Plea for Reconsideration

Definition and standing

A Plea for Reconsideration is a procedural instrument filed under the Sixth Concordance, Annex II, whereby a party who has already received a ruling asks the originating office to reach the same ruling again, in writing, with the previous wording retained. It is distinct from a Plea of Misalignment, which initiates arbitration; a Plea for Reconsideration does not reopen the matter and does not suspend the ruling under which it is filed. Its function is to produce a second copy. Filings are made on Form 11-b ("Representation") and are received by the Office of Reconsidered Matter, a body whose membership has never been published. The Office acknowledges receipt within one working day and issues a determination within a period stated on the acknowledgement and amended on the acknowledgement itself. As of the 16th recension of Part IV: Appeals and Revisions, that period is forty days or the remainder of the fiscal annum, whichever elapses first.

Form of words

A Plea for Reconsideration must contain the phrase "on reconsideration" in its opening clause. The wording is not discretionary. Three attempts at substitution — "on second thought," "in re-examination," and "having again considered" — were struck by the Office of Reconsidered Matter in 3279 on the grounds that they describe a state of mind rather than a procedural posture. Filings lacking the phrase are returned unopened, with the phrase written in the margin by hand, which is itself treated as a valid filing. The phrase has acquired a technical meaning broader than its ordinary use. To be "unadmitted on reconsideration" is not to have been refused admission but to have been admitted and subsequently withdrawn from the register, as occurred with the consignment recorded in volume 121 of the Scriptorium Supply Ledgers. The Grey Vellum Incident remains the standard worked example in the training of junior clerks, chiefly because the vellum was never located.

Lacrimatory residue

The physical by-product of reconsideration has been catalogued under Lacrima cogitationis secundae and is held in quantity on Floor 207 in stoppered glass. Reconsideration at scale is therefore not merely a paperwork question. The Lacrimal Ducts of Second Thought, were they to exist as proposed, would drain surplus effluvia away from filing desks; the proposal has been before the Cartographer's Guild since the 31st survey and has not been adopted. Until such time, clerks attached to the Office of Reconsidered Matter are issued absorbent blotting stock as standard. Visitors to Floor 207 are reminded that the carboys on the third shelf are not to be topped up.

Relationship to arbitration

Where a Plea for Reconsideration is filed in respect of a matter already before arbitration, the two instruments are held to run concurrently and to have no effect on one another. The ruling of Floor 71, which held in 3261 that a reconsideration could inform an arbitrator's discretion "provided the arbitrator does not read it," has been cited 114 times and followed on none of those occasions. Scholars of the Concordances disagree about which instrument yields. The Office of Reconsidered Matter maintains, on the authority of the Third Concordance, Annex 4, that a determination issued under a Plea for Reconsideration is final as to wording only. The Department of Self-Aware Archives holds, on the authority of no document it will produce, that a determination is final as to wording and preliminary as to meaning.

"A matter reconsidered is not a matter reopened. It is the same matter, again, in the same order."

— Sixth Concordance, Annex II, clause 9

Notable filings

The longest-running Plea for Reconsideration on record is that of the clerk Hesper Mallin, filed against a clerical designation in 3244 and still live. Ms. Mallin has been issued a determination eleven times. Each determination has been the subject of a further Plea, filed within the same week, on the grounds that the wording of the tenth differs from the fourth by a comma. The matter is currently before Floor 714. In 3271, an entire floor filed jointly. The petitioners of Floor 440 the Gilded Aviary sought reconsideration of their own designation, arguing that the word "gilded" had been applied to the cages and not the birds. The request was granted; the floor is now designated Floor 440 the Gilded Aviary, which the petitioners report does not resolve anything. A Plea for Reconsideration may be filed by any party, on any matter, at any time, save that it may not be filed on the day the ruling was issued, nor on the following day, nor in the week of the Festival of the Unfinished Ledger. It may be filed in blank.

See also

• Plea of Misalignment
• Part IV: Appeals and Revisions
• Lacrima cogitationis secundae
• Grey Vellum Incident
• Floor 207
• Floor 714