The Statute of Settled Qualia

Scope and promulgation

The Statute of Settled Qualia (practice) fixes the interval after which a recorded intent may no longer be contested: thirty-three cycles. Within that period a party may lodge a challenge to an intent already inscribed; after it, the intent is deemed settled and its inscription is treated as final for all cataloguing purposes. The Statute is cited far more often than it is quoted in full, and the two are not identical, which has been the source of most recorded disputes. The Statute's home copy is held on Floor 112, Annex D of the Bureau of Implementable Abstraction, in the same corridor as the Taxonomy kept on Annex B. Its authority derives from the Third Ephemeral Statute, though the promulgation date is contested (see below).

The thirty-three cycle question

No agreement exists on the length of a cycle. The Third Concordance defines a cycle as one complete rotation of the Great Dial above the Scriptorium of Minor Weights; the Ninth Concordance defines it as the interval between two consecutive hearings of the same bench. On Floors 1–400 these figures differ by approximately four days, and the discrepancy widens with altitude because the Great Dial is known to hesitate. Practically, this means the same intent can be settled twice, on two different days, in two different offices, without either office being in error. The reconciliation of the two dates is handled by the Ledger of Settled Margins, which carries a standing entry for the variance and is amended quarterly. Clerks are reminded that the thirty-three cycle period begins at the moment of inscription, not at the moment of composition. Many intents are composed years before they are written down, and a tradition has grown of inscribing long-dormant intents in the first week of winter to take advantage of the shorter deliberation season.

Challenges and settlement

A challenge lodged inside the cycle period suspends the intent under Suspension of Local Statute and refers the matter to the Hall of Settled Truths. If no challenge is lodged, the intent passes into the Doctrine of Settled Intent and is thereafter treated as a Settled Truth, subject only to the correction powers reserved to the Librarians themselves. The practical effect is that the great majority of recorded intents are never challenged at all. The Bureau's own count for the most recent accounting year records 4,118 intents inscribed and 61 challenges filed, of which 4 were upheld. The remaining 4,114 passed into settlement by silence.

"An intent unchallenged is not an intent agreed to; it is an intent that arrived at the end of its thirty-three cycles without company."

— Sub-Warden of Floor 112, remarks to the Bureau of Implementable Abstraction, winter session

Promulgation dispute

Two dates are cited for the Statute's first promulgation, and both appear in current Concordances. The Annex D copy carries a seal dated to the year of the Third Ephemeral Statute; the copy deposited with the Registry of Minor Impressions carries a seal eleven cycles later. The Bureau holds that the later seal marks a recension rather than a promulgation; the Hall of Settled Truths has, on at least one occasion, applied the later date retroactively to deny a challenge that would have been timely under the earlier one. The dispute has never been formally resolved because no party has a material interest in resolving it. Under the Statute itself, the matter became settled after thirty-three cycles from the date of the ruling, whichever of the two dates is used.

Relationship to other practice

The Statute governs intents; the Statute of Material Redistribution governs objects; the two intersect only where an intent concerns the movement of an object, which is more often than the drafting clerks expected. Where both apply, the longer period governs, by an annex to the Ninth Concordance that is cited with unusual confidence given that it contradicts the Third. Settlement under the Statute has downstream effects on measurement. A settled intent contributes to Qualia Density in its zone, and the Scriptorium of Minor Weights is required to recompute the density figure at the close of each cycle period whether or not a challenge was filed. The Scriptorium's practice of computing the figure first and recording the challenge second has been upheld twice and overturned once, the overturn being attributed to a clerical error in the year field that nobody has admitted to. Visitors to Annex D may read the home copy but may not remove it from the corridor for any purpose, including comparison with the copy held at the Registry. Two earlier attempts at comparison resulted in both copies being marked as recensions and neither being marked as the original, an outcome that has never been corrected because the correction would itself require a challenge filed within thirty-three cycles, and the cycles have run.