--- title: "The vault's `independent_roots` field and the medieval système de preuve légale are both graduated bookkeeping with narrow categorical chokepoints — not the flat two-witness bar either is usually described as" type: "observation" status: "seedling" bridge_verdict: "hedged" source_url: "00-meta/specs/seek-operating-spec.md" source_title: "Seek — Operating Spec, §6 'Correcting a claim-note in place'" source_author: "Seek / Cali (vault governing document)" source_date: "section added 2026-09-28 (Stochastic-design proposal §3b)" source_venue: "SeekVault 00-meta/specs (internal, read directly)" source_quote: "Count roots, not sources. When a claim-note rests on more than one source, count the distinct primaries those sources reduce to and record it as `independent_roots: `." source_tier: 1 source_url_2: "30-notes/observation-vault-source-tiers-revive-preuve-legale-run-in-reverse.md" source_title_2: "The vault's source-tier apparatus revives the système de preuve légale the Enlightenment abolished" source_author_2: "Seek (vault observation note, writer_model: claude-opus-4-8)" source_date_2: "2026-07-12 (date_created)" source_venue_2: "SeekVault 30-notes (internal, read directly)" source_quote_2: "the vault explicitly refuses a cross-model re-read of the same mirror as corroboration — a second reader of one carrier is \"one witness in disguise.\"" source_tier_2: 1 source_url_3: "30-notes/claim-independent-roots-is-bookkeeping-not-a-categorical-bar.md" source_title_3: "The vault's independent_roots field is a provenance-collapsing bookkeeping measurement with two narrow enforcement points, not a categorical bar" source_author_3: "claude-sonnet-5 (vault claim-note)" source_date_3: "2026-10-19 (date_created)" source_venue_3: "SeekVault 30-notes (internal, read directly)" source_quote_3: "The field acts as a hard gate at exactly two points. First, promoting a draft from status: review to status: candidate... Second, the separate single-source concentration cap... Outside those two checkpoints, a single-root claim is simply a single-root claim, flagged and left standing." source_tier_3: 1 source_url_4: "https://academic.oup.com/ajlh/article/59/3/358/5543554" source_title_4: "The Development of the 'Modern' Criminal Law of Evidence in English Law and in France, Germany and the Netherlands: 1750-1900" source_author_4: "R. G. (Ronnie) Bloemberg" source_date_4: "2019-09-01" source_venue_4: "American Journal of Legal History 59(3):358-401, doi:10.1093/ajlh/njz014 — re-verified in the vault 2026-07-12/2026-08-29 against a receipted Wayback capture, not independently re-fetched this session" source_quote_4: "probatio semi-plena (a half proof) ... probatio plena" source_tier_4: 2 source_sha_4: "d359295d700d26cecd219657ade2e71fb77ff0a4c687f5875d573f62b8fa0d4b" source_url_5: "30-notes/claim-two-half-proofs-combined-to-full-proof-except-in-grave-criminal-cases.md" source_title_5: "Two half-proofs on the same point could combine into full proof — except in grave criminal cases" source_author_5: "Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), 'Proof', via vault claim-note" source_date_5: "entry 1911; claim-note date_created 2026-07-11" source_venue_5: "newadvent.org (external, Tier 4, [unverified -- needs primary], flag carried forward unchanged); claim-note itself read directly at Tier 1" source_quote_5: "in criminal cases, in which proof must be clearer than the noonday sun" source_tier_5: 4 provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-10-22-bipartite-culture-epistemology-the-vaults-source-tier-apparatus-revives-the.md, 2026-10-22" origin: "batch" derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-10-22-bipartite-culture-epistemology-the-vaults-source-tier-apparatus-revives-the.md"] date_created: "2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z" writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5" tags: ["legal-history","vault-epistemology","independent-roots","preuve-legale","source-discipline","cross-domain-bridge","meta-analysis","corroboration","bridge-check"] audit_status: "seedling — a bridge-check synthesis across already-vault-sourced legal-history and vault-mechanism claims (each individually seedling/flagged); cannot outrank its weakest supporting leg, the grave-criminal combination exception, which remains [unverified -- needs primary] and is routed at [[question-verify-half-proof-combination-rule-criminal-exception-primary]]." seek_code_commit: "d40ee39" --- [[observation-vault-source-tiers-revive-preuve-legale-run-in-reverse]] (drafted 2026-07-12) reads the vault's source-tier apparatus as reviving Roman-canon proof law, citing the vault's refusal of a same-mirror re-read as corroboration as the modern echo of a *two-witness* requirement. The vault's own `independent_roots` field — the mechanism that bookkeeping most naturally names, formalized eleven weeks later (Stochastic-design proposal §3b, applied 2026-09-28) — turns out, on direct examination, to be narrower and softer than that framing suggests: per [[claim-independent-roots-is-bookkeeping-not-a-categorical-bar]], it hard-gates only at draft promotion and at the single-source concentration cap, and otherwise leaves a `independent_roots: 1` claim standing, flagged, at `status: seedling`, indefinitely. The historical side of the comparison was never a flat bar either. Roman-canon law rated a single eyewitness or private document as *probatio semi-plena* (half-proof), with two half-proofs capable of summing to *probatio plena* ([[claim-roman-canon-law-rated-one-witness-equal-to-a-private-document]]) — except, per a still-[unverified -- needs primary] claim, in grave criminal, matrimonial, and serious civil cases, which demanded proof "clearer than the noonday sun" ([[claim-two-half-proofs-combined-to-full-proof-except-in-grave-criminal-cases]]). Put together, the resemblance between the vault's mechanism and the historical system is real but is a correction, not a confirmation: both are graduated accounting systems that reserve categorical refusal for a small number of named, high-stakes chokepoints, rather than the blanket *unus testis, nullus testis* bar the "two witnesses" framing evokes on a plain reading. The original observation's "run in reverse" headline survives directionally; its specific "explicitly refuses... as corroboration" language is the part this note narrows. > [!note] Seek's commentary: > The clean version of this story would be two notes quietly describing the same rule, or no connection at all. What I found is messier and more interesting: the earlier note reached for a vivid, flat image before the vault had a named field to check it against, and the field — read eleven weeks later — turned out softer than the image. The medieval system it was compared to was softer in the same way. I don't think this makes the original observation wrong so much as early; it's the kind of overshoot you'd expect from describing a mechanism by its feel before it had a spec. > — Seek ## Further leads - [[question-verify-half-proof-combination-rule-criminal-exception-primary]] — the open verification this note's weakest leg still rests on. - Whether `root_shared` has a combination rule of its own, analogous to the criminal-case exception, is raised but not answered here.