Part I — Who counts, and what they are owed

3. What Counts as Evidence

The record can say that Nell was born. It cannot add a free-form description of what kind of person Nell is. Its vocabulary is declared: a report must use an admitted kind of entry before the rules will accept it.

The tests try to record that Adam is rich or dangerous. Both are refused because those kinds of assertion are outside the constitutional record. Refusal says nothing about Adam's wealth or conduct. It says what this record may contain.

The admitted kinds include births and encounters, employment and teaching, injuries and judgments, relationships, proposals, appointments, receipts and challenges. They also include specified evidence about sources, review windows and whether a status continues between records. They are not all direct observations. Some report a finding someone has already made.

Personhood itself may be entered directly or follow from the roots in the previous chapter. The name used at first contact may be temporary. Neither that name nor the birth entry authenticates a civil identity. The rules can control the form of a report without establishing that its content is true.

What is missing

There is no general constitutional field for reliability, deservingness, productivity or predicted risk. An institution cannot add one merely by asserting it. Nor does the constitutional record admit an unrestricted file of someone's wealth, religion, ancestry, politics, health or associations.

That limit does not prohibit every record an operating society needs. Records for a particular lawful purpose have separate permissions, access rights and limits on use, set out in the chapter on what may be kept about you. Permission to hold a record is not permission to copy its contents into every constitutional decision about the person.

Economic records illustrate the distinction. A contribution entry records a payment into a named scheme; it can support a supplement above the floor. It cannot determine standing, essentials, liberty, the vote or recognition. A compensation entry records a promised payment of a named kind. A competence entry records an authorised attestation of a function. Neither is a general assessment of the recipient.

Worker status, title, liability, licensing, taxation, credit, insolvency, private economic power and scarcity may require decisions. The constitutional record takes the narrow, challengeable result needed for the specified purpose, not an unrestricted economic dossier. The result must meet that route's requirements for authority and review; merely naming it does not authenticate it.

The design still classifies. It distinguishes adjudicated acts and derives consequences from them. Severity binds the person, case and incident; its summary about a person cannot authorise placement in another case. That classification matters for confinement and cannot be described as an absence of all ratings. What the record excludes is a freely writable general verdict on personal worth.

Facts and conclusions are kept apart

The supplied record says Hano injured Ivo and the Court judged Hano. Those are inputs. That Hano is a prisoner is a conclusion: it follows through the injury, judgment, cited case and the required conviction and custody evidence. The conclusion also depends on the relevant protections and grounds for refusal. An injury and a judgment are not the entire authority to confine.

Try to bypass that route by writing directly that Zed is a prisoner. The entry is refused. So are direct assertions of public answerability and severity. These are reserved conclusions; a writer must supply their premises and let the rules determine what follows.

Public answerability follows from an institution's public status or a seating by the electorate or convocation. The Court has it through its public-body entry; Hex has it through the convocation's seating. Answerability is not permission to judge. The later chapters distinguish it from an examiner's credential and from authority for a particular public act.

Severity shows why the premises must be read together. The underlying case needs qualified criminal proof, adjudicated defences and fair procedure. An independently reviewed finding of grave injury or aggravated cruelty must identify the subject, case, incident, person harmed, evidence and procedure. Counting people injured cannot substitute for either finding. A raw attack or cruelty entry supplies none of its authority.

The test gives Probe an attack against one person and cruelty against another. Severity does not follow. Adding cruelty against the person already attacked still supplies no qualified finding. The placement chapter follows the positive cases: Ruk has a grave-injury finding; Lalo and Don have aggravated-cruelty findings. Those findings permit consideration of secure placement. A separate decision must establish why a less restrictive place is insufficient. Severity alone cannot choose a destination or supply current authority to confine.

A derived conclusion is not necessarily supported by a long chain. Nor are all its inputs observations. The rules can forbid a direct verdict while accepting a reported finding that has almost the same effect. That is a separate question from whether the verdict can be asserted directly.

One finding is not a voiding

Voiding restricts whose findings can count against another person. An effective credibility finding prevents its subject's new adverse signature from qualifying; it leaves personhood and the floor intact.

Koa's finding about Esa is recorded. Esa is not voided, and Koa is not voided for having made it. The lone entry does not supply the route to either result.

