Mutual Questioning
互问
Among states that have no superior overhead, where do questions come from, and who cannot close them; and when the system itself acts, who can question it? This paper takes the Three-Borders Cooperation System as its example and answers both halves. The system's position is that of an external questioner: its determinations are public questions and records; it neither authorizes nor vetoes, and even a member that sends forces cannot close its questions. Making a covenant needs the consent of all parties; questioning existing matters does not; the party questioned recuses itself on the matter directed at it, and the questioning party does not decide alone that the case is closed. Closing one channel cannot cancel the questioning. The system does not enforce, and whether a question lands rests with each member; a member's obligation to answer comes from the covenants it has acknowledged, and "internal affairs" does not block questions. Treaty bodies admitting individual petitions fill the place where individuals cannot reach the procedures between states, and they are checked against the three conditions of a channel. The unified sentence of the Theory of the State is extended here, for the first time, to the system level, and its full text is given in §6: those whom the system's acts reach and who cannot avoid them are, as regards those acts, in the system's interior, whether or not they are within a member's territory; giving them a road by which the system itself can be reached is the system's own fifth ought; the accounts of the system and of the members are each checked by their own source. The system's arrangements can be chiseled; the three conditions are not withdrawn, and the arrangements are checked against the four points of War Treatise §16; decisions can be final, positions cannot. Four matters run through the paper: the system puts questions to the DRP about a decree that deprived people of citizenship; the families of the dead of Junction Town and the farming households of Wheat Plain petition the Petitions Committee against the UCSE; shopkeepers and villagers on the two banks of the Grey River petition over a common measure; people in the Eastfield camp petition against a sharing decision of the Conference of Members itself. The paper interfaces in place twice with Vattel's The Law of Nations: on the liberty and independence of nations, and on no state's having a right to interfere in the government of another; for Kant's publicity, it points to the interface the Theory of the State has already made. The paper has seven propositions (XZ9 to XZ15), each stated at the end of its section and listed together at the end.
Writing Declaration: This paper was co-drafted with Claude (Anthropic). All intellectual decisions, framework design, and final editorial judgments were made by the author.
Introduction
In the autumn of Year 9, with the war still being fought, the Democratic Republic of Purposes (DRP) issued a decree: those who left the country during the mobilization and did not return within six months would lose DRP citizenship, and the DRP would not register children born to them abroad. From that year on, the Nation Union of Telos (NUT) took in, by degrees, some forty thousand people who had left the DRP. In the Willow Ferry Reception Center in the Kingdom State of the United City-States of Ends (UCSE), three hundred ten children had been born by Year 12, and the "Citizenship" field on their birth certificates read "undetermined." Theory of the State Paper 3, §4, has read the situation of these children on the UCSE's side (N14). At that time there was not yet any place among the three states where they could put questions together.
In the spring of Year 13, the three states signed the Three-Borders Compact (hereafter the Compact) at Three Borders, a border town of the NUT. With it came the Three-Borders Cooperation System (hereafter the system). The system has a Conference of Members, in which each member has one vote; a standing Secretariat; several common procedures; and a committee that admits individual petitions. The Compact came into force in the winter of Year 13. Among the provisions the DRP acknowledged when it ratified the Compact is Article 4(3): members "do not push their own people onto other states by way of deprivation of citizenship." The Compact, the organs of the system and the laws of the several states are all examples set up by this series; this series does not claim that they are the best design, and they are cited so that there are facts to judge by.
In the summer of Year 14, the NUT requested that questions be put to the DRP under this provision, and the UCSE seconded the request. The Conference of Members opened questioning by 2 to 0, the DRP not taking part in the vote. The Secretary-General, who held DRP citizenship, was recused; the Deputy Secretary-General for Common Procedures acted in the Secretary-General's place on the documents. This Deputy Secretary-General held NUT citizenship. The DRP's permanent representative argued that, since the NUT was the requesting party, the Deputy Secretary-General should be recused as well; the Secretariat replied in writing: "Recusal under Article 8 refers to the case in which the official's own state of citizenship is the party questioned." The DRP's objection was entered in the record.
The letter of questions put three questions: how many people had lost citizenship under the decree; how many children born abroad had not been registered; and whether the DRP intended to register these children.
In the autumn of Year 14, the DRP's Foreign Ministry replied in writing: "The acquisition and loss of citizenship are internal affairs of the Republic. The decree was issued in the autumn of Year 9, before the Compact; Article 4(3) of the Compact is not retroactive." The reply attached a further passage that turned to the UCSE: "In the winter of Year 9 the UCSE revoked the citizenship of a commentator living in the NUT, leaving her holding no citizenship of any state; Article 14 of the UCSE's Membership Act still requires the parents of stateless children to have been lawfully resident for five years. The UCSE has not given these children citizenship either." The reply gave no numbers.
In the winter of Year 14, the Conference of Members adopted a record by 2 to 0, the DRP not taking part in the vote. The record contained the full text of the decree; the figures the NUT supplied: of the some forty thousand people in the NUT who had left the DRP, about eleven thousand had lost DRP citizenship under the decree, and about nine hundred children born in the NUT had not been registered; the figure the UCSE supplied: about four hundred twenty children had been born in the Willow Ferry Reception Center by Year 14; and the full text of the DRP's reply, together with the attached passage. The record was made public on the Secretariat's website. In Year 15, one newspaper in the NUT, two in the UCSE and one in the DRP capital each printed the record in full or in summary.
Two things followed. In the summer of Year 15, the UCSE's Chamber of Citizens amended Article 14 of the Membership Act by 171 votes to 120, deleting the condition that the parents have been lawfully resident for five years; by Year 17, three hundred eighty-nine of the children born in the Willow Ferry Reception Center had acquired UCSE citizenship. In the autumn of Year 15, the DRP's Foreign Ministry published new registration rules: a child born abroad could be registered if one parent applied in person at a DRP consular office in the NUT or the UCSE and "completed after the fact the exit formalities for the mobilization period"; the parents' own citizenship was not restored. By the end of Year 16, thirty-seven children had been registered under these rules.
On whom this matter falls must be made clear first. It falls on those who lost DRP citizenship under that decree, about eleven thousand of them in the NUT; and on their children born abroad and not registered by the DRP, about nine hundred in the NUT and about four hundred twenty at Willow Ferry. These are the people to be protected. The DRP is the member questioned, the address under whose name this account is booked; what answers is the position of the DRP's Foreign Ministry. The children at Willow Ferry are at the same time under an act of the UCSE: Article 14 of the Membership Act decides whether they can acquire UCSE citizenship. So the DRP's counter-question falls on the same children too (§4).
Which line is to be looked at is stated for two sides. On the DRP's side, it is Article 4(3), which the DRP acknowledged when it ratified the Compact. On the system's side, it is how far the system itself goes: it only asks and only records; it does not make citizenship law for the DRP, and it does not enforce; landing rests with each member.
Before the questioning, the decree had long been in force, and those who had lost citizenship and the unregistered children were already there; Article 14 of the UCSE's Membership Act still required the parents to have been lawfully resident for five years. On procedure, Article 7(b) of the Compact provides that putting questions on existing matters, opening procedures and adopting records require a majority of the members not concerned, and that the member questioned does not take part in the vote but has the right to make statements at every stage; Article 8 provides that the Secretary-General and the Deputy Secretaries-General are recused in matters concerning their own state of citizenship; Article 9 provides that all questions, replies and records are public.
In this matter there is no one above the three states. Clause 2 of Article 2 of the Compact reads: "This Compact establishes no organ above the members. No organ of the system may exercise force against a member or against persons within a member's territory." The Conference of Members cannot order the DRP to change its law, and the Secretariat cannot send people to register the children. Yet the matter is not a blank either: someone asked, someone answered, and what was answered and what was not were all recorded and laid out in the newspapers of the three states. Afterward, two of the states each changed one thing.
This paper asks about questioning of this kind. With no superior overhead, where do questions come from, and who cannot close them; on what grounds does the system question a member, and on what grounds a state outside the system; how do questions land inside member states? Conversely, the system itself also acts, and its acts fall on people: do those whom its acts reach have a road by which it can be reached, and can its arrangements be chiseled? The last clause of this series' main-line sentence says: it puts questions to its members, and every one of its own arrangements remains open to questioning (the Prequel, §5). This paper writes out both halves of that clause.
The paper proceeds in eight steps. §1 sets out the system's position; §2, that making covenants and questioning are kept apart, and that the party questioned recuses itself; §3, that closing one channel cannot cancel the questioning; §4, how questions land inside member states; §5, treaty bodies admitting individual petitions; §6, those whom the system's acts reach; §7, the system itself being questioned; §8, that the system's arrangements can be chiseled. The first four sections write of the system questioning others; the last four, of people questioning members and questioning the system. The interfaces with the tradition come in place, where the judgment falls.
§1 Questions Come from Outside
The Conference of Members cannot give orders. What, then, did it do in the DRP matter, and on what grounds?
Reading the word "last," the Theory of the State says: "'Last' refers to level: there is nothing above. It does not refer to exemption from questioning." And again: "That there is no one overhead shows only where the questions must come from; it does not show that the questioning has stopped." (the Theory of the State Prequel, §3) Over a single state there is no higher level, and those who question it are inside it and also beside it: its own people question it through its own channels, and peer states question it from outside. When many states are put together, there is likewise no higher level over them, and questions can come only from outside, from a group of peers. The system stands among this group: it is the place where the members put questions together and make records together. Its position is that of an external questioner.
What this position is not must be made clear first. The system's determination of line-crossing is public questions and records, not authorization: it constitutes no ground for any state to start a war, nor does it endorse any state's sending of forces. The system neither authorizes nor vetoes. Article 18 of the Compact writes this into its text: where there is an entry by armed force into a member or another state, the Conference of Members may make a record, "There is a colonizing entry"; clause 2 goes on: "This record is a public question and record; it constitutes no authorization, and no obligation on any member to deploy."
The DRP record is exactly such a thing. It contains the full text of the decree, the figures of the NUT and of the UCSE, and the DRP's reply and counter-question. Not one sentence requires the DRP to change its law, and not one declares the DRP in breach of its covenant. Whether to change rests with the DRP's own positions; how a change, once made, is questioned inside the DRP is written in §4.
Questioning reaches the side that sends forces too. The Stonegorge Commonwealth (Stonegorge) joined the system in the autumn of Year 14; the only sea route from the Mirror Sea to the outer ocean is the Stonegorge Strait, and both of its shores belong to Stonegorge. In the spring of Year 17, ships and forces of the Plateau Federation entered Stonegorge's territorial waters and Lamp Island in the strait, and the Conference of Members made a record under clause 1 of Article 18. After the UCSE sent forces, it submitted a written explanation to the Conference of Members under clause 3 of the same article, listing three grounds, one of which was that two UCSE freighters and thirty-one crew members had been detained in Stonegorge's territorial waters. On this ground the DRP's permanent representative said: "The detention of the freighters is not the same as an attack on the UCSE." Both were entered in the record. What kind of ground each of those grounds is, whether they suffice, and who determines that, are written in Paper 5, §4; here only one thing is taken: the side that sends forces is also under questioning. Theorem Four, in War Treatise §16, says exactly this: "the war-party has no privilege of not being questioned"; it also asks of third parties: "international institutions, neutral observers, humanitarian organizations, scholars, journalists: may they challenge the war-party's decisions without being treated as enemies?" (War Treatise §16) This theorem originally speaks of the war-party and its third parties; here the third party is replaced by the system, and the war-party by the member that sends forces (own undertaking). The system's questioning a member that sends forces is not hostility; the member that sends forces cannot close this question.
Conversely, if an arrangement in fact acquires force over the members, it is no longer the system spoken of here. Once there is a superior with force overhead, that is a level in the Theory of Government's sense, and it answers as that level answers (Theory of Government Paper 4, G26; Paper 7, XZ46).
It may be said that a system that can only ask and cannot act is empty, and that rather than look on, it would be better to let it authorize the use of armed force, at least in the face of a colonizing entry. The weight of this objection is in the cost: questions do not stop guns. But once authorization is given, the system has compulsory power. Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. Once authorization is given, the system's judgment becomes the members' ground for starting a war; yet under the War Treatise, starting a war requires that the sending side's own first face hold (War Treatise §13), and whether to start a war is the sending side's judgment on its own affairs; authorization moves it onto the system's vote. If the authorization is directed at matters within a state's territory, what is substituted also includes that state's judgment on its own affairs: how matters within its territory are to be handled passes to the system, which determines that they may be changed by armed force. With this layer added, the system is a superior, and no longer cooperation between one another. So the system of this series does not authorize.
