the argument. Everything preceding it is understood to be the argument's preparation, and everything following it is understood to be the argument's record. Clerks of the Bureau are fond of saying that the Arbitration is nine-tenths patience and one-tenth hematite, though the saying is attributed to at least four different clerks.

Incident of the Year 178 filing

In the winter of Year 178 a dispute between the Salt Chandlers and the Salt Weighers was filed at the rail chamber during a period when the chamber's south door was frozen shut. Proceedings were conducted through the north door only, which shortened the entry procession and, by the arbiter's later admission, caused the parties to arrive at the rail out of charter order. The resulting Determination was challenged not on its substance but on the procession, and the challenge was upheld by the Bureau on the ground that a charter out of order is a charter unheard.

Archivist-Liaison Corvus, then a junior recorder, was tasked with the recension of the rail entries for that winter. The recension took eleven years, and Corvus's marginal note on the matter is preserved: "The door is not the argument. The door determined the argument. Record the door." Bureau practice now requires that ambient conditions at the rail chamber be entered in the filing header, a requirement commonly called the Door Rule.

Dispute over the rail sequence

Annex 4 of the Third Concordance sets the attitudes in the order given above. Annex Kappa, drafted eleven years later and never formally reconciled with Annex 4, places Custody before Attrition. The Bureau has declined to resolve the contradiction, holding in Year 154 that both sequences are valid and that the arbiter selects one at the opening of proceedings and announces it. This is the only procedural election the arbiter is permitted to make.

"Where two sequences are lawfully given, the arbiter shall announce which he follows, and having announced it shall not follow the other, nor both, nor neither."

— Third Concordance, Annex Kappa, Clause 9

Critics within the Inter-Departmental Liaison have observed that the election makes the outcome dependent on the arbiter's preference. The Bureau's answer, recorded in a Year 159 memorandum, is that the outcome was already dependent on the arbiter's preference and that the election merely makes this legible.

Relation to other liaison bodies

The Arbitration is not available to bodies outside the guild register. Departments of the Tower settle their differences through Inter-Departmental Liaison, and matters touching the Office of Dimensional Liaison are referred there under the mandatory liaison protocol, a referral that the Bureau has twice attempted to have narrowed and twice withdrawn. The Avian Liaison Office has sought standing at the rail since Year 141; its petitions are received, filed, and answered with the standing formula that the rail "does not admit wings," which the Office has formally protested as a description rather than a ruling.

Amps presented at arbitration must be Type-III-G or above and must be presented by the guild that holds them. A proxy Amp is not admitted. The Master Register records two guilds sharing a single Amp under a Year 88 indenture; when both parties to a dispute are the same two guilds, the arbiter strikes the Amp once on behalf of each and enters the result as a single Determination with two seals.