Part II — The life the design leaves alone

7. An Ordinary Week

An ordinary week can hold work, a rented home, a visit to a clinic, a child at school, an election, a dispute with a landlord and a police stop. This chapter follows each through one person's record and asks where the rules touch the person and what must be written before they do.

The record starts with an entry that Selin is present within the republic's jurisdiction and with evidence that Selin has reached general adulthood. Every further fact below begins with "Suppose", and each is an entry in the record.

Where the record starts

Presence within the jurisdiction is enough for the rules to conclude that Selin is a person. Every debt of the floor follows from that alone: the State owes Selin food, shelter, care, learning, bodily safety, material security, expression, belief and company. Free movement follows as well.

The ballot needs both entries. Presence gives personhood and the floor; the adulthood evidence adds the basic ballot entitlement. The Vote Conviction Does Not Take (Chapter 18) sets out what the full franchise adds to it.

All of this holds before the record says anything about work, a home, a clinic, a child, a vote, a dispute or a stop. Those are the week's business, and everything so far rests on those first entries alone.

Most of that business is also protected by barriers that ask for nothing. Selin is protected against arbitrary interference with privacy, against prescription of how a household is run, against prescription of private and civic life, and against any social score built from voluntary life: gifts, care, friendship, worship and association. These follow from personhood, and they hold for Selin while the record is silent about all of those things.

Work and a wage

Selin is protected in choosing, refusing and leaving work, and the floor is owed whatever Selin contributes. Both protections hold before any work is recorded.

Suppose an employer promises Selin a wage. The promise alone concludes nothing. Suppose next that the employer, authorised to attest pay for Selin, attests its own promise. That concludes nothing either, because the rule asks for an attester other than the payer. Suppose, last, that a separate pay office authorised for Selin attests the same wage, naming the employer, on the same stated basis. The rules now conclude the wage the employer promised Selin.

The attestation covers only the kind of pay and the payer it names, here this employer's wage. The floor and the ballot were concluded before the employer appeared in the record.

A rented home

The tenancy is outside the record. Selin is protected against the suppression of a lawful form of tenure, against treating the housing floor as a question of ownership, and against an eviction that threatens the floor without a route that keeps housing continuous. What Money Cannot Buy (Chapter 10) follows what such an eviction must meet. Shelter was owed to Selin from the first entry, whatever the tenancy says.

The clinic

Care was owed from the first entry as well. At the clinic, Selin's current informed choice about treatment governs. Selin is also protected against unlawful enrolment for enforcement, which closes care as a route into enforcement records.

Suppose the record holds a receipt: Selin received care from the clinic. The receipt alone concludes nothing about care having reached Selin. Suppose the clinic, authorised as a witness for Selin, attests its own care. Still nothing: a delivery needs a witness other than its provider. Suppose a witness authorised for Selin, someone other than the clinic, attests the same care. The rules now conclude that care reached Selin.

The witness attested care, and the same receipt shows nothing about food.

School

Suppose the record holds a birth entry for a child, Teo. Teo is a person on that entry alone and is owed learning. Teo holds rights in Teo's own name: Teo is to be heard at any age, and Teo's views must be given weight and answered with reasons. Teo is protected against unlawful enrolment for enforcement, as Selin is, which closes school as a route into enforcement records as well. The ballot waits for Teo's adulthood evidence.

Suppose a teacher teaches Teo. Teaching alone concludes nothing about learning. Suppose Teo's hearing of that teaching is also recorded. The rules now conclude that learning reached Teo. The route reads the teaching and the hearing, and Selin's own learning stays where it was.

Suppose, too, that the record names Selin as Teo's parent. Teo's standing, the learning owed and concluded, and the protections above all followed before that entry was written.

Election day

The ballot entitlement followed from the first entries and still holds at the end of the week. The rule that gives it reads personhood and adulthood, and the entitlement follows while the record is silent about whether or how Selin votes.

A dispute with the landlord

Suppose Selin files a request for review of a dispute with the landlord, addressed to a housing office. Until the record shows the office's authority to receive it, the request concludes nothing. Suppose the office's authority to receive this request is recorded. The rules now conclude that the office owes review of the request.