Nor is questioning empty. It leaves an account visible from outside: who asked, who answered, what was answered and what was not (Paper 3). On the strength of this account, peers can each withdraw cooperation (Paper 4). Asking and recording themselves also fall within the stretch that the War Treatise says must be exhausted before a war is started: "the level of jiao (diplomacy, channels, third-party mediation, the procedures of international institutions, non-military pressure, the concluding and repairing of agreements)" (War Treatise §13). The system's asking and recording are a non-war route that, where available, ought to be brought into this test; whether it has been exhausted is checked by the routes actually available at the time and by the conditions of urgency, and going mechanically through every common procedure is not made into a further, uniform threshold.
It may also be said that not asking is what neutrality is: only by saying little does the system keep from being drawn in. But ceasing to ask is also an act. Speaking of bystanders in a network, Power Theory says: "At the network-topology layer, silence (with subject-position registration, without an operational counter-vector) is a zero-resistance transmitting node that objectively amplifies the power gradient." (Power Theory P3 §V.4) This originally speaks of a node in a network; here it is extended to the system (own undertaking): when the system does not ask in the face of a line-crossing, its silence saves the crossing side a share of effort. Conversely, the system's observation is likewise an act. The Theory of the State says that setting up an observation post on the other side's land requires first explaining the source of authority, the manner of entry, what may be done there and the arrangements for withdrawal, and then checking them (Theory of the State Paper 6, N34). When the system sends people to look, it likewise explains first and then checks; this is a step extended from a single state to the system (own undertaking).
One thing is missing at the system level, and it must be said plainly. Moral Law P8, writing of the default channel within a community, leaves a fallback road for the party that refuses: "if one party refuses ... to the 14DD court for handling." (Moral Law P8 §3.4.2) That is a court with compulsion. Between states there is no such layer overhead. What can serve as a fallback at the system level is only each state's own law and each state's own first face, together with checks (own undertaking). This is a condition of the position of external questioner, and it is written here.
The cost too is written down as it is. The system's position is that of an external questioner, and the cost is watching problems happen, unable to resolve them directly by armed force, able to use only indirect means. In the DRP matter, the record was adopted, the newspapers printed it, and two of the states each changed one thing; the DRP's new rules state that the parents who lost citizenship do not have their own citizenship restored. This is recorded as it is, and no road of compulsion is sought to make it up.
Here this paper speaks in three layers (how the three layers are spoken of is in the Prequel, §11). That the system is an external questioner, that its determinations are questions and records, and that it neither authorizes nor vetoes: this is the normative layer. The wording of Article 18 of the Compact and the vote required by Article 7(b) are examples at the rule layer. What wording a record uses, and whether a particular entry is recorded as a "colonizing entry" or as something else, are judged by the positions that vote in the Conference of Members, and the account falls on the members that vote: this is the judgment layer. On the Lamp Island occasion, the DRP argued that it should be recorded as an "armed entry" and abstained, and its words too were entered in the record.
The system's questions, answers and records are public (Compact, Article 9). How far publicity can go, Theory of the State Paper 5, §4, has already checked against the formula of publicity in Appendix II of Kant's Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden): how, with no common judge, one can recognize that a practice toward the outside is not right. The conclusion there is that publicity can serve as a trace, not as a verdict. Here this paper points back to it and does not redo it. The DRP record, printed in the newspapers of the three states, is a trace of this kind: it lets people see, and judges for no one.
XZ9 The system's position is that of an external questioner. The system's determination of line-crossing is public questions and records, not authorization; it constitutes no ground for any state to start a war, nor does it endorse any state's sending of forces; the system neither authorizes nor vetoes. "Last" refers to level, not to exemption from questioning; that there is no one overhead shows only where the questions must come from, and does not show that the questioning has stopped (the Theory of the State Prequel, §3). The war-party has no privilege of not being questioned; third parties may challenge the war-party's decisions without being treated as enemies (War Treatise §16). With the system as external questioner, a state that sends forces cannot close this question (the War Treatise originally speaks of the war-party and third parties; here it is extended to the member that sends forces and the system; own undertaking).
§2 Making a Covenant Needs Consent; Questioning Existing Matters Does Not
Setting up new binding needs every party's consent; asking about something that has already happened need not wait for the party questioned to nod. The two are easily mixed up. Once they are mixed, either the system can ask about nothing at all, or it can make rules for others in the name of asking.
Article 7 of the Compact writes the two separately. Article 7(a): amending the Compact, adding common procedures, admitting new members and concluding new agreements in the system's name are new binding, and require the written consent of all members. Article 7(b): putting questions on existing matters, opening procedures and adopting records require a majority of the members not concerned; the member questioned does not take part in the vote on that matter, but has the right to make statements at every stage and to require that its statements be entered in the record.
The matter of the Gorge Water put the two side by side. The Gorge Water rises in Stonegorge, flows southwest into the NUT's Northern District, and joins the Cloud River above the High Gorge Reservoir; Stonegorge has a power station on the Gorge Water, built with a loan from a bank of the Plateau Federation, and Article 22 of the loan contract forbids providing the station's operating data to third parties without the lender's written consent. In the spring of Year 15, the Cloud River Basin Protocol drafted by the Secretariat was opened for signature; the UCSE and the NUT signed, and Stonegorge did not; under Article 7(a), the three-party protocol did not come into being. That summer a gate at the Gorge Water power station failed and water was released in an emergency; Stonegorge notified the NUT only forty minutes after the release began. Within two hours, the Gorgemouth gauging station on the NUT side measured the flow rising to nine times its normal level, the High Gorge Reservoir overflowed, two villages in the NUT's Northern District were flooded, and one person died. The NUT requested that questions be put to Stonegorge under Article 5 of the Compact. Article 5 is one Stonegorge had already acknowledged when it joined in the autumn of Year 14: where a member's acts may affect people within another member's territory, it gives notice beforehand; where there is no time to do so beforehand, it gives notice immediately afterward. The Conference of Members opened questioning by 3 to 0, Stonegorge not taking part in the vote. Stonegorge replied that the gate failure was an accident; that there had been "no time" for advance notice; and that Article 22 of the loan contract covers only operating data, not notice after the fact. The record was made public. On one and the same river, new binding needed its consent; questions on an existing obligation did not.
Paper 1, §3, has read this matter from the side of covenant. Here the side of questioning is looked at: the question falls on the people of the two flooded villages downstream; the line to be looked at is Article 5, which Stonegorge had already acknowledged; before this, Stonegorge had acknowledged Article 5 and had not acknowledged the protocol.
The two can be kept apart because they govern different things. A covenant governs what comes after: it adds for each party a binding the party did not have before, and without a party's consent there is no binding on that party (Paper 1, §1; XZ1). A question governs acts already done: the release had already happened, the obligation to give notice had long been acknowledged, and what is asked about is something already there. The party questioned may answer, may not answer, may answer insufficiently; it cannot close this question (Theory of the State Paper 1, §5; Theory of Government G36).
Once they are kept apart, a common failure comes into view: the party questioned holds the power to shut the door on the question directed at itself. A rule requiring everyone's agreement lets any one party block everything. That making covenants needs the consent of all is right; if questioning existing matters also needed the consent of all, the party questioned could shut the question with one vote, and questioning would become something it decides for itself whether to undergo.
So when a common procedure questions a member, the member recuses itself on the matter directed at it: it does not vote, and does not hold the power to close the case. That covenant and questioning are kept apart in this way, and that the party questioned recuses itself in this way, has no ready sentence upstream; it is a step this series undertakes itself (own undertaking). In the DRP matter, the DRP did not take part in the vote, and the Secretary-General holding DRP citizenship was recused; in the Gorge Water matter, Stonegorge did not take part in the vote. The form of recusal can differ, and Articles 7(b) and 8 of the Compact are only one way of writing it; what must be held is that, on that matter, the party questioned does not have in its hand the vote that shuts the door.
A sentence of the Conflict Treatise can be used here, but only half of it. Speaking of who has standing to question a person, it says: "I cannot be my own final adjudicator and declare in advance that some class of questioner is permanently without standing. This layer I cannot exempt. Once I have that power I have become my own court of last instance." (Conflict Treatise §15) This originally speaks of a person in the first person; here it is extended to the member state questioned (own undertaking): if a state could veto, within a common procedure, the questions directed at itself, it would become its own court of last instance. The same section has another half: "it is I who must remain open to questioning. This constraint gives me no standing to question the other." (ibid.) This half cannot supply the system's standing to put questions. That the system can ask rests on two other grounds. One is that external questioning cannot be cancelled (§3; XZ11). The other is the class of external body that Conflict Treatise §27 marks out: "But this holds only for a certain class of external body: a procedure both parties have acknowledged, a mechanism with lawful authority, or an institution with legitimate authority for the protection of basic rights." (Conflict Treatise §27) The DRP and Stonegorge both ratified the Compact, and Article 7(b) is a procedure they have acknowledged. That sentence originally speaks of two parties; here it is extended to many (own undertaking).
Recusal keeps the party questioned within bounds; the questioning party must be kept within bounds too. Questioning does not need the consent of the party questioned; but neither may the questioning party declare by itself that the questioning is over, that the answer was insufficient, and that the matter is thereupon recorded as a breach of covenant. The step of closing the case needs a position that the questioner does not monopolize; where there is no such position, the matter is recorded plainly as unsettled. The Theory of Government says: "Decisions can be final: a particular matter can be answered and closed. Positions cannot be final: no position may monopolize the power to shut the door" (Theory of Government Paper 6, G36). Institution Theory has said the same thing of the party under review: "Questioning must be independent, and the reason is that the party under review may not monopolize the decision on whether a challenge exists and whether it is over" (Institution Theory Paper 6, Z35a). This originally speaks of the party under review; here it is extended to the questioning party (own undertaking): the questioning party likewise may not monopolize the decision on whether the questioning is over.
The DRP record reproduces verbatim the sentence "not retroactive." Whether that sentence holds, the record did not judge on anyone's behalf. The decree was issued before the Compact; the statelessness the decree caused went on after the Compact came into force, and children were still being born. How these two are to be read together, the NUT may have its reading and the DRP has its own; what the Conference of Members adopted by 2 to 0 is a record, not a verdict. The Conflict Treatise says: "cues are not criteria, and traces are not verdicts" (Conflict Treatise §26). On this paper's reading, the question there is unsettled.
It may be said that states are free and independent, so that questioning a state should first have its consent. This objection has a long history. Emer de Vattel says in the Preliminaries of The Law of Nations that "each nation should be left in the peaceable enjoyment of that liberty which she inherits from nature" (Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Preliminaries, §15, ed. J. Chitty, Philadelphia, 1883, read against two online texts; tier B). In the section immediately following, according to one online text, he says that each nation judges by itself what its conscience requires of it, and that other states cannot coerce it to act in any particular way; only where the other side holds a perfect right may it coerce (Preliminaries, §16; tier C, paraphrased only). In the section after that, he distinguishes perfect from imperfect rights: the former carry a right to coerce, the latter permit only requests (Preliminaries, §17, same source; tier C, paraphrased only). The texts relied on for §§15 to 17 of the Preliminaries are all English online transcriptions; neither the French original nor the pages of the 1883 printing has been checked in person, and checking against the transcriptions is not taken as checking against the original printed pages.
The common question is: how wide is the range within which a state is not swayed by other states. The question here is the same, and where they agree is in making covenants. That other states cannot coerce a state to act in a particular way lands, in this series, on a covenant's requiring the consent of all parties (XZ1): when Stonegorge does not sign the protocol, the protocol does not come into being for it, and no one signs on its behalf. When it comes to questioning, three things must first be kept apart: questioning, requesting performance, and compulsion. What Vattel's §16 speaks of is when a state may not be coerced; it does not cancel external questioning along with that; and §17 lists separately a right of request that carries no compulsion. This series therefore does not rely on these two sections to present "questioning does not need the consent of the party questioned" as a step he did not take, nor does it say that he allowed a state to be questioned only by itself. What this series adds is an unfolding: within common procedures the parties have acknowledged, it writes out item by item who can initiate, how the party questioned recuses itself, where the grounds for answering come from, and how the results connect into the interior (this section; §§3 and 4). A question is not new binding, and requires the state to do nothing; that it must answer comes from a separate covenant it has acknowledged (§4; XZ12). Nor does recusal mean that every party can veto: the Theory of Government says that "Control does not mean that every person affected has a veto" (Theory of Government Paper 6, G36a). Nor is being questioned being accused: "'Open to questioning' means that the channel is always open, for every government and at every time, and being questioned is no evidence of illegitimacy" (Theory of Government Paper 6, G35). So this is a division of scope, and it can be read side by side with his division of the right to coerce: Vattel guards a state against being coerced to do something; this paper guards the point that a state cannot close the questions directed at what it has already done. These sections of Vattel rest only on English online texts read against each other and, in part, on a single source; here they serve only as an in-place comparison, not as a refutation.