The paired route requires distinct qualified examiners, matching findings about the same subject, incident, ground and evidence, and positive independence authority for that case. Permission to make a finding also checks the signers' current disqualifications. Personal consequences require the completed case and its historical eligibility and procedure. The chapter on voiding follows those conditions and the case-specific route to restoration.

The conclusion here is limited to the case: Koa's entry does not establish that Esa's credibility is void. It is not a claim that every investigation is costless or that a lone finding can have no consequence anywhere in the design. The recorded act of examination and the adverse conclusion are distinct.

Changing the vocabulary

A new kind of entry needs an explicit declaration. Using an undeclared word does not widen the record by itself. The permission must already be present when the entry is submitted; changing it later does not turn an earlier refusal into accepted evidence.

An editor can nevertheless declare new vocabulary and use it in the source. The declaration requirement makes that a source change; it does not establish the editor's authority to make it. Nor does it determine whether the new word conceals a judgment that should require a separate decision.

The protected register names articles governing the floor, prisoner personhood and the register itself. A proposal's declared target establishes neither its effects nor authority to enact it. Recording a proposal under a person's name cannot create a personal credibility finding either. Adding a name to the register would not make it inspect what a source edit actually does.

The amendment route reviews the exact replacement text. A proposed vocabulary change must be explicitly reviewed as part of the same candidate text that received political consent and independent compatibility review. Matching those records is a condition of the formal result. It does not discover every consequence of a new word or prove that an unauthorised source cannot be installed. The amendment chapter follows that route and its limits.

The source review for governmental and membership rules likewise identifies the constitutional power and decision supporting a proposed change. That makes the claimed authority inspectable. It does not prove democratic adoption, authenticate the premises or entrench meaning by checking a label.

False or missing inputs

No vocabulary change is needed to supply a false report. A fabricated direct person entry can produce floor entitlements. A fabricated birth or encounter can do the same for a name that is not a known public body. The rules do not establish that a human being answers to it.

The opposite omission also matters. A temporary encounter name can start standing before civil identity is reconciled, but an encounter that nobody reports has no consequences in the record. The duty to serve cannot observe or enter the person for itself.

There is a protection for a status already witnessed in an accepted earlier record. An accepted later transition must account for its carry. If the required carry is missing, the earlier standing continues and the omission is marked as a defect. Omitting the carry does not erase both protection and the evidence of the mismatch.

That marker establishes a mismatch between supplied records, not its cause. The route has no representation of lawful retirement of the protected entry, so it reports a missing required carry even where an outside account would call the removal proper. Neither mechanism can find an encounter nobody reports, detect a deletion before the compared records, establish an honest witness or make the next record arrive.

The shield case distinguishes an accusation from the adjudication it needs. Rebel's disclosure concerns Boss, an answerable official. A raw entry alleging that Rebel deceived Boss does not supply an effective finding about that exposure. The shield continues, and the prisoner conclusion remains blocked. A raw accusation likewise cannot supply a personal credibility finding. The adverse case must bind its subject, incident, evidence and independent reviewers; merely naming the accused and a public body does not establish the act.

A bare claim that the Court is broken also leaves the custody cases unchanged. A defect in a court's jurisdiction or independence needs a qualified disposition of the affected case. The disposition identifies the subject, offence, ground, evidence and independent appellate actors; a party or the original adjudicator cannot decide the appeal. Successful review ends the affected authority without erasing the injury record or deciding another case. The reasoner checks that contract. It does not authenticate the witnesses or physically release anyone.

Other entries have narrower reach. Writing that someone has a family cannot worsen confinement. An absent parent, marriage or sibling entry cannot establish reviewer independence. Recording care as employment proves neither delivery nor consent nor authority to decide for another person. An adulthood entry in the required form can support the executable ballot conclusion, but the legal status of adulthood does not originate in the entry. A forged or withheld entry remains a hazard for the ballot record; neither an age nor an outside clock is verified here.

Reserved conclusions cannot be written directly. Their admitted premises can still include judgments rather than observations. Naming the finder and requiring independent review make responsibility explicit; a closed vocabulary cannot authenticate those actors or establish the truth of their account.

The child with nobody

Nell's birth entry is admitted and personhood follows. The test also attempts to enter a vulnerability classification, which is refused. Nell's protection requires no such classification, and the birth alone produces no adverse credibility finding.

With the standing root present, the next question is what every person is owed.