The rule reads the request, the person who made it and the office's authority to receive it. The landlord's agreement is outside the rule, and the landlord is absent from every entry. What review leads to is the subject of A Way to Be Heard (Chapter 21).

A police stop

Before any officer appears in the record, Selin is protected against policing for order as such without an individual ground of harm, against a coercive measure that lacks an individual ground or automatic review by a court, against unnecessary or disproportionate force, against coercion that goes unrecorded, and against bulk or suspicionless collection.

Suppose two officers stop Selin and open a search record. Each is authorised for that record, and both write the same entries: that its subject is the human being in front of them, a finding that claims nothing about civil identity, guilt or lawfulness; and that the record is for an individual search order. That is the whole record. It lacks an individual ground, an authorising body, a review and an end.

Under this record the search order stays incomplete, Selin's privacy stays unrestricted and Selin keeps free movement. Nothing here approaches custody. The One Thing Taken (Chapter 27) follows what a search requires.

A pattern seen across a group decides nothing about Selin either: Selin is protected against a diagnostic pattern being turned into a verdict about an individual.

What the lightness costs

At the end of the week the record holds far more about Selin than it did at the start, and what followed from the first entries still holds: Selin is a person, is owed the floor and holds the ballot.

That lightness has a price, and it falls on whoever needs the rules to see something. A wage attested only by the employer stays unconcluded until another attester authorised for Selin records it, and care attested only by the clinic waits for a witness authorised for Selin; Selin bears both waits. A request filed with an office lacking authority to receive it waits until that authority is recorded. An officer who holds only an identification lacks a search under the record, and whoever that search might have protected bears the cost of the record it still lacks.

What this cannot settle

The stop record exists because two officers wrote it. A stop that nobody records leaves these rules nothing to test. Unrecorded coercion is itself one of the kinds of defect the protective rules name, and Selin is protected against it; somebody must still notice the missing record and prove the stop. Whether the wage was paid, the care was sound and the review took place belongs to the second book.

Run it: the companion runs this chapter's cases on your own device, at dhilipsiva.dev/rights-nobody-has-to-earn/cases.

Argument: Power that must write before it touches

The companion states these rules as Articles 1, 3, 7, 8 and 22.

I leave ordinary life to the person living it, and let the rules reach it only through specific records that name who wrote them, because a person can be unfree without ever being interfered with. Philip Pettit defends freedom as non-domination: a person is unfree to the extent that another has the capacity to interfere in their choices on an arbitrary basis, even if the other never actually does.^[1] An office able to stop, inspect or reclassify anyone at will holds that capacity over everyone it passes by. The rules in this chapter withdraw the capacity instead of trusting it to stay idle: a stop that only identifies a human being restricts nothing under its record, a wage or a delivery counts only when someone other than the party that pays or provides it attests it, and review opens on a request that asks the other party nothing. A court has treated the same space as a matter of right. In 2017 a nine-judge bench of India's Supreme Court declared privacy protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, and as part of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution.^[2]

The strongest alternative accepts non-domination and puts the protection elsewhere: in democratic control over officials, rather than in a record required before each act. Officials would then keep broad discretion in ordinary encounters, stopping on judgement and checking eligibility when they see fit, while elections, courts and complaint keep that discretion from becoming arbitrary. It is held by anyone who trusts those institutions to discipline officials after they act. Its strongest statement borrows Pettit's later argument that state coercion need not dominate citizens who share equally in a form of control over those in power, backed by a model of the democratic institutions that could secure it.^[3] Pettit makes that argument about the legitimacy of state coercion; extending it to discretion in ordinary encounters is the alternative's own step. Its best case is that a record cannot anticipate every danger, and that an official who must first complete one will sometimes act too late. I have no measurement I can cite for or against that claim.

My rule's cost is time and some protection. The officer with a suspicion and no individual ground has no search, and whoever that search would have protected bears the loss. The alternative moves the cost onto the people its discretion falls on, who must show after the event that it was arbitrary, against an official who never had to write down why. I would rather the burden of writing sit with the power than the burden of proof with the person.

I would reconsider on two findings together: that requiring a complete record before a protective act lets serious harm through that discretion would have stopped, and that discretion checked only after the fact falls evenly on the people it touches and is corrected when it errs.