Back to the objection in the Introduction. The DRP wanted the Deputy Secretary-General holding NUT citizenship to be recused as well. The norm this series gives here is only two sentences: the party questioned recuses itself, and the questioner does not decide alone that the case is closed. Articles 7(b) and 8 of the Compact take recusal only as far as the citizenship of the party questioned; this is only one way of writing it, an example. Whether acting in the Secretary-General's place on the documents counts as part of holding the power to close the case, and whether a person from the requesting side may so act, are for specific rules to settle; in a given matter, they are judged by those in positions. On that occasion the Secretariat judged; the DRP's objection remains in the record, and it can be raised again later.
One point is left here: how far an answer must go to count as answering the matter asked about. Stonegorge answered the question about the release and still does not provide the operating data; the DRP answered "internal affairs" and "not retroactive," and gave no numbers. Whether an answer suffices is not decided by the questioner alone; where there is no position the questioner does not monopolize to determine it, it is recorded plainly as unsettled.
XZ10 Questioning does not need the consent of the party questioned; the party questioned recuses itself (own undertaking). A covenant requires the consent of all parties (XZ1); questioning existing matters does not need the consent of the party questioned: a question governs acts already done, and the party questioned cannot close it (Theory of the State Paper 1, §5; Theory of Government G36). Only when the two are kept apart can a common failure be told: the party questioned holding the power to shut the door on the question directed at itself. Requiring everyone's agreement lets any one party block everything: that making covenants needs consent is right; that questioning existing matters should also need consent is wrong. So when a common procedure questions a member, the member recuses itself on the matter directed at it: it does not vote, and does not hold the power to close the case; the form is not fixed. Of Conflict Treatise §15, only the half in which the party questioned does not hold the power to shut the door is taken: one cannot be one's own final adjudicator and declare in advance that some class of questioner is permanently without standing (originally said in the first person; here extended to relations between states; own undertaking). The system's standing to put questions rests on other grounds: external questioning cannot be cancelled (XZ11); and procedures the parties have acknowledged, as Conflict Treatise §27 says (originally said of two parties; here extended to many; own undertaking). Recusal does not mean that everyone can veto: control does not mean that every person affected has a veto (Theory of Government G36a). Questioning does not need the consent of the party questioned, and neither does the questioner decide alone that the case is closed: the step of closing the case needs a position that the questioner does not monopolize, or else the matter is registered plainly as unsettled; no position may monopolize the power to shut the door, the questioning party included (Theory of Government G36; own undertaking).
§3 Closing One Channel Cannot Cancel the Questioning
The party questioned does not take part in the vote, and questioning is opened all the same. Can it still walk away: exit that arrangement and let the questioning come to nothing?
At the level of a single state, the Theory of the State set up one sentence: "Here only one sentence is established (own undertaking): external questioning cannot be cancelled. This state may exit or switch an external arrangement; that is a change of structure, itself under questioning (Paper 5, N24); it can close one channel, but it cannot cancel the questioning of it by other states, by the people of other states, and by those affected" (Theory of the State Paper 1, §5). This paper takes up that sentence as it stands.
Extended to the system, it has two sides (own undertaking). One side is the members: when a member exits one of the system's arrangements, the questioning of it by the system and by the other members goes on as before, and its acts before the exit can still be questioned (Paper 7, XZ45, XZ47). The other side is the system itself: the system's arrangements are under this sentence too; it can close a particular road, but it cannot cancel the questioning of it by those whom its acts reach (§§6–8; XZ14, XZ15).
The DRP later ran into exactly this. From the winter of Year 9 to the spring of Year 11, the UCSE maintained an administration office in the Wheat Plain buffer zone, and the office selected eleven local residents to form a provisional self-government committee. At the withdrawal, nine of them left with the UCSE forces; the two who stayed were prosecuted by the DRP for "collaboration with the enemy," and in the winter of Year 13 were sentenced to twelve and nine years respectively, at trials not open to the public and with defense counsel appointed by the court. Article 14 of the Compact established a committee admitting individual petitions (written in full in §5), and in the autumn of Year 13 the DRP's People's Assembly, in a separate vote, accepted that article by 318 votes to 247. In the spring of Year 16, the two petitioned the Committee against the DRP through a lawyer. In the autumn of Year 17, the Committee asked the DRP to submit the trial records and to allow a member of the Committee to visit the two in prison. In the spring of Year 18, the DRP's Foreign Ministry, with the approval of the President of the Republic, declared under clause 5 of Article 14 that the DRP was exiting Article 14. The declaration read: "Article 14 has been used to interfere in the Republic's administration of justice. The Republic will make no further answer on this petition." Under clause 5, the declaration takes effect twelve months after it is made, and petitions already submitted before it takes effect are heard and concluded as usual. In the summer of Year 18, the Conference of Members recorded this declaration by 3 to 0, the DRP not taking part in the vote. In the winter of Year 18, the Committee gave its opinion on the case of the two, asking the DRP for a public retrial and to allow visits; the DRP did not reply within six months, and in the summer of Year 19 the Conference of Members recorded the fact that no reply had come. From the spring of Year 19 on, the Committee returned seven newly received petitions against the DRP, on the ground that they had been submitted after the declaration took effect and were not to be taken up.
How this matter is to be judged is in Paper 7, §§1 and 3. Here only the structure it lays out is taken. What exit closes is a channel's road from then on: the seven petitions after the spring of Year 19 could no longer come in. Questioning already begun still lands in the record: the case of the two was heard and concluded as usual, and the opinion was given as usual. Not answering is itself one more fact in the record. The DRP can keep new petitions from being taken up; it cannot make the case already under questioning in the spring of Year 18 disappear.
Two things must be kept apart (own undertaking). Not joining an arrangement, not cooperating, and exiting an arrangement are closing a channel; this is allowed. Pressing, punishing or retaliating against a questioner because the questioner has raised questions is trying to cancel the questioning; this crosses the line (as in the first of the places named in Paper 4, §5; XZ25). The former changes the structure between oneself and the questioning; the latter seeks to have the questions no longer raised. Among the matters this paper uses, there is no fact of anyone moving against a questioner; here this is set up only as a principle, and the example is in Paper 4, §6: prosecutions under the Anti-Division Act of people who commented on the system's arrangements.
What the party questioned cannot close includes two more things, outside it. The Theory of the State says: "what it cannot close is peers judging for themselves on this basis and withdrawing cooperation other than recognition (N26), and these questions entering the channels inside through this state's internal subjects (N37)" (Theory of the State Paper 7, §1). In the DRP matter, there is a trace of the second. Accepting Article 14 was voted on by the People's Assembly, but exiting it was approved by the President; sixty-one members of the People's Assembly jointly demanded that the People's Assembly vote on the exit, and the Presiding Board did not put it on the agenda. This demand is itself one appearance of that question inside the DRP; where it landed is in Paper 7.
It may be said that, since exit is allowed, "cannot be cancelled" is empty talk: a state that does not want to be questioned need only exit. The weight of this objection is that exit did close a road: all seven new petitions were returned. But what cannot be cancelled is the questioning, not any particular road. The side that exits is still questioned inside itself: "exit does not stand in for questioning." (Theory of Government Paper 4, G27) If it does not answer outwardly, that not answering is also questioned inside it: "Answering and not answering are themselves both open to questioning in this state, and are questioned in the channels inside (own undertaking)" (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3). Peers, too, can still each act on the record. With one road fewer, the questions still have other places to land.
One point is left here: the questioning cannot be cancelled, but the answer may not come. The question whose answer does not come stays in the record; how it is recorded and how it is read are handed to Paper 3. The two from Wheat Plain were still in custody in Year 20, one of them moved to the prison hospital; by what road their questions go from here is answered in Paper 7.
XZ11 External questioning cannot be cancelled (carried over from Theory of the State Paper 1, §5, its own undertaking taken up as it stands). A state may exit or switch an external arrangement; that is a change of structure, itself under questioning; it can close one channel, but it cannot cancel the questioning of it by other states, by the people of other states, and by those affected (Theory of the State Paper 1, §5). Extended to the system (own undertaking): when a member exits an arrangement, the questioning of it by the system and by the other members goes on as before (Paper 7, XZ45, XZ47); the system's own arrangements are under this sentence too (XZ14, XZ15). Closing a channel is kept apart from moving against a questioner: not joining, not cooperating, and exiting an arrangement are closing a channel, and are allowed; pressing, punishing or retaliating against a questioner because the questioner has raised questions is trying to cancel the questioning, and crosses the line (as in the first place in Paper 4, XZ25).
§4 Questions Land Inside Member States
After the record was adopted, the UCSE changed its own law and the DRP changed its registration rules. What is the relation between these two things and that record?
The record does not say, and nothing else on this point has been recorded. The UCSE's Chamber of Citizens amending Article 14 of the Membership Act by 171 votes to 120 was a vote cast by the UCSE's legislators in a UCSE procedure; the DRP's Foreign Ministry publishing new registration rules was a decision made by a DRP position under DRP procedure. Each was made by that state's own positions, and each is questioned inside that state. Whether the system's questions land rests with each member.
This is the direct consequence of the system's not enforcing. At the level of a single state, the Theory of the State spoke of this point about external routes: "But they have no enforcer of their own: with no force at a higher level above, whether an award lands once it is made depends on whether this state's positions carry it out." (Theory of the State Paper 1, §5) So too with the system's questions. To become a channel, a question must also connect to a road inside the member state: "A peer's question does not on its own count as a channel; it counts only once it connects to N37." (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3) N37 is the inward channel set up in Theory of the State Paper 7: the road by which a state's own people question that state.
In the DRP matter, several of the roads by which the question connected inside are visible. A newspaper in the DRP capital printed the record. The DRP's Foreign Ministry afterward changed the registration rules; whether the change goes far enough must be asked inside the DRP: the new rules require one parent to go in person to a DRP consular office in the NUT or the UCSE and to have "completed after the fact the exit formalities for the mobilization period," the parents' own citizenship is not restored, and by the end of Year 16 thirty-seven children had been registered. All of this can be asked in the channels inside the DRP, and can also be asked again by the system. The Theory of the State has, further, a sentence about two doors: "if what a peer asks about falls on people inside this state, not answering outwardly cannot stand in for answering inwardly: these are two doors." (ibid.) Those who lost citizenship are outside the DRP's territory; but under the unified sentence of the Theory of the State, as regards that decree they cannot avoid it, and they are still in the DRP's interior. The DRP's answering the system with "internal affairs" does not answer, on the DRP's behalf, to these people and their children.
Why must the DRP answer? That the system is an external questioner gives the system the position of asking; it does not directly give the party questioned an obligation to answer. The Theory of the State allows a state not to answer ordinary questions from peers: "This state may decline to answer ordinary diplomatic questions between peers that carry no separate obligation to answer; the requirements to answer and to implement that it bears under the treaties and common procedures it has acknowledged still follow N24 and N27" (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3). The obligation to answer must come from covenants acknowledged. The DRP's obligation arises from two things it acknowledged when it ratified the Compact: the commitment of Article 4(3), and the procedure of Article 7(b). In the autumn of Year 13, the DRP's People's Assembly ratified the Compact by 389 votes to 196. A covenant requires the consent of all parties (XZ1), and so the obligation to answer comes into being through the consent of all parties too; it is not derived from "the system is an external questioner" alone. That sentence of the Theory of the State originally speaks of a state toward peer states; here it is extended to a member toward the system (own undertaking).
