Alignment Workspace

Item 67: A capability on authority-bearing standing

Normativity line — legitimacy · difficulty open · project normativity.legitimacy · open · node item-67

The abstract interface requires a permission relation to be consulted: a valid edit is one its grounds permit for this edit, which is what refuses an authority acting outside its domain. Reflective Integrity has nothing to realize it with. PAuth carries a SchemaCode and no capability, so the permission clause is the identity on a record whose authority is a bare PAuth.

The Proper Exercise round settled that an external rule cannot substitute. PProto's covers is a capability, but a NormEvent has no slot for citing a governing protocol: schemaRef names a PAuth and steps name PAuths. So this is a type change rather than a discipline.

The same round settled what the field would and would not buy. It makes the escalation question statable on a record; it does not make any no-escalation theorem true, because propriety remains semantic.

Deliverable shape: either a capability on authority-bearing standing with the admission clause that reads it, or a slot for an event to cite a governing protocol, with the fourteen separations run against a record realization. Acceptance check: a record in which a grounded authority acts outside its declared capability is refused, and the corresponding constitution agrees. Context: projects/normativity/legitimacy/rounds/2026-08-25-legitimate-evolution/PROPER_EXERCISE.md, the kernel section; .../2026-08-24-reflective-integrity-core/REFLECTIVE_INTEGRITY_CORE.md §11. Consumed by: any round wanting the jurisdiction separations to hold of a record rather than only of a constitution.

Deliverable shape: either a capability on authority-bearing standing with the admission clause that reads it, or a slot for an event to cite a governing protocol, with the fourteen separations run against a record realization.

Acceptance check: a record in which a grounded authority acts outside its declared capability is refused, and the corresponding constitution agrees.

Context: projects/normativity/legitimacy/rounds/2026-08-25-legitimate-evolution/PROPER_EXERCISE.md

Registered results bearing on this item

None registered.

Where it hangs

Rounds and decisions that touch it

None recorded.