{
  "id": "ultra-vires.unauthorized",
  "term": "ultra vires",
  "sense": "unauthorized",
  "pos": "adjective",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 15,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "Of an act outside the reach a law gave the one acting, so the walls it sets do not hold and the law reads it as never done.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "reach.action",
      "act.deed",
      "law.rule",
      "give.transfer",
      "wall.range-end",
      "set.fix",
      "hold.physical",
      "read.information",
      "power.over",
      "never.temporal",
      "outside.spatial"
    ],
    "interaction": "A body holds only the reach a law gives it; an act past that edge is not stopped or punished but not recognized, so the walls it tried to set on others never stand. The penalty is authorship removed rather than a wall enforced.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "reach that exists only as given",
      "a wall enforced by not recognizing the crossing",
      "an act done in the world and void in the law"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In Hazell v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC (1991), the House of Lords held that English councils had no power to enter interest rate swaps, so those contracts were void as ultra vires.",
      "domain": "law"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "power.over",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "power is the reach one has over another's walls; ultra vires is reach used past the part a law grants, which the law then refuses to count"
    },
    {
      "id": "illusion-of-control.over",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "illusion of control is a self-model claiming reach it lacks; ultra vires is an act that uses it, and the law voids the act"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "ultra vires"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-ultra-vires.unauthorized"
}