The obligation of a member that sends forces to explain its grounds to the system comes about in the same way. Clause 3 of Article 18 of the Compact requires a deploying member to explain in writing, within seventy-two hours, the grounds of its deployment; the explanation the UCSE submitted in the spring of Year 17 was submitted under this clause (§1). This clause moves being questioned from beforehand to afterward; it does not withdraw being questioned. The Theory of Government said a sentence of the same shape about emergencies: an emergency "may move review and being questioned from beforehand to afterward, but it does not withdraw being questioned" (Theory of Government Paper 5, G30). This originally speaks of a level of government in an emergency; here it is extended to a member that sends forces (own undertaking). Having given the explanation to the system does not stand in for giving it to the state's own people either. The War Treatise calls the practice of concealing things from one's own side and cutting off internal questioning gui (deception): "What this treatise calls 'gui' ... is not any tactical concealment or camouflage before the enemy, but the war-technique that operates at the cost of oppressing one's own side's subjectivity and cutting off internal questioning" (War Treatise §12). To have spoken outwardly and said nothing inwardly does not count as having answered. Toward those whom the sending of forces reaches, the sending state answers following the unified sentence (state level, the Theory of the State Prequel, §8; see §6). The part of the coordination and preparation made in the system's name that this sending of forces then used, such as joint plans, joint exercises and prepositioned depots (Paper 5, §7), still answers to those it reaches following the unified sentence (system level, §6). That the sending state answers at the state level to those whom its sending of forces reaches does not relieve the system of what it owes for its own part; nor does the system's part bear, on the states' behalf, their starting of a war.
Toward a state outside the system, the Compact can supply no obligation to answer. The "sweeps" in the north of the Republic of the Sandbars (the Sandbars) began in the spring of Year 16; that summer, the Secretary-General wrote to the Sandbars' Whitewall government, asking about the number and locations of the "instruction camps" and about the state of the villages that had been burned. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Whitewall replied: "This is an internal affair of the Republic. The system is not the Republic's superior, and the Republic is not a member of the system." The letter and the reply were made public under Article 9 of the Compact and are kept at the Secretariat. This matter is read in Paper 6, §§1 and 6. Here only the principle is set up. A state outside the system has never acknowledged the Compact, and may decline to answer. Its not answering does not cancel the questioning (XZ11). The question and the non-answer both remain outside, as an account that can be seen; that account is handed to Paper 3.
The DRP's first words in answer were "internal affairs." Do they block the questioning? The Theory of the State says: "Not interfering is not the same as not asking, either." (Theory of the State Paper 5, §2) To interfere is to decide for it; to ask is only to require it to explain. The system does not enforce, and the Conference of Members has not written a single line of citizenship law for the DRP. How the DRP settles citizenship is still settled by the DRP's law. Speaking of handing disputes to an external procedure, the Conflict Treatise has said how much is handed over: "What is ceded is the procedural power of adjudication over disputes about action, not the constitutive power over one's own law." (Conflict Treatise §27) This originally speaks of two persons; here it is extended to a member and the system (own undertaking): in acknowledging Article 7(b), what the DRP handed over is the procedure of being questioned and answering on an existing matter, not the power to settle citizenship.
Moreover, this "internal affair" had reached outside from the start. The decree turned those who had left into people without citizenship within other states' territory, and left their children in other states' birth registers, the "Citizenship" field reading "undetermined." What Article 4(3) governs is precisely this effect of pushing people onto other states.
How is the DRP's counter-question to be read? It asks about the UCSE: the UCSE once revoked a commentator's citizenship, and the UCSE's citizenship law did not give the Willow Ferry children citizenship. This is a separate question to the UCSE, and one that can fairly be put; the revocation has already been checked in Theory of the State Paper 3, §3 (N14). But it cannot close the question to the DRP. The Theory of the State says: "a question is answered according to its object, an exchange is checked according to its own reasons. The two can be negotiated at the same time; one cannot be used to close out the other." (Theory of the State Paper 5, §4) That the two questions fall on the same children is no surprise. The Theory of the State says: "Between states there is no nesting, only overlap: one and the same person can, as regards different acts, be in the interior of two states (extension; own undertaking)." (Theory of the State Paper 5, §2) As regards the DRP's decree, the Willow Ferry children are in the DRP's interior; as regards Article 14 of the Membership Act, they are in the UCSE's interior. The DRP's account and the UCSE's account are each booked by their own acts. What relation the UCSE's later change of law bears to that counter-question is for the UCSE's own positions to say; nothing on this point has been recorded.
It may be said that citizenship is the most typical of internal affairs, and that the system's putting questions about citizenship is interference. This objection too has a history. Vattel says that "no state has the smallest right to interfere in the government of another" (The Law of Nations, bk. II, ch. 4, §54, same source; tier B). He says further, of a state's sovereign: "If he loads his subjects with taxes, and if he treats them with severity, the nation alone is concerned in the business" (same chapter, §55, same source).
The common question is: when a state treats its own people in some way, what other states may do. Where they agree is non-interference. That other states have no right to govern a state in its place, the Theory of the State has already set up as a proposition (N25); that this series' main-line sentence says the system does not enter other states to decide on behalf of the people there is the same point. Where they part is "the nation alone is concerned." Vattel speaks of how a state treats its subjects as a concern of that nation alone; this series does not let "internal affairs" exempt anything from questioning. The system can ask, can record, and can make public records among the members; it does not enter by force, nor does it make that state's law for it. The DRP matter has one more layer besides: the decree's effects do not fall only within the DRP's territory; those who lost citizenship and the children are in the NUT and in the UCSE. Even by Vattel's division, this matter is not the concern of that nation alone. This is a division of scope; for these two sections of Vattel only a reading against online texts has been obtained, and this is not offered as a refutation.
Whether the DRP's reply counts as having answered, this paper does not settle for anyone. That step is handed to the channels inside the DRP and to the account visible from outside, and it is not decided by the questioner alone either (§2). One entry is left here: the DRP gave no numbers. By the end of Year 16, thirty-seven children had been registered under the new rules; the other children, and the some eleven thousand people who lost citizenship, are recorded plainly as unsettled.
XZ12 The system's questions connect into member states; the obligation to answer comes from the Compact (carried over from Theory of the State N38; own undertaking). The system does not enforce, and whether its questions land rests with each member: a peer's question does not on its own count as a channel; it counts only once it connects to the channels inside (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3). The Theory of the State allows a state not to answer ordinary questions from peers, and the obligation to answer must come from covenants acknowledged: a state may decline to answer ordinary diplomatic questions between peers that carry no separate obligation to answer; the requirements to answer and to implement that it bears under the treaties and common procedures it has acknowledged still follow the covenants acknowledged (ibid.). So a member's obligation to answer to the system, including a state that sends forces explaining its own first face publicly to the system, is written into the Compact and comes into being through the consent of all parties; it is not derived from "the system is an external questioner" alone; toward those whom the sending of forces reaches, the sending state answers following the unified sentence (state level, the Theory of the State Prequel, §8; see §6); the part of the coordination and preparation made in the system's name that this sending of forces then used (joint plans, joint exercises, prepositioned depots) still answers to those it reaches following the unified sentence (system level, §6). When a member answers with "internal affairs," not interfering is not the same as not asking (Theory of the State Paper 5, §2); a question is answered according to its object, an exchange is checked according to its own reasons (Theory of the State Paper 5, §4).
§5 Treaty Bodies Admitting Individual Petitions
Up to here, the questions have all been states questioning states. When the system questions the DRP, it asks what the DRP has done to its people; those people themselves are, on this road, only the people asked about. Can they hand in questions themselves?
The Theory of the State came this far. The Cloud River arbitral tribunal ruled on the volume of water between the UCSE and the NUT, and the Theory of the State wrote there: "But what it reviews are matters between the two states; the forty-three farming households cannot reach it, and above the three states there is no common court." (Theory of the State Paper 2, §5) Procedures between states are beyond the reach of individuals. The Theory of the State went on: "Treaty mechanisms admitting individual petitions come close to a channel: internal subjects can initiate them themselves, and the treaty also prohibits retaliation; this state's undertaking is not to obstruct, not to retaliate, and to implement rulings under the treaties this state has acknowledged (N24); such a mechanism has no enforcer of its own, and whether its decisions land still rests with this state." (Theory of the State Paper 5, §4) At that time there was no such mechanism among the three states. What such a mechanism is as a channel, and how it is to be designed, the Theory of the State registered as a remainder and handed on to here. Nor is such a road without a footing between states. In its nation-state case, How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6) said that where states share one continent, external checks too are hard to invoke independently; and it at once limited itself: "sharing a continent does not by itself prove that every external check must fail to be independent." (F6 §3.1b)
Article 14 of the Compact set up such a body, the Three-Borders Petitions Committee, located at Three Borders. It is written out in full here, since the sections that follow all make use of it. The article has seven clauses:
- Clause 1, composition: seven members of the Committee, elected by the Conference of Members by a three-quarters majority from a list of persons nominated by the members, for a term of six years; members of the Committee serve in their personal capacity and do not take part in deliberating on petitions against their own state of citizenship.
- Clause 2: where a member's acts touch on the matters listed in Article 4 and Annex II (life, the person, detention without trial, citizenship, leaving and returning, movement, speech, the taking of property), those affected may petition after exhausting the remedies within that member state.
- Clause 3: "Persons reached by a decision made under a common procedure may also petition."
- Clause 4: the Committee gives opinions, not rulings; the member petitioned against replies in writing within six months, and the reply is public.
- Clause 5: a member may declare its exit from this article; the declaration takes effect twelve months after it is made; petitions already submitted before it takes effect are heard and concluded as usual, and those submitted after it takes effect are not taken up.
- Clause 6: the Committee takes up acts done after this article has come into force for the member concerned; acts done before it came into force whose effects continue after it came into force may be taken up.
- Clause 7: "Members shall take no adverse measures against petitioners or their relatives on account of a petition."
The Committee was constituted in the spring of Year 14; of the seven, two hold the citizenship of no member. Each member's acceptance of this article was decided separately. The UCSE accepted it in the winter of Year 13, attaching a declaration: "The opinions of the Committee land according to the law of the UCSE." Article 14 came into force for the UCSE in the spring of Year 14.
The first petitions to reach the Committee were petitions against the UCSE.
The background is in the Theory of the State. In the winter of Year 9, the UCSE struck the railway junction at Junction Town in the DRP's Wheat Plain District, hitting the station's waiting hall; the DRP announced forty-one civilian dead, the UCSE's Office of Defense twenty-two; the Office of Defense's target memorandum read "Passenger train times not verified." In the same period, the Defense Force, in the buffer zone, requisitioned the stored grain in the granaries of the Wheat Plain District, and the receipts said "to be settled after the war" (Theory of the State Paper 6, §3). In Year 12, written statements from the families of the Junction Town dead went through the liaison office at Three Borders to the War Inquiry Commission of the UCSE's Chamber of Citizens; the Commission discussed whether to accept them, and in the end accepted them (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3). In the winter of Year 13, the Chamber of Citizens passed the War Victims' Compensation Fund Act by 152 votes to 140; the fund compensated only "UCSE citizens and persons lawfully resident within the UCSE."
In the spring of Year 14, Article 14 came into force for the UCSE. The families and the farming households first went all the way through the routes within the UCSE. Twenty-seven families of the Junction Town dead applied to the Fund Administration Office for compensation in the spring of Year 14 and were turned down, on the ground that they were not among the persons listed in the Fund Act; they complained to the Inspectorate, which replied that the complainants were neither UCSE citizens nor lawfully resident within the UCSE, and were not among those whose complaints it takes up. Three hundred eleven farming households of the Wheat Plain District applied to the Office of Defense in the summer of Year 14 for settlement of the receipts; the Office of Defense replied that "the method of settlement after the war has not yet been drawn up."
In the winter of Year 14, two petitions reached the Committee: one from the families, on the scope of the Fund Act and the disclosure of the target memorandum; one from the farming households, on the receipts not having been settled. Both were submitted by lawyers in Rivermouth City engaged by the families and by the farming households respectively, and the petitions set out the routes they had already taken within the UCSE. After they were submitted, the DRP's Foreign Ministry wrote to the Secretariat: "The Republic supports the petitions of its nationals."
The member of the Committee holding UCSE citizenship did not take part in the deliberations, and six deliberated. In the spring of Year 15, the Committee decided to take up two items of the families' petition, the scope of the Fund Act and the target memorandum, and the whole of the farming households' petition; the ground was clause 6: the receipts had not been settled, and the Fund Act applied after Article 14 came into force, their effects continuing after it came into force. The decision added: "Within the UCSE, the petitioners have no other available remedy." The strike itself took place before Article 14 came into force and was not taken up; the decision read: "This Committee does not determine whether that strike accorded with the law of war."
