# Representational Authority **Domain:** Rights / Delegation / Identity **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Evolving **Related:** [[Authority–Identity Separation]], [[Descent vs Derivation]], [[Reconstructed Person]], [[Rights]] --- ## Definition **Representational Authority** is the scoped power to speak, decide, publish, contract or otherwise act on behalf of another person, office or lineage. It must be granted, evidenced, limited and revocable independently of resemblance, continuity or technical access. ## Requirements A defensible grant identifies the principal, agent, permitted acts, duration, delegation chain, conflicts, audit trail and termination conditions. Authority should not silently transfer through copied memories, inherited credentials, a familiar voice or successful behavioral imitation. Multi-hop delegation requires a genealogy of authority: **original principal → authorized delegation steps → acting agent → action record**. The downstream actor remains distinguishable from both the originating principal and intermediate agents. Preserving that chain proves where authority came from; it does not make the downstream actor identical to the principal. [[Person of Interest S5E10 — The Day the World Went Away]] shows the Machine using Root's voice while remaining the Machine. The voice may carry emotional and practical authority with grieving listeners, which makes disclosure essential. [[Charlotte Hale]] and [[Halores]] show the institutional danger when a copied face and credential set can transfer office before identity has been established. Representational authority can survive death only through an authorized legal or contractual structure; even then, it is not proof that the representative is the deceased continuant. Conversely, a successor person may possess independent standing while lacking permission to represent the predecessor. ## Key Insight **Fidelity can make representation persuasive; only authorization can make it legitimate.** ## See Also [[Authority–Identity Separation]], [[Proof of Descent]], [[Successor Standing]], [[Person of Interest S5E13 — return 0]], [[Reconstructed Person]] ## Sources / Provenance - [California AB 1836 digital-replica framework](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB1836). - [NIST AI Agent Standards Initiative](https://www.nist.gov/artificial-intelligence/ai-agent-standards-initiative). - [IETF Datatracker: Architectural Requirements for Supporting AI Agents on the Internet](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-daniel-ai-agent-internet-architecture-00) — individual Internet-Draft; see `REQ-AUTH-3` and `REQ-AUTH-4`. - [IETF Datatracker: Agent Identity Protocol](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-singla-agent-identity-protocol/) — individual Internet-Draft proposing cryptographic delegation chains.