Paracoercion

“…as to your avowed intention to institute a Universal Income, we welcome such systems – as evidenced by our own Citizen’s Dividend – as an excellent answer to paracoercive states. (Para-, in this case, meaning “not really”, but having initially solved the ethical problems of true coercion, which is to say choice-theft, we may rightly turn our attention to the moral concern of those whose volitional phase-space is limited not by the actions of others, but the insufficiency of their own resources.)

“The difficulty, of course, is that one is not permitted to use unethical means in the pursuit of moral ends, for the one is mandatory and the other supererogatory, as is necessarily the case when ill means poison all good ends. For ourselves, the Citizen’s Dividend is a voluntary obligation accepted by all of our citizen-shareholders in their signing of the Imperial Charter, and since citizen-shareholdership is a privilege (which may be denied by the existing citizen-shareholders in Senate assembled on the grounds of philosophical incompatibility), those lacking properly enlightened self-interest or the generosity appropriate to a daryteir are merely denied that privilege.

“As a korasmóníë, of course, such a Universal Income in your case, if attained through political means, would be doing precisely that, inasmuch as it would be funded by institutionalized robbery on a mass scale. We would not, and obviously did not, find this acceptable in our own case. However, in yours…

“In your case, we must acknowledge reluctantly that local conditions do not always admit of the immediate implementation of ethically perfect solutions. I fear I am as unable to offer you advice on this matter as the old proverb would have it. While it is easy for me to advocate the construction of a system such as ours funded by infrastructure returns and externality fees, or one entirely funded by voluntary contributions in the manner of the Plurality, this depends on an existing consensualist governance, or at the least one which can be counted on not to interfere.

“As for the other, you yourself must weigh in the balance the reduction of paracoercion against the increase in coercion actual in the context of progress towards your desired consensualist future, while bearing in mind the risk – I have attached a number of relevant clionomic models – that a nonconsensual Universal Income carries with it a substantial risk of becoming an instrument of mulcting in perpetuity.

“If I may offer a final thought: I would only remind you that “While certainty is best, where there is doubt, it is best to err on the side of the Excellences. For the enlightened sophont acting in accordance with Excellence can only be betrayed, and cannot do wrong.”

– Meris Ejava, Freedom’s Seed COG, letter to the Second Temne Seed

The Imperial Charter: Section Thirteen

…continued from parts ten, eleven, and twelve.

SECTION XIII: THE EUPRAXIC COLLEGIUM

(Note: this entire section was added by the Eleventh Amendment, passed in 0000 as a response to the steady increase in the power available to individuals, which (with reference to incidents in the few years immediately preceding it) greatly increased the potential harm that an irrational individual could cause if unchecked and undetected, and with reference also to the code of behavior (based on the Eupraxia) coded into the structure of AI operating systems, the eleventh amendment imposed the requirement of a similar eupraxic code on all sophonts within the Empire, and established a body to define it, implement testing for it, and in other ways to care for the avoidance of pernicious irrationality and the promotion of rational thought.  — ed.)

Article I: Charter of the Eupraxic Collegium

Inasmuch as essential prerequisites to the liberties of the citizen-shareholders of the Empire and the prosperity and good order of our civilization are the rational choices of its citizen-shareholders;

And inasmuch as developments in technology have placed greater and greater energies into the hands of the individual sophont; and further, have enabled new technologies of mental editing, desire control, and personality analysis to be developed and used;

And inasmuch as these developments pose a great threat to the liberties, prosperity and good order aforementioned, when wielded by minds unstable or irrational;

We hereby charter and establish the Eupraxic Collegium, for the purpose of monitoring and assuring the rationality and good mental health of the citizen-shareholders of the Empire.