In the winter of Year 15, the Committee gave its opinion: it asked the UCSE to explain on what basis the Fund Act excludes civilians whom the UCSE's acts reach and who are outside the UCSE's territory; asked the UCSE to settle the granary receipts; and asked the UCSE to let the families see the parts of the target memorandum bearing on the deaths of their relatives. In the summer of Year 16, the UCSE's Office of External Affairs replied in writing: "The UCSE respects the opinions of the Committee; landing follows the law of the UCSE." In the same season, the Chamber of Citizens elected in the autumn of Year 15 amended the Fund Act by 158 votes to 139, adding "civilians outside the territory whom the UCSE's acts reach." The Office of Defense settled the receipts at Year 9 grain prices; a representative of the farming households said that, "at Year 9 prices, it amounts to paying thirty percent less." The Office of Defense refused to disclose the target memorandum, on the ground that it "touches on intelligence sources," and gave the families a redacted summary. In Year 17, nineteen of the twenty-seven families received compensation from the fund; eight were turned down, the Fund Administration Office's reason being that "whether the dead were civilians cannot be determined." The relatives of these eight families are not among the twenty-two the Office of Defense announced, and are among the forty-one the DRP announced.
This matter falls on the twenty-seven families and the three hundred eleven farming households. They hold DRP citizenship and are outside the UCSE's territory; the strike, the requisitioning of grain and the Fund Act are all acts of the UCSE that fall on them, and they cannot avoid them. The line to be looked at is the fifth ought: whether there is a road by which questions can reach the UCSE, independent, actually able to be initiated, and bringing no retaliation for initiating it; and what the UCSE undertook under Article 14, which it had accepted. Before this, they had only one road: the families' statements went through the liaison office at Three Borders to the War Inquiry Commission, and whether they were passed on and whether they were accepted both lay with others. The Theory of the State has spoken to the weight of such a road: "A route that gets through only if others are willing cannot yet certify that 'can actually initiate' has been met" (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3). And the Fund Act compensated only UCSE citizens and those lawfully resident.
Step one: check against the three conditions of a channel. Institution Theory has written these three: "the channel meets three conditions: it is independent of the party questioned, internal subjects can actually initiate it, and initiating it brings no retaliation." (Institution Theory Paper 6, Z34) This originally speaks of a construct and its internal subjects; here it is extended to a treaty body and those whom members' acts reach (own undertaking).
First, independence. Members of the Committee serve in their personal capacity and are elected by the Conference of Members by a three-quarters majority; the member holding UCSE citizenship does not take part in deliberating on petitions against the UCSE, and this case was deliberated by six. The vote on whether to take it up was not in the hands of the party questioned.
Next, whether it can actually be initiated. The petitioners are the families and the farming households themselves, and the lawyers submitted the petitions on their instructions; the DRP Foreign Ministry's letter came after submission, and the petitions depended neither on the DRP passing them on nor on whether the liaison office was willing to pass them on. Clause 2 requires that domestic remedies be exhausted before petitioning. This requirement has its reason: it gives the party questioned's own positions the chance to answer first. But it can also become a lock, if what counts as "exhausted" is for the party questioned to say. In this case, the Fund Administration Office turned the families down, the Inspectorate did not take up their complaint, and the Office of Defense said that the method had not yet been drawn up; what determined that there was no other available domestic remedy was the Committee, not the UCSE. This item passes the check.
Last, no retaliation for initiating it. Clause 7 states that members shall take no adverse measures against petitioners or their relatives on account of a petition; this clause is an example at the rule layer. In this matter, whether the petitioners and their relatives met with adverse treatment has not been recorded. So this item is checked only as far as the text being there; how things actually went is written plainly as not recorded, and is not written as having been checked.
Step two: state this channel clearly by the four items. The Theory of the State requires: "For every channel it must be stated who initiates it, which object it affects, whether the party questioned can close it, and how the account is booked when it fails" (Theory of the State Paper 7, §1). The Theory of Government puts it more strictly: "Of each, three things must be statable: who can activate it; what actual efficacy it has on reasons, actions, rules, or the holding of office; how the party questioned cannot cancel it on its own. Where these cannot be stated, that function is there in name only." (Theory of Government Paper 6, G36a) Following these two places, it is written in four items:
- Who initiates it: those affected, themselves.
- Which object it affects, and with what actual efficacy: the UCSE's acts that touch on the matters in Annex II, here the taking of property, and life; the Committee's opinion asks the UCSE to explain, to settle and to let the families see, and the UCSE must reply in writing within six months, the reply being public.
- Whether the party questioned can close it: the UCSE cannot withdraw this petition on its own. All it can do is exit the whole article under clause 5; the exit takes effect only after twelve months, and petitions already submitted are heard and concluded as usual (§3).
- How the account is booked when it fails: where the UCSE does not reply, or the opinion does not land, this is booked to the UCSE and to the position that made that decision, and the record is public.
Step three: landing. Once the opinion was given, what it became on landing was the work of the UCSE's own positions (§4; XZ12). The Chamber of Citizens amended the Fund Act; the Office of Defense settled the receipts at Year 9 grain prices; the target memorandum was given only as a redacted summary. Each of the three was done by a position of the UCSE, and each is questioned inside the UCSE: the farming households' representative's words, "paying thirty percent less," are one such question. A member's undertaking toward this road is written following Theory of the State N27: not to obstruct, not to retaliate, and to implement under the covenants acknowledged. One point must be put precisely here. That sentence of the Theory of the State says "implement rulings"; the committee in the example gives only opinions, and what the acknowledged covenant requires of the UCSE is a written reply and publicity. So this paper writes it as: to implement the decisions of treaty bodies under the covenants acknowledged, whether those decisions are rulings or opinions being as the covenant has it.
The line of time separates two kinds of question. The strike itself took place before Article 14 came into force; the Committee did not take it up, and stated that it does not determine whether that strike accorded with the law of war; what it took up is the part whose effects continue after Article 14 came into force: the receipts and the Fund Act. The question of the strike itself did not vanish on that account: it is in the UCSE's own War Inquiry Commission, and in the channels written of in Theory of the State Paper 7; it is only not on this road.
It may be said that a committee that only gives opinions and cannot enforce them is a rubber stamp. The weight of this objection is that an opinion can indeed be politely received and then left to lie. But whether a channel counts does not turn on whether it has an enforcer of its own; the Theory of the State has already said that external routes have no enforcers of their own (this paper, §4). What must be looked at is whether what it leaves behind stands up to checking: whether those who ask are there, whether the questions reach the place where decisions are made, whether those who ask are protected, and whether decisions change because of it (§8). In this case, after the opinion, the Office of External Affairs answered in writing; the Chamber of Citizens amended the Fund Act in the same season; the receipts were settled; the summary was given. All of these left traces visible from outside. What relation they bear to the opinion, and how the two sentences "respects the opinions of the Committee" and "land according to the law of the UCSE" are to be read together, is questioned inside the UCSE.
What this paper gives is only the three conditions, the four items and the members' undertaking. How many tiers to set up, whether it is a court or a committee, how many members it has, how long the time limit for replies is, are handed to specific theories of institutions; Article 14 of the Compact is only one way of writing it, an example. How much of an opinion lands is judged by the UCSE's positions, and the account falls on those positions.
Several points are left here. Eight families were turned down because "whether the dead were civilians cannot be determined"; no third party has ever made a determination between the two numbers, forty-one and twenty-two, and these eight families' question falls between the two numbers. The parts of the target memorandum not given out remain out of reach even after questions from outside have connected inside the UCSE. Of the thirty percent less paid by settling at Year 9 grain prices, the farming households have spoken; who answered has not been recorded. The strike itself is not on this road.
XZ13 Treaty bodies admitting individual petitions as channels (carried over from Theory of the State N27; own undertaking). Treaty mechanisms admitting individual petitions come close to a channel: internal subjects can initiate them themselves, and the treaty also prohibits retaliation; such a mechanism has no enforcer of its own, and whether its decisions land still rests with the state (Theory of the State Paper 5, §4). What it fills is the place where arbitration between two states is beyond the reach of individuals (Theory of the State Paper 2, §5). The design sets up functions only: following the three conditions of a channel, it is independent of the party questioned, internal subjects can actually initiate it, and initiating it brings no retaliation (Institution Theory Z34); it does not depend on the willingness of an intermediary, since a route that gets through only if others are willing cannot yet certify that it can actually be initiated (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3); for each function it can be stated who can activate it, what actual efficacy it has, and how the party questioned cannot cancel it on its own (Theory of Government G36a). The members' undertaking follows Theory of the State N27: not to obstruct, not to retaliate, and to implement the decisions of treaty bodies under the covenants acknowledged (whether rulings or opinions, as the covenant has it). How many tiers, and whether a court or a committee, is handed to specific theories of institutions.
§6 Those Whom the System's Acts Reach
In the preceding sections, those questioned were all states: the system questions members, and people question members. But the system itself also acts, and its acts fall on people. Where are those people?
In the summer of Year 16, after the sweeps and detentions in the north of the Republic of the Sandbars had begun, the Conference of Members adopted Common Measure No. 2 by 4 to 0, for a term of one year: (1) an embargo on arms and "dual-use goods" to the Republic of the Sandbars; (2) a freeze on the personal assets, in each member, of the members of the Stability Committee and the commanders of the Stability Squads; (3) a halt to commercial traffic at all the ferry crossings of the Grey River, persons and humanitarian supplies excepted. Humanitarian supplies pass on the license of each member's competent authorities. Article 11 of the Compact provides that common measures are implemented by each member under its own law, that they must include a humanitarian exemption, and that those affected by a measure may petition under Article 14.
The lower Grey River is the boundary river between the Republic of the Sandbars and Stonegorge, the west bank belonging to the Sandbars and the east bank to Stonegorge. The market in the town of Grey Ferry on the east bank had been shared by both banks, held three times a week, and the villages on the west bank bought most of their salt, fuel and medicine there. After item (3) was implemented, the market closed. The licensing review period at Stonegorge's Commerce Office averaged forty-one days in the autumn of Year 16; water-purification agents were listed as "dual-use goods" and refused licenses. In the winter of Year 16, a doctor at a clinic on the river in West Shoal Province reported that the supply of cold-chain medicines had been cut off for two months, and that the clinic had cut its opening to two days a week; the Grey Ferry chamber of commerce said that thirty percent of the four hundred twelve shopkeepers in the town had closed.
That same winter, two petitions reached the Petitions Committee. The Grey Ferry chamber of commerce, on behalf of one hundred twenty shopkeepers, petitioned over Stonegorge's implementation of item (3); the Committee set aside the item on compensation, on the ground that the remedies within Stonegorge had not been exhausted, and took up the rest. The doctor at that clinic in West Shoal Province and fifty-eight villagers petitioned over the Commerce Office's licensing review and the classification as "dual-use goods." These petitioners are outside the system, in the Sandbars. The Committee decided by 4 to 3 to take the petition up: "Clause 2 of Article 14 speaks of 'those affected,' and does not limit them to people within members' territory." The minority opinion: "People outside the system are not within the Compact; their questions should be put by the Republic of the Sandbars."
In the spring of Year 17, the Committee gave its opinion: it asked Stonegorge to shorten the licensing review period to fifteen days or less; asked Stonegorge and the Conference of Members to explain why water-purification agents were listed as "dual-use goods"; and asked that a humanitarian market at Grey Ferry be considered. In the same season, the Conference of Members amended Measure No. 2 by 4 to 0: the review period was capped at fifteen days; water-purification agents were removed from the "dual-use goods"; and a humanitarian market was to open at Grey Ferry twice a week, selling salt, cooking fuel and medicine. Stonegorge's Commerce Office complied.
This matter falls on people in two places: the shopkeepers of Grey Ferry, within Stonegorge's territory; and the doctor and villagers of the riverside clinic in West Shoal Province, outside the system. All of them are within the reach of item (3) of Measure No. 2 and of the "dual-use goods" classification, and cannot avoid them; yet what the measure targets is the Stability Committee and the Stability Squads, not them. Two lines are to be looked at: the first ought, that the part of the measure falling on people does not cross the line, and that the humanitarian part is cut out, and cut out so that it lands; and the fifth ought, that these people have a road by which the system itself can be reached. The situation before this was: item (3) had halted commercial traffic, persons and humanitarian supplies excepted; the licensing review averaged forty-one days; water-purification agents were refused licenses.
