---
slug: kompetenz_kompetenz
name: Kompetenz-Kompetenz
one_liner: "A second-order property of an authority structure: the authority to determine the limits of one's own authority — to decide who has authority and where jurisdictional boundaries fall — so that the allocation of authority itself becomes the object over which authority is exercised."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [structural, legal, political]
origin_domain: constitutional_law
alternate_origin_domains: [international_arbitration, political_theory, organizational_governance, standards_and_protocol_governance]
aliases: [competence_competence, authority_over_authority, jurisdiction_over_jurisdiction, competence_to_decide_competence, meta_authority]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-02 self-application, route M / machinery) — the SECOND-ORDER prime obtained by applying `authority` / `sovereignty` to itself: authority exercised not over conduct within a scope but over the ALLOCATION of authority and the location of jurisdictional boundaries. CONVERGENCE ×2: reached independently from both `sovereignty` and `authority`. Discovered in the op-02 sweep 2026-07-03. STRONG hold (verified absent from corpus; established named doctrine — Kompetenz-Kompetenz in German constitutional & international law; competence-competence in arbitration). STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). SI/SF/similarity are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `authority` and `sovereignty` (the two inputs / parents) and any `rule_of_recognition`, `constitutionalism`, `constituent_power`, `self_reference` / `reflexivity_self_reference` prime if present; confirm it is the genuine second-order lift (authority over the allocation of authority, with the jurisdiction-boundary and regress structure) and not merely a domain-specific instance of a general self-reference prime; draw subsumption/sibling edges to BOTH `authority` and `sovereignty` at incorporation; write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1/v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 4
  domain_breadth: 4
  structural_abstraction: 4
  transfer_evidence: 4
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — an authority structure that contains, as a distinguished object, the authority to decide *who has authority* and *where the boundaries of jurisdiction fall*, so that the allocation of authority is itself a thing over which authority is exercised — is a genuinely substrate-neutral second-order form. It recurs wherever a rule-governed system of binding decision can turn its decisional power back on its own scope: which court decides federal-versus-state boundary disputes (constitutional law), a tribunal ruling on the limits of its own jurisdiction (international arbitration), who sets and revises the org chart (organizational governance), which body is entitled to say which body governs (protocol/standards governance), and any self-amending rule system. These are structurally-unlike siblings sharing only the abstract shape — authority whose object is the distribution of authority — so domain_breadth scores 4 (a shade below the widest primes because the instances cluster in institutional/rule-governed settings rather than spanning physical and biological substrates too). Structural abstraction is 4 because the core is a pure level-2 statement (the object is the allocation of authority, distinct from the level-1 object of any bounded decision), requiring no legal substance to hold; it stays just short of 5 because the authority/jurisdiction vocabulary carries a mild institutional cast. Transfer evidence is strong — the construct is independently and canonically named in at least two distinct legal literatures (constitutional and arbitral).'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: sovereignty
  similarity: 0.6
structural_framed:
  label: structural
  aggregate: 0.42
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.55, evaluative_weight: 0.3, institutional_origin: 0.55, human_practice_bound: 0.45, import_vs_recognize: 0.45}
  rationale: 'Reads structural-to-mixed. The core claim — an authority structure whose distinguished object is the allocation of authority itself, generating the possibility of self-authorization, boundary disputes with no higher arbiter, and a who-decides-who-decides regress — is recognized rather than imported, and travels into arbitration, organizational governance, protocol governance, and any self-amending rule system. The frame residue is real but bounded: the "authority" and "jurisdiction" vocabulary carries an institutional/human-practice cast (keeping institutional_origin and human_practice_bound off the floor), and the concept is most sharply developed inside legal and political practice. But the underlying second-order structure — a distinction between authority-within-a-scope and authority-over-the-scope-boundary — is substrate-neutral and appears wherever a binding-decision system can adjudicate its own limits. Comparable framing to its parents `authority` and `sovereignty`.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Kompetenz-Kompetenz

## Core Idea

Kompetenz-Kompetenz is a *second-order* property of an authority structure: the object of authority is not conduct within a scope but the *allocation of authority itself*. Base-level `authority` is the recognized right to make binding decisions within a given scope — a court, an officer, a body decides matters that fall inside its jurisdiction. Kompetenz-Kompetenz names the fact that some holder can decide *who has authority* and *where the boundaries of jurisdiction fall* — "the competence to decide competence." It is reached from `authority` (and equivalently from `sovereignty`) by applying the power to bind back onto the very question of who is entitled to bind and over what: authority exercised over the distribution of authority, not over any particular matter the authority governs.

