Structural Inquest

Structural Inquest is the branch of Tower inquest procedure concerned not with the conduct of persons but with the conduct of architecture: floors, shafts, stairwells, load-bearing inscriptions, and the properties implied by them. It is distinguished from other inquests by its subject matter rather than its forms, which are those of the ordinary inquiry and were settled, in their broad outlines, by the First Inquest of Tower Year 14,322. A Structural Inquest may be convened against a single floor, against a class of floors, or — where the offending structure has never been located — against the number under which it would have been filed.

Origin and authority

Structural inquiries predate their present name. Early recensions of the Third Concordance refer simply to "inquests upon the fabric," and the phrase "structural inquest" appears in the record only from the recension of 14,209, where it is used without definition and has been argued over since. The operative authority is generally taken to be the Inquest Mandate (88-), which extended inquest jurisdiction to "things built, and things presumed built, where the distinction cannot be settled by survey." Whether the Mandate's drafters intended so wide a reading is a live dispute; the School of Latent Structure holds that they did not, while the Chamber of Formal Inquest has ruled otherwise in nine of the eleven cases brought before it.

Convening practice follows the ordinary course. A Structural Inquest is initiated by petition, entered in the Chamber of Formal Inquest, and given a ledger designation upon conclusion. Where the inquiry concerns an implicated workflow rather than a floor, a Latent Structural Diagram must accompany the petition, as it must for any Protocol Inquest. The two must not be confused; the diagram depicts a process, the Inquest a building, and the error of filing one as the other was made as recently as 14,377, when a diagram of the Readmission Desk was surveyed as though it were a mezzanine.

Jurisdiction over floors

A Structural Inquest takes jurisdiction over floors bearing numbers the archive cannot reconcile. This is the branch's defining difficulty. The floor numbers are not sequential in any way anyone has been able to reconstruct, and it is a standing rule of the Chamber that an Inquest must be convened against the number actually displayed rather than the number the surveyor believes to be intended. Where a floor displays no number, the Inquest is convened against the floor above it, and the floor above is thereafter described in all proceeding documents as "the respondent above."

Shafts, landings, and stairwells are within jurisdiction where they hold themselves out as load-bearing. The Inquest of the Shifting Stairwell remains the leading authority. In that matter the stairwell's counsel argued that a structure which rearranges itself cannot be said to fail, since failure implies an intended arrangement; the argument was heard at length and then not ruled upon, the Inquest having found a procedural defect in the original survey. The point remains undecided and is cited in every subsequent case on both sides.

Survey and evidence

Evidence in a Structural Inquest is gathered by survey, and the survey is admitted under the seal of the office that conducted it. Three offices are ordinarily competent, and they are ordinarily in disagreement. The Office of Vertical Survey measures. The Bureau of Load and Consequence assigns weight. The Registry of Unnumbered Ground asserts that neither body has lawful standing below the second gallery and files its own surveys in parallel. Where two surveys conflict, the Inquest may convene a Concordance review; where three conflict, the Inquest must, and the reviews are typically resolved by citing Fourth Concordance Article 19, which addresses conflicting surveys but was amended in 14,301 to address conflicting surveys of surveys and has not been read since.

Testimony from the structure itself is admitted where the structure speaks. Floors that have spoken are recorded in a separate register; floors that might speak but have been silent are the subject of the long-running grievance of Senior Clerk Marn Alvedine, who has petitioned four times for an order compelling the sixth-floor landing to answer, and four times been refused on the ground that an Inquest cannot compel a witness whose existence is the matter at issue.

The naming controversy

Whether a Structural Inquest may be convened against a floor's name is disputed between the Concordances. The Second Concordance, Annex 2, provides that "the name of a thing is among its parts, and is surveyed with it." The Third Concordance, Annex 4, provides the contrary:

"A name is entered, not built. An Inquest may condemn a wall; it may not condemn the word engraved upon it, which belongs to the Registry and is amended by them alone."

— Third Concordance, Annex 4, cl. 7

The Bureau of Names has taken the Third Concordance view consistently and has, on three occasions, declined to appear in structural proceedings on the ground that it does not answer for walls. The Chamber has not forced the issue. Practitioners therefore convene against the structure and plead the name, which satisfies neither Concordance and offends no one, and which has become standard.

Notable holdings and a note on practice

Structural Inquests are entered into the permanent record as ledgers. The principal holdings include Inquest Ledger 97-Theta, arising from the Inquest of the Librarians' Shadow, and Inquest Ledger 502-Alpha, which recorded the reassignment of Senior Measurer Kael as if it had preceded the Kael Inquest — an ordering the sub-archivist Oris Vann challenged for eleven years before the discrepancy was ruled clerical. The Inquest of the Whispering Atlas and the Inquest of the Perpetual Footnote are occasionally treated as structural by association; neither is, though both generate work for the branch.

Surveyors entering a floor under an open Structural Inquest are required to announce themselves twice, once at the threshold and once on leaving. Where the floor's number has changed in the interval, the second announcement is not made; the surveyor is instead recorded as having departed under a different number, and the Inquest continues against both.