In whose interior are they? The Theory of the State answered this at the level of a single state. Its unified sentence says: "Those whom this state's acts reach and who have no way to avoid them by exiting are, as regards those acts, in this state's interior; the five oughts apply each on its own conditions"; and its latter half reads: "the first and fifth oughts (a channel that is independent, within reach, and brings no retaliation for its use) and the 'not sealing the channels' half of the fourth do not vary with relational thickness; the trigger of the second does not vary with it, and its means are bounded by this state's authority at that place" (the Theory of the State Prequel, §8).
The subject term of this sentence is "this state." To extend it to the system level, the whole sentence is extended, the subject term is changed, and how far the system's means at that place go is stated (own undertaking). Extending it in this way first requires that the system count as a construct, its acts organizing these people's lives; this is answered further in §7. The whole series writes it out in full here for the first time, and later papers point back here when they use it:
Those whom the system's acts reach and who have no way to avoid them by exiting are, as regards those acts, in the system's interior; the five oughts apply each on its own conditions: the first ought (the system's acts cross no line), the fifth (a road within reach by which the system itself can be questioned) and the "not sealing the channels" half of the fourth do not vary with relational thickness; the trigger of the second does not vary with it, and its means are bounded by the system's authority at that place, going only as far as questioning, recording, withdrawing cooperation and asking the member where it lands to guard the line; the third ought, and the "leaving room" half of the fourth, go by relational thickness: where those reached are in member states, the conditions for cultivation lie within those states; where those reached are outside the system, the system only creates conditions for cultivation. This confers no membership.
The system's acts are actions taken in the system's name, made through a common procedure, and acting on people: lists entered under a common procedure; notices and lists the system issues; the part of the coordination and preparation of joint defense made in the system's name; the allocation of admissions; the decisions of treaty bodies. Sending forces and joint action themselves are acts of each participating state (Paper 5, XZ30, XZ32). Measure No. 2 was adopted by the Conference of Members through a common procedure, and it is an act of the system; it is also implemented by each member under its own law, and on the stretch of the Grey River it is implemented by Stonegorge's Commerce Office, so on that stretch it is also an act of Stonegorge.
Read the two banks of the Grey River by this sentence. The people in both places are, as regards these acts of the system, in the system's interior, whether or not they are within a member's territory. One and the same person can also be in two interiors at once: as regards item (3), the shopkeepers of Grey Ferry are within the system; and since item (3) is implemented by Stonegorge under its own law, they are within Stonegorge too. This is the overlap spoken of in §4, extended from between two states to between the system and its members (own undertaking).
The minority opinion says that the west-bank villagers' questions should be put by the Sandbars. But the Sandbars' government is precisely the side the measure targets. Under the unified sentence, those reached must have a road within reach; a road that can pass only through the side the measure targets cannot be their only road.
Where each of the five oughts falls in this matter is written in four items.
- The second ought: the trigger is not reduced, and the means are bounded by the system's authority. The measure targets the line-crossing of the Stability Committee and the Stability Squads; the system's means go only as far as withdrawing cooperation, questioning and recording, and do not enter the Sandbars. Halting commercial traffic on the Grey River is each member withdrawing its own share of dealings. Force is substituting one's own judgment for the other party's judgment on its own affairs. There is no such substitution here: how matters in the north of the Sandbars are handled is still judged in the Sandbars; what each member withdraws is its own cooperation. Withdrawing cooperation is a check, not force; this is set up in Paper 4, §2 (XZ22).
- The first and fifth oughts, and the "not sealing the channels" half of the fourth: these do not vary with relational thickness. The west-bank villagers' relation to the system is very thin, and for them these oughts are not reduced in the least. What item (3) halted was commercial traffic; persons were not among what was halted, and the ferry crossings were not closed to people. The measure fell on the shopkeepers of Grey Ferry and on the clinic on the west bank, and people came to the Committee by way of Article 14; the Committee gave its opinion, the Conference of Members amended the measure by 4 to 0, and Stonegorge's Commerce Office, where it lands, complied. The three amendments all fall under this item: the review period capped at fifteen days, water-purification agents removed from the "dual-use goods," and a humanitarian market at Grey Ferry twice a week. This is the system correcting its own act: the part of the measure falling on people does not cross the line, and the humanitarian part is cut out, and cut out so that it lands; salt, fuel and medicine reach the hands of the people on both banks, and the channels are not sealed.
- The third ought, and the "leaving room" half of the fourth: these go by relational thickness. The shopkeepers of Grey Ferry are in a member state, and the conditions for their cultivation are provided by Stonegorge according to its relation with them; the system does not do this in Stonegorge's place. The people on the west bank are outside the system, and the system only creates conditions for their cultivation; how they live their lives is still for them to decide.
- This confers no membership: the Committee's taking up the west-bank villagers' petition does not make them the people of any member, nor does it give the system authority to govern the Sandbars.
It may be said that people outside the system are not within the Compact, and that the Committee, in taking them up, went beyond the Compact. This is the minority opinion, and the weight of this objection is that the Compact is indeed only a covenant among the members, and people outside the system never signed it. But the Compact draws the members; the unified sentence draws what acts reach. Wherever the system's acts fall, the road for questions must follow. Following them there gives the people there no membership, and gives the system no authority to govern there; it gives them only a road within reach of the system.
That to be reached is to be inside, and that the road must follow, is the norm this paper gives; the wording of clause 2 of Article 14, "those affected," is one way of writing it into a rule. Where reach is drawn still has to be judged in each matter: this time it was drawn by the Committee by 4 to 3, and the account falls on the members of the Committee who made the decision to take the petition up.
One entry is left here. Before the amendment, cold-chain medicines were cut off for two months, the clinic cut its opening to two days a week, and thirty percent of the shopkeepers in the town closed; the account of those months stands as recorded, and how it is recorded and how it is read are handed to Paper 3. How the humanitarian part is cut out, and cut out so that it lands, is in Paper 4, §4 (XZ24). How the accounts of the system and of Stonegorge are booked separately, and how the system's own road is its own fifth ought, is in the next section.
XZ14 is set up in full in §7.
§7 The System Itself Is Questioned
What the people on the two banks of the Grey River asked about was how Stonegorge implemented a measure, and in passing they asked the Conference of Members too. What if what is asked about is a decision the Conference of Members itself has made?
People from the north of the Sandbars fled across the Grey River, and Stonegorge received them; after the camp at Grey Ferry was twice shelled from the opposite bank, it moved east to Eastfield in the winter of Year 16. Article 12 of the Compact set up a sharing of admission: the members share the costs and the places for transfer, calculated by the formula in the annex; Article 12 itself states that "sharing does not decide for those who arrive where they are to settle."
In the spring of Year 17, the Conference of Members made Sharing Decision No. 3 by 4 to 0: thirty thousand people were to be transferred from the Eastfield camp that year, with places allotted as sixteen thousand to the UCSE, eight thousand to the DRP and six thousand to the NUT (the NUT having already taken in about one hundred ninety thousand people, which was deducted under the formula). Those eligible for transfer were people who had been registered in the camp for six months; to which state they would go was drawn by lot, household by household; "those drawn who refuse the result of the lot lose eligibility for transfer that year and remain in the camp." Adult children counted as households of their own. The Admission-Sharing Office's explanation was: "The lot allocates places, not people; those drawn may refuse."
In the camp, forty-six households, two hundred fourteen people, who had relatives in the NUT's Northern District were drawn for the UCSE or the DRP. Thirty-one of these households refused, and lost their eligibility for that year. In nine households, the adult children and the parents were drawn for different states.
In the summer of Year 17, one hundred three of these two hundred fourteen people petitioned the Committee under clause 3 of Article 14 against Sharing Decision No. 3 itself. The Deputy Secretary-General for Common Procedures issued a written opinion on behalf of the Secretariat: "A 'decision made under a common procedure' in clause 3 of Article 14 means a decision made by the members under a common procedure, not a decision of the Conference of Members itself; the Conference of Members is responsible for its own decisions." The Committee decided by 5 to 2 to take the petition up: "Clause 3 does not exclude the decisions of the Conference of Members." The minority opinion: "The Conference of Members is a conference of the members; to question the Conference of Members is to question the members, and petitions should be brought against each member separately."
In the winter of Year 17, the Committee gave its opinion: it asked the Conference of Members to explain how the clause "refusing the result of the lot means losing eligibility for transfer" can coexist with Article 12 of the Compact, "sharing does not decide for those who arrive where they are to settle"; and asked the Conference of Members to take families into account in allocation. In the spring of Year 18, the Conference of Members made Decision No. 4 by 4 to 0: adult children may join their parents as one household; those who refuse the result of the lot keep their eligibility for the following year. Brothers and sisters are not joined into one household. The reply was issued in the name of the Conference of Members, stating how each member voted, as Article 3 of the Compact requires. Stonegorge's permanent representative said at the meeting: "The camp is in Stonegorge, and those who stay are in Stonegorge too."
This matter falls on those forty-six households, two hundred fourteen people: they are within the reach of Sharing Decision No. 3 and cannot avoid it; thirty-one households lost that year's eligibility because they refused; nine households were split between different states. Two lines are to be looked at. One is the fifth ought: whether there is a road by which the Conference of Members itself can be reached. The other is the first ought: the system's allocation does not cross the line; Article 12 of the Compact itself states that sharing does not decide for those who arrive where they are to settle. Before this: Sharing Decision No. 3 had been made by 4 to 0, with lots drawn by household, refusal meaning the loss of that year's eligibility, and adult children counted as households of their own; clause 3 of Article 14 allowed those reached by a decision made under a common procedure to petition.
Step one: who can be questioned. The Secretariat's reading would place the Conference of Members' own decisions outside this road. The Committee did not follow it. A decision of the Conference of Members is precisely an act of the system: made in the system's name, through a common procedure, and falling on people. Those it reaches must have a road by which it can be reached. Whether this road is open is decided neither by the Conference of Members being questioned nor by its Secretariat; the party questioned does not hold the power to shut the door on the question directed at itself (§2; XZ10). The Secretariat's written opinion is one position's opinion; it was entered in the record, and it did not block the taking up; whether to take the petition up was decided by the Committee by 5 to 2, and the account for this judgment falls on the members of the Committee who made the decision.
This road, stated clearly by the four items: those reached initiate it themselves; its object is the decision of the Conference of Members; the Conference of Members cannot close this case on its own, and amending the Compact can change the structure but cannot change the three conditions this road must meet (§8; XZ15); if there is no answer and no change, the account is booked to the system, and also to each member that voted.
From this one thing can be said: for the system, a mechanism of the kind that admits individual petitions is not merely a better design; it is the system's own fifth ought. Speaking of multilateral sanctions, the Theory of the State has spoken of a state's share in a common procedure: "This state's share in the common procedure includes advocating and supporting that a road be left for those affected" (Theory of the State Paper 5, §5). That speaks of a participating state. At the level of the system, leaving those affected a road by which the system can be reached is the common procedure's own share (own undertaking).
Step two: where the account is booked. The minority opinion says that to question the Conference of Members is to question the members. This is half right. Between two levels of government, the Theory of Government set up a sentence: "The accounts of two constructs are each checked by their own source and are not transferred from one to the other (own undertaking)." (Theory of Government Paper 4, G25) This originally speaks of two levels of government within one state; here it is extended to the system and its members (own undertaking). The account of Sharing Decision No. 3 is in the system; it is also on the four members that voted and on their positions. Article 3 of the Compact requires documents issued in the system's name to state how each member voted precisely so that this share of the account can land on someone. Questioning the Conference of Members and questioning each member separately are two roads; they stand side by side, and neither replaces the other. Questioning each member asks why each member voted as it did; questioning the Conference of Members asks about this decision itself.
The same holds for the matter on the two banks of the Grey River. When the Committee asked Stonegorge to shorten the review period, it was asking about Stonegorge's share in implementing the measure under its own law; when it asked Stonegorge and the Conference of Members to explain the classification of water-purification agents, it was asking each of the two about its own part. The accounts are booked separately.
Step three: whether the system counts as a construct. To say that those whom the system's acts reach are in the system's interior presupposes that the system is a construct, something that organizes these people's lives. Institution Theory draws the interior by entanglement: "reach of influence is not reach of authority, and whether the construct is organizing their lives is judged by the actual relation" (Institution Theory Paper 1, Z4). Whether the system is a construct in this sense, Institution Theory did not say; this series undertakes it. Judged by the actual relation, where these people in the Eastfield camp go is organized by a decision of the Conference of Members; the lot, the way households are drawn up and the consequences of refusing all fall on their days. As regards these acts, the system is organizing their lives.