Article II: Purposes of the Eupraxic Collegium

To fulfill the purposes for which it is chartered, the Eupraxic Collegium shall be granted the following powers:

  • To define, maintain, and update standards of rationality, of stability under stress, and a eupraxic code, which shall henceforth be adhered to by all citizen-shareholders of the Empire;
  • To routinely audit and certify the mind of every citizen-shareholder of the Empire, on a regular basis, as executing within such standards of rationality, and as stable under such levels of stress; and to offer such higher levels of certification on the basis of rationality as shall also be defined;
  • To, when under audit the mind of a citizen-shareholder of the Empire shall be found not to execute within such standards of rationality or stability, take such corrective action as shall be necessary to restore said mind to a rational and stable state;
  • To investigate cases and trends of cacopraxia which do not themselves qualify as pernicious irrationalism, and to take such measures as are permissible within the rights outlined in this Charter to advise and guide against them;
  • To produce, maintain, publish and promulgate an ontology and set of social and economic protocols capable of fulfilling the purposes of sophont interaction and the recording of knowledge, while acting to propagate rational thought free from bias and irrational axiom;
  • To research further advancements in the science of clionomy; and to produce projections, extrapolations, and computations therefrom;
  • And to investigate cases of self-reproducing thought-code; toxic memes; and other infectious information capable of propagating irrationality, and to take such action as is necessary to prevent their free propagation.

Article III: Governance of the Eupraxic Collegium

To achieve the above purposes, The Eupraxic Collegium shall be governed by a council of twelve officers, the Clarifiers of the Collegium, each of whom shall be appointed by the Imperial Couple with the advice and consent of the Senate, and who shall be passed at the highest degree of rationality by the previously existing procedures of the Collegium before their appointment, and who shall be Aspects of the Eldraeic Transcend.

Each Clarifier of the Collegium shall be audited no less often than once in each week to the strictest degree of scrutiny practiced by the Collegium; and should such examination reveal any deviation from the highest degree of rationality, the Clarifier shall be suspended from office until such deviation is corrected.

(The boldface in the article above is another addition by the Twelfth Amendment. — ed.)

Article IV: Rationality of Collegium Officers

Each and every officer of the Eupraxic Collegium shall be audited at such intervals and to such degree of scrutiny as the Clarifiers of the Collegium shall find appropriate for the office to which they have been appointed; and should such examination reveal any deviation below the appointed degree of rationality for that office, the officer shall be suspended from office until such deviation is corrected.

Article V: Responsibility of the Citizen Mentality

Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of permitting the officers of the Eupraxic Collegium, duly appointed to audit the minds of citizen-shareholders, to access their static and dynamic mind-state for the sole purpose of auditing its structure and algorithm to assess the rationality and stability thereof.

Such static mind-states, having been audited, shall be erased forthwith; and an officer of the Eupraxic Collegium, having audited a mind-state, shall redact and erase from their memory all information gained from their study of that mindstate not germane to the assessment of its rationality and stability, specifically including all memory information; and each audited citizen-shareholder of the Empire shall have the right to examine the records confirming that this has been done.

RATIFICATION

Given under our hands and seals this day, 17th of the Fourth Cycle of Selene, 1,828th Year of the Calendar of Rhoës;

ALPHAS I AMANYR, EMPEROR OF CESTIA and the UNION OF EMPIRES

SELEDIË III SELEQUELIOS, EMPRESS OF SELENARIA and the UNION OF EMPIRES

LORAN CAMRÍÄD, THÉARCH of the DEEPING

LIRÍEL LÁRATHYR, QUEEN OF VERANTHYR

VARÍÄN LEIRAVÁL, KING OF LEIRIN for the POLYARCHY of the SILVER CRESCENT

…and we’re done!

The Imperial Charter: Sections Ten, Eleven, and Twelve

…continued from parts eight and nine.

SECTION X: MATTERS FISCAL

Article I: On Currency

The Empire shall establish a single unit of exchange to use in commerce between the nations of the Empire and with those beyond its borders, and this shall become the base for the coin, currency and values minted by the nations of the Empire, which shall have with it an absolute relation. The Empire shall have the responsibility and the power to protect and control the value of this currency.

A nation of the Empire shall not coin money outside the bounds of this unified system of exchange, nor shall make anything except for currencies of this system legal tender for the payment of debts.

Article II: On the Imperial Revenue

The government of the Empire, and the governments of its constituent nations, to such extent as voluntary contributions and infrastructure usage fees do not suffice, shall be funded by an annual fee in direct proportion to incomes earned, or from whatever other source derived, by citizen-shareholders of the Empire and coadunations chartered therein, levied by an instrumentality of the Imperial Service created for that purpose, and by its citizen-shareholders paid, save that coadunation income passed through to their members shall not be again counted.

Under no circumstances shall this fee exceed a fifth part of the gross income of each citizen-shareholder or coadunation upon whom it is levied.

