# Claim boundaries

> Updated 3 October 2026: `concept`, `except_when`, `claim`, `definition … sufficient`, and `default` strength have been removed, together with their special deprecation diagnostic. References below to the former behavior and corpus sources are historical. New source uses `relation`, `unless`, `duty`, a strict rule, and `defeasible`.

What the construct does NOT do in 0.2: scope,
reserved values, neighbouring constructs, and the selection rule.

## Does not

- **Not create a fifth modality.** The executable modality set is closed at
  four (`duty`, `liberty`, `power`, `immunity`); a jurisdiction may
  declare surface modalities, but lowering must lead into the four or
  be `opaque`. A claim is a view of one canonical position:
  no second instance, no status ladder of its own.
- **Not hold a duty without an obliged party.** The view is ternary; `duty`
  with one `beneficiary` and no addressee is not a claim — nobody
  answers.
- **Not lower `entitlement` by itself.** Choosing the lowering is the
  author's job, not the engine's: a bare entitlement never becomes a norm; the engine
  does not guess it but rejects the record.
- **Not introduce a `claim` modality.** A claim is a correlative view of a
  duty through `claim_right`; write the normative template as `duty` with
  `bearer` and `beneficiary`.
- **Not replace judgment.** A claim's evaluative content ("fair",
  "reasonable", "proportionate") is the judgment channel, not a goal condition: until the organ
  answers the status is undetermined FOR A REASON (`REQUIRES_JUDGMENT`), see
  the [judgment page](/constructs/judgment-channel/).

## Reserved and closed

- The modality list is closed; the ordinary English word *claim* describes
  a legal relation, while `claim_right(...)` remains a query view, not a
  normative position head.
- The correlative mapping is fixed in three rows (`claim_right` ↔ `duty`,
  `liability` ↔ `power`, `disability` ↔ `immunity`); no invented correlatives.
- A power's `subject` is a closed enumeration of subject matters
  from the empowering act's vocabulary; absence is `LDC-W5302`, excess is
  `LDC-E5307`. This is the neighbouring, not this, construct, but its omission
  is most often masked by the word "entitlement".

## Neighbours and the selection rule

- `duty` vs `liberty`: when another party is obliged to act, write `duty`;
  permission to act without an addressee is `liberty` (Quran Mulk).
- `duty` vs `power`: content is another's act by a deadline — the debtor's duty;
  content is one's own demand decided by an organ — a power
  (`entitlement-as-power/`).
- `entitlement` vs an institutional fact: "meets the conditions" with no
  obliged party — a fact (EU Charter: "NO POSITION").
- The `claim_right(...)` view vs the `then duty` head: a query about the
  correlative right reads the existing position; create the normative
  position through `duty`.