The load-bearing anatomy is a distinction that flat authority cannot represent: *first-order authority* (the binding right to decide matters inside a scope) versus *second-order authority* (the right to decide the scope itself). Flat authority has no vocabulary for the question of its own limits, because within a fixed jurisdiction the boundary is a settled background, not a decidable object. Lift authority up one level and the background becomes the foreground — the boundary of jurisdiction is now the thing that is decided. This new meta-level object creates a distinctive and unstable structure: whoever holds it can expand or contest jurisdictional boundaries, which opens the possibility of *self-authorization* (an authority that certifies its own competence), *boundary disputes with no higher arbiter* (two bodies each claiming the right to decide who decides), and *regress* (if one body decides who has authority, who decides that it may so decide?). The feature present at the meta level but absent at the base is precisely this: authority over the allocation of authority, with the self-reference and terminating-arbiter problems that come with it.

Read structurally, the same second-order shape appears wherever a system of binding decision can adjudicate its own limits, and the siblings are genuinely unlike. In *constitutional law*, it is the question of which court decides federal-versus-state jurisdictional boundaries — who owns the boundary between the levels. In *international arbitration*, the competence-competence doctrine is a tribunal's power to rule on its own jurisdiction — the tribunal decides whether it is entitled to decide. In *organizational governance*, it is the power to set and revise the org chart — who allocates roles and reporting lines, as distinct from any decision a role-holder makes. In *protocol and standards governance*, it is the power to decide which body governs a standard — the meta-choice above any particular technical ruling. And in *any self-amending rule system*, it is the rule that says which rules may change the rules. Across these, the shared abstract shape is authority whose object is the distribution of authority; the constitutional case is one species of the genus, and the structurally-unlike siblings show the genus is the bare second-order structure.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by operator 02 (self-application), route M (machinery), as the second-order prime obtained by applying `authority` / `sovereignty` to itself — authority exercised not over conduct within a scope but over the allocation of authority and the location of jurisdictional boundaries. Reached by ×2 convergence: independently from `sovereignty` (final authority within a domain → authority over the domain boundaries themselves) and from `authority` (the right to bind → the right to decide who may bind). Surfaced in the op-02 self-application sweep on 2026-07-03. Established named doctrine: *Kompetenz-Kompetenz* in German constitutional and international law (the competence to determine competence); *competence-competence* in international arbitration (a tribunal's power to rule on its own jurisdiction); related to *constituent power* (pouvoir constituant) and Hart's *rule of recognition*. Claimed siblings: which-court-decides-boundaries in constitutional law, tribunal-jurisdiction-over-its-own-jurisdiction in arbitration, org-chart-setting in organizational governance, which-body-governs in protocol/standards governance, and self-amending rule systems generally. Verified absent from the corpus. Manifest: STRONG hold.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR is strong: Kompetenz-Kompetenz is a *canonical, named legal doctrine* (not a proposer coinage), attested in at least two independent domains (constitutional law and international arbitration), verified absent, reached by ×2 route convergence (from both `authority` and `sovereignty`), with a sharp second-order anatomy — authority over the *allocation* of authority, and the distinctive regress / self-authorization / no-higher-arbiter structure that flat authority cannot represent. It fills a real gap: a prime for "authority over the boundaries of authority" that neither `authority` nor `sovereignty` names. The RISKS Kurt should weigh: (1) **whether it is a distinct prime or a domain-specific instance of a general `self_reference` / `reflexivity_self_reference` prime** — the discriminating claim is that this is specifically *authority's* self-application, carrying the jurisdiction-boundary and terminating-arbiter/regress structure that a generic self-reference prime does not; the object here is not "reference that refers to itself" but "authority whose object is the distribution of authority." (2) **Overlap with `sovereignty`** — sovereignty is *final* authority within a domain; Kompetenz-Kompetenz is authority over the domain *boundaries themselves*, one level up, which is why a sovereign that cannot fix its own borders lacks it and a boundary-fixer that governs nothing else has it; recommend subsumption/sibling edges to both `authority` and `sovereignty` rather than merger. Sharp keep/cut question: *is "authority over the allocation of authority" a distinct prime, or is it just `sovereignty` (final authority) or `self_reference` (reflexivity) wearing a legal name?* — the proposer's answer is that the boundary-of-jurisdiction object, with its regress and no-higher-arbiter structure, is a level-2 feature that neither parent names.

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `authority` and `sovereignty` (the two inputs / dual parents), and against any `rule_of_recognition`, `constitutionalism`, `constituent_power`, and `self_reference` / `reflexivity_self_reference` prime present in the corpus, to confirm no collapse and to fix placement. If kept: draw subsumption/sibling edges to *both* `authority` and `sovereignty` (dual-parent), reflecting the ×2 convergence, and flag the `self_reference` contrast explicitly as a missing-edge note (authority's self-application, not generic reflexivity). Consider composition edges to any `constituent_power` / `rule_of_recognition` prime as mechanisms/instances if present. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
