Recursive Filings

Recursive Filings are a class of administrative instrument in which a document names itself as its own subject, annex, or grounds for submission. They are permitted, provided the recursion is declared at the point of entry. Filings that recurse without declaration are not void; they are simply held until a reader can be found who is willing to begin at the innermost layer, and the queue for such readers is long.

The class is administered under Concordance 117, Annex 9, and cross-referenced to the schedule of Recursive Nullities wherever the recursion terminates in nothing. The distinction between a Recursive Filing and a Recursive Nullity is one of intent: a Recursive Filing intends to return to itself, whereas a Recursive Nullity was not consulted about the matter.

Definition and form

A Recursive Filing must state, on its face, the depth at which it first refers to itself, expressed as a Roman numeral and a letter. A filing declaring depth III-B is understood to contain three further self-references before reaching ground, and the registering clerk is expected to count them, twice, in the presence of a second clerk. The second clerk need not count; the second clerk need only be present.

Form RF-2, revised in CY 4,388 and not since, requires the filer to append a sealed envelope containing the filing's own description of itself. The envelope is not opened unless the description and the filing disagree, at which point the description governs, because it was written by someone with more time.

"No instrument shall be registered which, when read aloud in full, requires more than one reading of itself to establish what it is. Where two readings are required, the shorter shall be entered in the ledger; where three, the filing is remitted to the Office of Volumetric Assessment."

— Concordance 117, Annex 9, cl. 4

History of the form

Recursive Filings were regularised only after the Great Recursive Pause of CY 4,401, during which fourteen months of administrative stasis followed the mass submission of Recursive Leave filings by clerks who had each cited their own previous leave as precedent. The Pause was not caused by the filings themselves but by the impossibility of determining which of them had been filed first. The Passage Advocate at the time, one Marren Osp, proposed that the question be settled by date-stamp; it was pointed out that every filing carried the same date-stamp, having inherited it from itself.

The reconciliation, drafted in the Chamber of Recursive Justification over a winter generally given as CY 4,402 but disputed, established the declared-depth rule that survives today. Osp's marginal note on the surviving recension reads, in full: "The innermost is always correct. It was written last." This is quoted in almost every subsequent ruling on the subject and is understood by almost no one.

Interaction with the Contradiction Warrens

Because a Recursive Filing frequently contradicts an earlier version of itself, a large proportion are routed to the Contradiction Warrens and entered as Contradiction Filings. These must cite specific holdings, the nature of the contradiction, and a proposed severity classification, a requirement that a self-citing instrument discharges with unusual ease and unusual length. The Bureau of Registry receives and validates such submissions, and the Office of Volumetric Assessment returns them when incomplete, which in this class is often.

The Concordance of Filings sets a ceiling for SFU-D, the ratio of registered holdings per square STU, and Recursive Filings are the principal cause of its being exceeded on the lower shelves. A single filing at depth IV can register as many as nine holdings on one call number, since each self-reference is entitled to its own entry and each entry to its own corroborating reference. The Warrens have requested, repeatedly and without success, that the ceiling be expressed instead per shelf-metre.

Doctrinal dispute

Two positions persist. The first, associated with the Post of Recursive Oversight and resting on Concordance 707-Alpha, holds that a Recursive Filing is a single instrument that appears many times, and should be registered once and shelved once, at its outermost layer. The second, advanced from the Wing of Recursive Application and consistent with the Assertion of Primacy of Form, holds that each appearance is a distinct holding because each is separately consultable, and that shelving them together is a filing convenience masquerading as a doctrine.

The Atrium of Recursive Truth has hosted the dispute four times without resolving it. In CY 4,417 the Recursive Certification Loop certified both positions as correct, an outcome later described by the Office of Volumetric Assessment as "consistent with the ceiling" and by the Warrens as "the reason for the ceiling." The Title Dispute of the Seventh Helical Gallery arose from a related question and is sometimes cited in support of either side, depending on which gallery one considers relevant.

Consultation

Readers requesting a Recursive Filing are issued the outermost sheet and a wooden token numbered to the depth declared. The token must be surrendered at the desk on return; tokens are not replaced, and a reader who loses one is entered on the Recursive Folios as pending.

Under Pre-Clearance Scrutiny, filings above depth III are not released to the open shelves before the seventh day.