Residue
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Summary
Residue is what remains owed after a directed claim is left unsatisfied. Each claim is classified separately. A justified override leaves a claim unsatisfied with an adequate justification available to its holder; a wronging leaves a claim unsatisfied without one. One act may generate override residue toward some holders and violation-grade residue toward others.
Recognition follows every unsatisfied claim, while explanation, compensation, distributive correction, and violation-grade response arise under their further conditions. An act is justified only where every unsatisfied claim has an adequate justification available to its holder. Repair cannot be converted by the owing party into Settlement.
Residue requires an established claim and classification. An unresolved Stage 1 ground can support a conditional account of what would remain owed if the ground and non-satisfaction were established; the unresolved record itself generates no present residue.
Necessity-justified wronging carries the same violation-grade residue toward each holder it wrongs as other wronging. Under the proposed Necessity rule, the properly selected act is necessity-required within the Standing Framework's directed domain, but that act-level status neither supplies an adequate answer to a wronged holder nor reduces the residue owed to that holder.
Differentiated residue
| Kind | When owed | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Recognitional | every unsatisfied claim | acknowledgment that the claim remained unsatisfied |
| Explanatory | where the relation or institution supports account duties | reasons on request, record, and usable access to review |
| Compensatory | where leaving a claim unsatisfied causes concentrated material loss under the conditions below | restoration where possible, material repair, pooling, or compensation |
| Distributive | where compensation is infeasible or burdens recur | rotation, priority adjustment, and redesign against repeated concentration |
| Violation-grade | every wronging, whether contained in a necessity-required or non-required act | all applicable residue, acknowledgment as wrong, non-repetition by design, disgorgement where the wrongdoer profited, and a claim-relative culpability inquiry that adds no burden by itself |
The categories can accumulate. They do not imply that every burden can be priced or that compensation substitutes for recognition and correction.
Recognition and explanation
Every unsatisfied claim is acknowledged as unsatisfied. Sound justification can explain why an override occurred, but it cannot redescribe the claim as having been met. Where an account is owed, explanatory residue includes the preserved record, reasons responsive to this holder's claim, and access to review capable of changing remedy or future conduct.
Explanation is performance, not a condition of abstract availability. An actor may possess an adequate reason and still fail answerability by withholding the record, concealing material facts, or denying a usable route of contest.
Compensation and concentration
Material repair is owed for actual loss caused by leaving a claim unsatisfied when the loss is concentrated on identifiable parties and at least one condition holds:
- it exceeds what fair participation in the scheme could ask anyone to carry;
- exposure was asymmetric, so some parties or classes were structurally likelier to absorb it;
- participation in the risk-generating scheme was non-optional.
These conditions govern compensatory residue after both justified overrides and wrongings. A wronging also carries violation-grade residue; the availability of adequate justification determines the claim's classification without erasing an actual loss that otherwise meets the compensatory conditions.
Reciprocity defeats compensation only where it is real: exposure was symmetric, beneficiaries and bearers substantially overlap, and the loss falls within participation's fair range. Formal reciprocity does not answer catastrophic concentration. A participant devastated by a common and otherwise justified system can still be owed repair; pooling and insurance are institutional forms of that residue, and their absence can be an institutional failure.
De minimis burdens and losses within fair participation do not generate compensation merely because a claim was unsatisfied. Recognition can remain owed without a transfer.
Suppose a grid operator sheds one feeder to stop a fault cascading, leaving the claims of the three cold stores on that feeder unsatisfied; their stock spoils. Whether those claims were justifiably overridden or wronged is classified separately. Either way the loss is actual and concentrated on identifiable parties, and exposure was asymmetric: the feeder is designated first to shed, so these customers were structurally likelier to absorb it. On the proposed differentiation, material repair is owed.
Distribution and violation
Where losses cannot be restored or recur predictably, forward-looking residue requires the arrangement to change who bears them. Rotation, priority in later allocation, and redesign prevent the same parties from becoming standing supply. The Holder's Good's cumulative-position factor becomes an operational duty here.
Each wronged claim generates violation-grade residue whether or not the act is necessity-required under the proposed Necessity rule; justified overrides within the same act retain their own differentiated residue. The wrong must be acknowledged as a wrong; recurrence must be addressed by design; profit from the wrong can require disgorgement; the proposed claim-relative culpability screen is applied separately. A culpability finding can make the account more specific or satisfy an independently grounded fault-sensitive rule, but it does not itself add a responsive burden. A necessity finding therefore cannot function as institutional immunity.
Residue remains indexed to the addressee, claim ground and classification, actual loss, fault, and control. An arrangement's redesign duty does not transfer whole to an individual participant merely because that person contributed to the wrong. For an individual addressee, non-repetition by design reaches, as applicable, the course of conduct, records, safeguards, handoff, and future choices that the person can control under the relation grounding the claim. Disgorgement requires profit attributable under its own conditions; it is not inferred from role occupancy or salary alone. Limited authority can narrow the form of response without erasing recognition, an owed account, or feasible correction, and it creates no jurisdiction over other parties.
No closure
Repair occurs within an open account. The owing party may show that specified duties were performed, and ordinary procedures may close, but it cannot write “paid in full” for the holder. New evidence, continuing effects, or unperformed duties can reactivate the practical account without implying that every procedure must remain open forever.
Limits
- The differentiation is a proposed completion of the responsiveness ground; its concentration conditions are defended rather than derived.
- The framework does not supply a cardinal measure of compensation or a complete distributive theory.
- Fair participation, de minimis burden, and real reciprocity require institutional and empirical judgment.
- The culpability inquiry does not complete burden-generating desert or alter violation-grade residue merely because fault is established.
- Residue preserves a relation after non-satisfaction; it does not imply that every past holder remains capable of receiving every form of response.
- A candidate or otherwise unresolved ground is not an unsatisfied claim. Withholding residue on that record does not establish that no primary claim exists.