One more sentence must be added (own undertaking). The notices and lists the system issues fall on people, and people must have a road by which to ask. If a state uses the system's notices or lists to demand that another member send people back, the system does not help; not pushing back at the door holds as before (Paper 6, XZ38).
It may be said that the Committee was set up by the system itself, so that questioning the system is the left hand questioning the right. The weight of this objection is that the Committee is indeed an article of the Compact, and is located at the seat of the system. But whether a channel is independent is judged by structure, not by whose name it hangs under. The Theory of Government says: "Capture is judged by structure, not by the name of a body or where it sits" (Theory of Government Paper 6, G38). Judged by structure: members of the Committee serve in their personal capacity, are elected by the Conference of Members by a three-quarters majority, and do not hear petitions against their own state of citizenship; the Secretariat, on the side questioned, issued an opinion seeking to put this case outside, and it did not block the taking up. Whether this case was blocked, and whether it changed the decision, must still be checked against the four points of War Treatise §16, in the next section.
One point is left here, and it is not judged in this section. What to make of the arrangement itself, lots drawn by household and refusal meaning the loss of that year's eligibility, turns on whether the room not to go to a particular state is actually usable; that norm is set up in Paper 6, §4 (XZ39), and whether the room is actually usable in a given matter is left to the judgment of those in positions. This section judges only the road and the account. How the system's own fifth ought is realized, and whether a committee is its only form, is registered as a remainder and handed to The Close (Paper 8, XZ56).
XZ14 The system's own fifth ought (own undertaking). The system's acts are: lists entered under a common procedure, notices and lists the system issues, the part of the coordination and preparation of joint defense made in the system's name, the allocation of admissions, and the decisions of treaty bodies; sending forces and joint action themselves are acts of each participating state (XZ30, XZ32). The unified sentence of the Theory of the State (the Theory of the State Prequel, §8) is extended to the system level, the whole sentence extended, the subject term changed, and how far the system's means at that place go stated: those whom the system's acts reach and who have no way to avoid them by exiting are, as regards those acts, in the system's interior; the five oughts apply each on its own conditions: the first ought (the system's acts cross no line), the fifth (a road within reach by which the system itself can be questioned) and the "not sealing the channels" half of the fourth do not vary with relational thickness; the trigger of the second does not vary with it, and its means are bounded by the system's authority at that place, going only as far as questioning, recording, withdrawing cooperation and asking the member where it lands to guard the line; the third ought, and the "leaving room" half of the fourth, go by relational thickness: where those reached are in member states, the conditions for cultivation lie within those states; where those reached are outside the system, the system only creates conditions for cultivation. This confers no membership. The accounts of the system and of the member states that implement its acts are each checked by their own source and are not transferred from one to the other (Theory of Government G25; own undertaking). Hence a mechanism of the kind that admits individual petitions is not merely a better design but the system's own fifth ought; Theory of the State N29 says that a state's share in a common procedure includes advocating that a road be left for those affected, and at the level of the system this is the common procedure's own share. Whether the system is a construct in the sense of Institution Theory Z4 is undertaken by this series. The notices and lists the system issues fall on people, and people must have a road by which to ask; where a state borrows them to demand that people be sent back, the system does not help (not pushing back at the door holds as before; Paper 6, XZ38).
§8 The System's Arrangements Can Be Chiseled
Once there is a road, might the road be only for show? The system can set up a committee, let people petition, receive the opinions, and then carry on exactly as before. Being open to questioning requires that questioning be able to change something.
F6 has set up a proposition: "An institution premised on non dubito must have a chiseling channel satisfying three structural conditions: independent of what is chiseled; actually initiable by members; initiation not met with retaliation." (F6 §3.2, Proposition IV) This originally speaks of an institution and its members; here it is extended to the system level (own undertaking), and the three conditions read: the channel for chiseling the system's arrangements is independent of the place being questioned; members and those whom the system's acts reach can actually initiate it; and initiating it brings no retaliation.
The system might also find itself a reason for exemption from questioning: that it leans more toward the 15DD direction, that its aims are right, that it has already reformed. Institution Theory keeps out every reason of this kind: an institution "may not close off the conditions of questioning and correction on the grounds that it claims to cultivate, that it has already reformed, or that its aims are right; structures can change, but the three conditions cannot be withdrawn." (Institution Theory Paper 6, Z37) The system can amend its Compact, and can make the Committee into something else; the three conditions cannot be withdrawn.
Step one: check the three conditions against the system itself. In the Eastfield case, what issued an opinion seeking to put the Conference of Members' decisions outside clause 3 was the Secretariat, an organ of the side questioned itself; the Committee did not follow it (§7). Independence is judged by structure, not by name or where a body sits. The step of taking up the case was not held in the hands of the place questioned.
Step two: check against the four points. Speaking of whether a war-party allows itself to be questioned, the War Treatise says that "a real allowance must be embodied in structure: questioners exist, questioning reaches the decision core, questioners are protected, questioning actually affects decisions. Each of these four leaves traces visible from outside." It has also spoken first of the danger of such mechanisms: "But in actual operation these mechanisms may be no more than rubber stamps." (War Treatise §16) This originally speaks of the war-party and those who question it; here it is extended to the system and those who question it (own undertaking). The Eastfield case, looked at point by point by these four:
- Questioners exist: the Committee is there, and the one hundred three petitioners are there.
- Questioning reaches the decision core: the opinion came back to the Conference of Members; in the spring of Year 18, the Conference of Members made Decision No. 4 by 4 to 0.
- Questioners are protected: the no-retaliation of clause 7 of Article 14 is an example at the rule layer; whether the petitioners met with adverse treatment has not been recorded. This point is checked only as far as the text being there.
- Questioning actually affects decisions: Decision No. 4 was issued as the reply; adult children may join their parents' household, and those who refuse keep their eligibility for the following year.
The War Treatise further says: "Only when all four layers pass does Theorem Four truly pass. If any one layer gives way, Theorem Four fails." (ibid.) To say it as it is: in the Eastfield case, three of the four points left traces visible from outside; of the point on protection, only the text can be seen. There is no record of its giving way, and no record of its having been checked. The case on the two banks of the Grey River can be checked the same way: the three things the Committee asked for, the review period, the water-purification agents and the humanitarian market, match the Conference of Members' amendments one by one.
Step three: decisions can be final; positions cannot. Decision No. 4 is final in this case: that year's transfers were carried out under it. But it can still be questioned again afterward. Of the arbitration between two states, the Theory of the State has said: "The decision is final in the case; the positions that implement it are not final, each lying under a channel it cannot itself close" (Theory of the State Paper 5, §1). Nor does the Committee's opinion take the highest effect: it asks the Conference of Members to explain and to take families into account, and does not make decisions in the Conference of Members' place. Brothers and sisters are still not joined into one household. How far the change must go to count as having answered is decided neither by the Conference of Members alone nor by the Committee alone; where there is no position that neither side monopolizes to determine it, it is recorded plainly as unsettled (§2; XZ10).
It may be said that under pressure from outside the system must hold together, and that questioning of its own arrangements must be kept within measure, or it will be divided from outside. The weight of this objection is that the system does indeed face pressure from outside, and that among the members there will indeed be some who use questioning to pursue their own ends. But to press down questioning of one's own arrangements so as not to be divided is exactly the mirror the War Treatise speaks of: "if one's own side, to guard against the adversary, suppresses one's own space of questioning, one has already structurally become the adversary's mirror (the adversary originally does not allow questioning either)." (War Treatise §20) This originally speaks of a side at war; here it is extended to the system (own undertaking). How mirroring at the system level is recognized and judged is in Paper 4, §6 (XZ26); here only one thing is set up: the three conditions are not withdrawn because of pressure from outside.
That the three conditions are not withdrawn is the norm; how the Committee is composed, and how its voting thresholds and reply deadlines are set, are structure that can be changed. How far a change must go to be enough is judged by positions; in the Eastfield case, the account falls on the Conference of Members that made Decision No. 4 and on each member's vote.
Two larger questions are left here. One is how being open to questioning is realized between states as scale changes. Law Series P4 lists the modes of realization at each scale: "dyadic law relies on exit, group law on questioning delegates, national law on multi-branch separation of powers, interstellar law returns to exit and symmetric negotiation." (Law Series P4 §7) States cannot exit from one another, and they set up no superior with separated powers; how this is realized between them, the upstream has not given. This paper has answered part of it with XZ10 to XZ15, and the complete form is left to Paper 8. The other is a question Institution Theory left: "What the same passage goes on to ask, namely whether mutual recognition and mutual examination can grow into common legislation, this series does not answer." (Institution Theory Paper 6, Z39) Mutual questioning has come to the edge of this question; this paper does not answer it, and hands it to The Close (Paper 8, XZ55).
XZ15 The system's arrangements can be chiseled (carried over from Institution Theory Z37; own undertaking). An institution premised on non dubito must have a chiseling channel satisfying three structural conditions: independent of what is chiseled; actually initiable by members; initiation not met with retaliation (F6 §3.2, Proposition IV). Extended to the system level: the channel for chiseling the system's arrangements is independent of the place being questioned, members and those whom the system's acts reach can actually initiate it, and initiating it brings no retaliation. The system does not exempt itself from questioning by claiming "15DD predominance": it may not close off the conditions of questioning and correction on the grounds that it claims to cultivate, that it has already reformed, or that its aims are right; structures can change, but the three conditions cannot be withdrawn (Institution Theory Z37). In actual operation these mechanisms may be no more than rubber stamps, so they are checked against the four points of War Treatise §16: questioners exist, questioning reaches the decision core, questioners are protected, and questioning actually affects decisions (originally said of the war-party; here extended to the system itself; own undertaking). Capture is judged by structure, not by the name of a body or where it sits (Theory of Government G38). The decisions of treaty bodies do not take the highest effect, and are read by "decisions can be final; positions cannot be final" (Theory of Government G36).
Where This Paper Stops
This paper has proved these things. With no superior overhead, questions come from outside, from a group of peers; the system's position is that of an external questioner, its determinations are public questions and records, it neither authorizes nor vetoes, and even a member that sends forces cannot close its questions. Making a covenant needs the consent of all parties; questioning existing matters does not; the party questioned recuses itself on the matter directed at it, and the questioning party does not decide alone that the case is closed. Closing one channel cannot cancel the questioning; moving against a questioner is trying to cancel it. The system does not enforce, and whether a question lands rests with each member; a member's obligation to answer comes from the covenants it has acknowledged, and "internal affairs" does not block questions. Treaty bodies admitting individual petitions fill the place where individuals cannot reach the procedures between states, and they are checked against the three conditions of a channel and the four items. The unified sentence has been extended to the system level: those whom the system's acts reach and who cannot avoid them are, as regards those acts, in the system's interior, whether or not they are within a member's territory; giving them a road by which the system itself can be reached is the system's own fifth ought; the accounts of the system and of the members are each checked by their own source. The system's arrangements can be chiseled; the three conditions are not withdrawn, and the arrangements are checked against the four points of War Treatise §16; decisions can be final, positions cannot.
What it has not proved is handed elsewhere. How many tiers a treaty body has, whether it is a court or a committee, and the details of its procedure, are handed to specific theories of institutions; Article 14 of the Compact and the Petitions Committee are only examples, and this series does not claim that they are the best design. How "open to questioning" is realized between states as scale changes, in its complete form, is left to Paper 8. How the channels inside each state are designed is in Theory of the State Paper 7. How the account is recorded and read once questions have been asked is handed to Paper 3; withdrawing cooperation by the account is in Paper 4; questions left unsettled at exit, and the road for those whom a state's acts reach after its expulsion, are in Paper 7. Whether, in a sharing like Eastfield's with lots drawn by household, the room not to go to a particular state is actually usable, is in Paper 6.
Several costs are written here as they are. At the system level there is no fallback court; the questioning cannot be cancelled, but the answer may not come; the system watches problems happen and cannot resolve them directly by armed force. In the DRP matter, the parents who lost citizenship do not have their own citizenship restored; for those eight families of Junction Town, the question falls between two numbers; the two from Wheat Plain were still in custody in Year 20.
Of interfaces with the tradition, this paper has made only two, in place, both with Vattel: the liberty and independence of nations, which lands on a covenant's requiring the consent of all parties and parts from this series on questioning existing matters; and no state's having a right to interfere in the government of another, which parts from this series on "internal affairs" not exempting anything from questioning. These two interfaces with Vattel rest only on English online translations read against each other, and one of them on a single source, so they serve only as in-place comparisons. Kant's publicity has already been interfaced in Theory of the State Paper 5, §4, and this paper points back to it.