Article III: On Imperial Disbursements

No money shall be drawn from the Treasury of the Empire, but in consequence of appropriations enacted by the Senate; and the accounts of the Treasury, with a full accounting of receipts and expenditures, shall be available for the public use.

After the first fiscal year of the Empire, the total outlays of the Imperial government for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for the previous fiscal year, unless:

  • such outlays shall exceed receipts by an amount which is covered in its entirety by funds reserved within the treasury, and such outlays are authorized by the hand of the Imperial Couple;
  • or such outlays shall exceed receipts by an amount which would require the sale of Imperial bonds, or other borrowing on the credit of the Empire, and such outlays are authorized by a substantive vote of the Imperial Senate, and by no other means.

Prior to each fiscal year, the Imperial Couple shall propose to the Senate a proposed budget for the Imperial government for that fiscal year, in which total outlays do not exceed total receipts, save as authorized by the above rule.

Article IV: On Disbursements to Constituent Nations

In the first fiscal year of the Empire, the government of the Empire shall retain one-third of the revenues collected for its own use, and the remaining two-thirds of the revenues collected shall be available to the constituent nations of the Empire to draw upon; and each constituent nation of the Empire shall be permitted to draw upon a portion of this two-thirds in due proportion to its population.

In subsequent fiscal years, the budget proposed to the Senate shall set the portion of the revenues collected which the Exchequer shall reserve; and this budget shall also set the formula determining the availability of funds to each demesne of the Empire as it shall see fit, providing only that the formula shall be applied equally to all.

Notwithstanding the above, the Imperial Couple or the Senate may, by special decree, make extraordinary funds available to any demesne of the Empire for such purposes as it shall designate.

Article V: On the Reserve Fund

The Exchequer shall maintain a Reserve Fund against variability in Imperial revenues, by appropriating revenue in excess of disbursements; and increases in budgeted disbursements, both to the Imperial government and to the nations of the Empire, shall only be permitted inasmuch as they are covered threefold by the money available in the Reserve Fund; and the Empire may enter into no contract permitting future increases of disbursements that does not acknowledge this constraint.

Article VI: On Imperial Debt

The base limit on the aggregate debt of the Empire held by the public is hereby set at one million Cestian brights, or their equivalent in the Imperial currency, once established, or a fifth part of the national income, whichever is greater;

And this limit shall not be increased, unless the Senate shall provide by law for such an increase by a substantive vote, and by no other means;

And having been increased, in each following fiscal year the limit on the debt of the Empire shall decrease by such amount of the debt as is repaid, until the current limit shall return to the base limit. The repayment of such extraordinary debt, over a set term not to exceed one hundred and forty four years, shall have priority over all other appropriations and disbursements of the Imperial government.

Article VII: Borrowing by Constituent Nations

Constituent nations of the Empire shall not borrow funds from any source except the Exchequer; and such borrowing from the Exchequer shall require the permission of the Senate.

SECTION XI: MATTERS MILITARY

Article I: Imperial Military Service

For the purpose of defending the territories and the citizens of the Empire, its governance shall maintain a standing military force sufficient to defend each and every territory occupied by citizen-shareholders of the Empire, and, where necessary, to intervene abroad for their defense.

Article II: Organization and Command

The military forces of the Empire shall be organized as part of the Imperial Service, and the Imperial Couple shall command all military forces of the Empire, although this command shall be delegated to the runér in the case of units in garrison; but the first loyalty of all military units shall always be to the Empire.

Article III: Citizen Militia

Additionally, as the common defense is a duty of every citizen-shareholder, the governance of the Empire shall provide militia training to any citizen volunteers who request it, and maintain a stockpile of military weaponry for their use in the event of invasion, insurrection, or subversion.

SECTION XII: TRANSPARENCY

Article I: Transparency

In order to promote good governance, and to ensure the fulfillment of the responsibilities to the citizen-shareholders of the Empire implicit in the coronargyr that is the basis of the right and authority to govern, the governments of the Empire and its constituent nations shall conduct their work as openly as possible (In the modern era, this has been interpreted to permit the distributed auditing of the governments of the Empire and its constituent nations by all Imperial citizen-shareholders. — ed.).

Article II: Citizen Access

To fulfill this promise of transparency, any citizen-shareholder of the Empire, and any legal coadunation within the Empire, shall have the right of access to the documentation and archives of the government of the Empire; except for those which, for the public safety, must remain held in confidence, or which relate to public order operations currently in progress.