The Seven Propositions of This Paper
XZ9 The system's position is that of an external questioner. The system's determination of line-crossing is public questions and records, not authorization; it constitutes no ground for any state to start a war, nor does it endorse any state's sending of forces; the system neither authorizes nor vetoes. "Last" refers to level, not to exemption from questioning; that there is no one overhead shows only where the questions must come from, and does not show that the questioning has stopped (the Theory of the State Prequel, §3). The war-party has no privilege of not being questioned; third parties may challenge the war-party's decisions without being treated as enemies (War Treatise §16). With the system as external questioner, a state that sends forces cannot close this question (the War Treatise originally speaks of the war-party and third parties; here it is extended to the member that sends forces and the system; own undertaking).
XZ10 Questioning does not need the consent of the party questioned; the party questioned recuses itself (own undertaking). A covenant requires the consent of all parties (XZ1); questioning existing matters does not need the consent of the party questioned: a question governs acts already done, and the party questioned cannot close it (Theory of the State Paper 1, §5; Theory of Government G36). Only when the two are kept apart can a common failure be told: the party questioned holding the power to shut the door on the question directed at itself. Requiring everyone's agreement lets any one party block everything: that making covenants needs consent is right; that questioning existing matters should also need consent is wrong. So when a common procedure questions a member, the member recuses itself on the matter directed at it: it does not vote, and does not hold the power to close the case; the form is not fixed. Of Conflict Treatise §15, only the half in which the party questioned does not hold the power to shut the door is taken: one cannot be one's own final adjudicator and declare in advance that some class of questioner is permanently without standing (originally said in the first person; here extended to relations between states; own undertaking). The system's standing to put questions rests on other grounds: external questioning cannot be cancelled (XZ11); and procedures the parties have acknowledged, as Conflict Treatise §27 says (originally said of two parties; here extended to many; own undertaking). Recusal does not mean that everyone can veto: control does not mean that every person affected has a veto (Theory of Government G36a). Questioning does not need the consent of the party questioned, and neither does the questioner decide alone that the case is closed: the step of closing the case needs a position that the questioner does not monopolize, or else the matter is registered plainly as unsettled; no position may monopolize the power to shut the door, the questioning party included (Theory of Government G36; own undertaking).
XZ11 External questioning cannot be cancelled (carried over from Theory of the State Paper 1, §5, its own undertaking taken up as it stands). A state may exit or switch an external arrangement; that is a change of structure, itself under questioning; it can close one channel, but it cannot cancel the questioning of it by other states, by the people of other states, and by those affected (Theory of the State Paper 1, §5). Extended to the system (own undertaking): when a member exits an arrangement, the questioning of it by the system and by the other members goes on as before (Paper 7, XZ45, XZ47); the system's own arrangements are under this sentence too (XZ14, XZ15). Closing a channel is kept apart from moving against a questioner: not joining, not cooperating, and exiting an arrangement are closing a channel, and are allowed; pressing, punishing or retaliating against a questioner because the questioner has raised questions is trying to cancel the questioning, and crosses the line (as in the first place in Paper 4, XZ25).
XZ12 The system's questions connect into member states; the obligation to answer comes from the Compact (carried over from Theory of the State N38; own undertaking). The system does not enforce, and whether its questions land rests with each member: a peer's question does not on its own count as a channel; it counts only once it connects to the channels inside (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3). The Theory of the State allows a state not to answer ordinary questions from peers, and the obligation to answer must come from covenants acknowledged: a state may decline to answer ordinary diplomatic questions between peers that carry no separate obligation to answer; the requirements to answer and to implement that it bears under the treaties and common procedures it has acknowledged still follow the covenants acknowledged (ibid.). So a member's obligation to answer to the system, including a state that sends forces explaining its own first face publicly to the system, is written into the Compact and comes into being through the consent of all parties; it is not derived from "the system is an external questioner" alone; toward those whom the sending of forces reaches, the sending state answers following the unified sentence (state level, the Theory of the State Prequel, §8; see §6); the part of the coordination and preparation made in the system's name that this sending of forces then used (joint plans, joint exercises, prepositioned depots) still answers to those it reaches following the unified sentence (system level, §6). When a member answers with "internal affairs," not interfering is not the same as not asking (Theory of the State Paper 5, §2); a question is answered according to its object, an exchange is checked according to its own reasons (Theory of the State Paper 5, §4).
XZ13 Treaty bodies admitting individual petitions as channels (carried over from Theory of the State N27; own undertaking). Treaty mechanisms admitting individual petitions come close to a channel: internal subjects can initiate them themselves, and the treaty also prohibits retaliation; such a mechanism has no enforcer of its own, and whether its decisions land still rests with the state (Theory of the State Paper 5, §4). What it fills is the place where arbitration between two states is beyond the reach of individuals (Theory of the State Paper 2, §5). The design sets up functions only: following the three conditions of a channel, it is independent of the party questioned, internal subjects can actually initiate it, and initiating it brings no retaliation (Institution Theory Z34); it does not depend on the willingness of an intermediary, since a route that gets through only if others are willing cannot yet certify that it can actually be initiated (Theory of the State Paper 7, §3); for each function it can be stated who can activate it, what actual efficacy it has, and how the party questioned cannot cancel it on its own (Theory of Government G36a). The members' undertaking follows Theory of the State N27: not to obstruct, not to retaliate, and to implement the decisions of treaty bodies under the covenants acknowledged (whether rulings or opinions, as the covenant has it). How many tiers, and whether a court or a committee, is handed to specific theories of institutions.
XZ14 The system's own fifth ought (own undertaking). The system's acts are: lists entered under a common procedure, notices and lists the system issues, the part of the coordination and preparation of joint defense made in the system's name, the allocation of admissions, and the decisions of treaty bodies; sending forces and joint action themselves are acts of each participating state (XZ30, XZ32). The unified sentence of the Theory of the State (the Theory of the State Prequel, §8) is extended to the system level, the whole sentence extended, the subject term changed, and how far the system's means at that place go stated: those whom the system's acts reach and who have no way to avoid them by exiting are, as regards those acts, in the system's interior; the five oughts apply each on its own conditions: the first ought (the system's acts cross no line), the fifth (a road within reach by which the system itself can be questioned) and the "not sealing the channels" half of the fourth do not vary with relational thickness; the trigger of the second does not vary with it, and its means are bounded by the system's authority at that place, going only as far as questioning, recording, withdrawing cooperation and asking the member where it lands to guard the line; the third ought, and the "leaving room" half of the fourth, go by relational thickness: where those reached are in member states, the conditions for cultivation lie within those states; where those reached are outside the system, the system only creates conditions for cultivation. This confers no membership. The accounts of the system and of the member states that implement its acts are each checked by their own source and are not transferred from one to the other (Theory of Government G25; own undertaking). Hence a mechanism of the kind that admits individual petitions is not merely a better design but the system's own fifth ought; Theory of the State N29 says that a state's share in a common procedure includes advocating that a road be left for those affected, and at the level of the system this is the common procedure's own share. Whether the system is a construct in the sense of Institution Theory Z4 is undertaken by this series. The notices and lists the system issues fall on people, and people must have a road by which to ask; where a state borrows them to demand that people be sent back, the system does not help (not pushing back at the door holds as before; Paper 6, XZ38).
XZ15 The system's arrangements can be chiseled (carried over from Institution Theory Z37; own undertaking). An institution premised on non dubito must have a chiseling channel satisfying three structural conditions: independent of what is chiseled; actually initiable by members; initiation not met with retaliation (F6 §3.2, Proposition IV). Extended to the system level: the channel for chiseling the system's arrangements is independent of the place being questioned, members and those whom the system's acts reach can actually initiate it, and initiating it brings no retaliation. The system does not exempt itself from questioning by claiming "15DD predominance": it may not close off the conditions of questioning and correction on the grounds that it claims to cultivate, that it has already reformed, or that its aims are right; structures can change, but the three conditions cannot be withdrawn (Institution Theory Z37). In actual operation these mechanisms may be no more than rubber stamps, so they are checked against the four points of War Treatise §16: questioners exist, questioning reaches the decision core, questioners are protected, and questioning actually affects decisions (originally said of the war-party; here extended to the system itself; own undertaking). Capture is judged by structure, not by the name of a body or where it sits (Theory of Government G38). The decisions of treaty bodies do not take the highest effect, and are read by "decisions can be final; positions cannot be final" (Theory of Government G36).
References
All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. The version records used for sentence-by-sentence verification are given in the accompanying audit table.
I · This system
Qin, H. (2026). How Is Institution Possible: From Inter-Ontological Remainder to Co-Constructive Framework (SAE Foundational Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19328662
Qin, H. (2026). To Whom the Ought Is Addressed (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23269635
Qin, H. (2026). Open to Questioning (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23271324
Qin, H. (2026). Levels (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413192
Qin, H. (2026). Emergency (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413413
Qin, H. (2026). Questioning and Bearing (SAE Theory of Government, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23413511
Qin, H. (2026). What a State Is Not (SAE Theory of the State, Prequel) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584292
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Rule (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584315
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Instance (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584318
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Exit (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584325
Qin, H. (2026). One Another, with No Superior (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584346
Qin, H. (2026). The Last Resort (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584352
Qin, H. (2026). Questioning the Last Layer (SAE Theory of the State, Paper 7) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23584356
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
Qin, H. (2026). SAE War Treatise: How Cultivation Is Not Swallowed by War Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19656617
Qin, H. (2026). Interstellar Law and Grand Closure — The Recession of Coercive Law (SAE Law Series, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19549018
Qin, H. (2026). Collective 15DD and the Four-Stage Evolution of Community Form (SAE Moral Law, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20218248
Qin, H. (2026). On the Recognition of Power · Shi (SAE Power Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20480134
II · External works (public-domain originals, tier A)
Kant, I. (1795). Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf. Königsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius. Project Gutenberg, EBook #46873. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46873
Kant, I. (1917). Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay. Trans. M. Campbell Smith (1st ed. 1903; 3rd impression). London: George Allen & Unwin. Project Gutenberg, EBook #50922. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922
III · External works (public-domain translation, tier B)
Vattel, E. de. (1883). The Law of Nations; or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns. Ed. J. Chitty, notes by E. D. Ingraham. Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson. Online text: https://constitution.org/2-Authors/vattel/ ; read against the Lonang Institute text (from the 1797 English translation, reprinted 1853). (French original not obtained; read against the two online texts)
Interfaces
Main upstream: Theory of the State (the Prequel, §§3, 8; Paper 1, §5, N5; Paper 2, §5, N9; Paper 5, N24, N25, N27, N29; Paper 7, N36, N37, N38); Institution Theory (Paper 1, Z4; Paper 6, Z34, Z35a, Z37); Theory of Government (Paper 4, G25, G27; Paper 5, G30; Paper 6, G35, G36, G36a, G38); F6 §3.2, Proposition IV (extended to the system level; own undertaking); Conflict Treatise §15, §26, §27 (extended to relations between states and to many parties; own undertaking); War Treatise §16 (Theorem Four and the four points of questioning, extended to the system; own undertaking).
Also used: War Treatise §12, §13, §20; Moral Law P8 §3.4.2 (the fallback court, read narrowly); Power Theory P3 §V.4 (silence; own undertaking); Law Series P4 §7 (an upstream blank); Institution Theory Paper 6, Z39 (the question left over); F6 §3.1b; Theory of the State Paper 3, N14, and Paper 6, §3, N34; Theory of Government Paper 4, G26.
Interfacing: Vattel (The Law of Nations, Preliminaries, §§15–17; bk. II, ch. 4, §§54–55; tier B, per the English translation edited by Chitty, read against two online texts; Preliminaries §§16 and 17 at tier C, paraphrased from a single English online transcription only; the French original and the pages of the 1883 printing not checked in person); Kant (Perpetual Peace, Appendix II, publicity; tier A, pointing to Theory of the State Paper 5, §4, not redone).
This series: the Prequel, §§5, 11; Paper 1, §1 (XZ1), §3; Paper 3; Paper 4, §2 (XZ22), §4 (XZ24), §5 (XZ25), §6 (XZ26); Paper 5, §4, XZ30, XZ32; Paper 6, §§1, 3, 4, 6 (XZ38, XZ39); Paper 7, §§1–3 (XZ45, XZ46, XZ47); Paper 8 (XZ55, XZ56).
Handed to Paper 3: asked, answered or not answered, every question leaves an account visible from outside.