…continued in part thirteen and final.

 

The Imperial Charter: Sections Eight and Nine

…continued from part seven.

SECTION VIII: THE RUNÉR

Article I: Functions of the Runér

Each demesne of the Empire shall be governed by a duly appointed runér (Note that since the Empire recognizes multiple forms of government, a runér is not necessarily a singular entity. Letters patent are routinely issued to the offices of diarchies and triumvirs, the occasional ruling council, and even (in rare cases, since most of them manage to appoint a representative for the purposes of the special powers conferred) the occasional Athenian democracy. –ed.), who shall administer the demesne in accordance with their right of coronargyr and the Imperial Mandate held from the Imperial Couple, to achieve the purposes of Imperial government and uphold Imperial law, in accordance with this Charter.

The functions and powers of a runér shall comprise the following:

  • To implement and execute the system of government of their appointed demesne, as defined in its Charter and laws.
  • To supervise the operation of the Imperial Service and command all other Imperial servants and Imperial resources within their appointed demesne.
  • To ensure the enforcement of law within their appointed demesne; to supervise the Curial courts where necessary; and to carry out such formal enquiries as are necessary.
  • To prepare and enact such legislation as is necessary for the proper governance of their appointed demesne, as provided for by its Charter, provided that such neither contradicts the laws of the Empire nor those of a superior demesne.
  • To make such decrees as are necessary to handle circumstances for which no legislation provides.
  • To control the budget of their appointed demesne, to request extraordinary funds and loans when necessary from the Exchequer; and therein to allocate and appropriate funds as necessary for all the functions and operations of its government.
  • To command such armed forces of the Empire as are in garrison within their appointed demesne as necessary for its defense, under the supreme command of the Imperial Couple.

Article II: Assembly

Each demesne of the Empire, of 1,728 citizen-shareholders or more in size, shall select from its citizen-shareholders an assembly, of whichsoever structure and by whichsoever means shall be deemed proper in that place, to offer counsel to and prepare legislation for the runér appointed to that demesne, as the Senate for the Imperial Couple; and with a substantive vote, in accordance with the rules for such applying to the Senate, that assembly shall have the power to veto legislative acts of that runér, where such are carried out on their own authority.

Article III: Fealty

While the first loyalty of all runér shall be to the Empire, as the source and fountainhead of the Imperial Mandate, and the second shall be to the Imperial Couple, by right of coronargyr, fealty and duties beyond these shall be owed by each runér appointed to the superior demesne to that to which they have been appointed; and each runér appointed to a demesne beneath that to which they have been appointed shall owe them this same fealty and duty within the bounds of their loyalty to Empire and Imperial Couple.

Article IV: Praetorate and Exultancy

The Imperial Couple may, to provide due honor and dignities to officials of the Imperial Service, create noble ranks and titles, which shall collectively be known as the Praetorate, and to provide due honor and reward to citizens of the Empire for great merit, create noble ranks and titles, which shall collectively be known as the Exultancy; and those upon whom these titles are bestowed shall possess the right to the precedence, courtesies and honor of their rank, and shall be considered part of the runér darëssef, but shall not possess the Imperial Mandate, nor any of the rights, privileges, or authority to command inherent therein.

Article V: Revocation

The patent and Mandate of a runér, praetor, or exultant may only be revoked by the Curia, upon petition from the Imperial Couple, the Senate, or the assembly of the runér‘s demesne; and the Curia’s own judgment upon the substance of the petition shall be the final determinant.

Article VI: Sacrosanctity

The persons of runér shall be sacrosanct; while they are acting within their right of coronargyr, no authority or forces may be levied against them, save by their superiors, or that their delegated Mandate shall first have been revoked; and having resigned or having been been removed thus from their position, no action in law against them for any action which they shall have undertaken within their Mandated authority shall succeed, save only an action in respect of legislation or action outside the bounds of this Charter.

Article VII: States of Emergency and Martial Law

A runér shall, when a clear and present danger to the public order, the public safety, or the public health shall demand it, have the power to declare a state of emergency for their appointed demesne; and when the normal instrumentalities of government are unable to operate, to place their appointed demesne under martial law; each subject only to vacation by the runér appointed to the superior demesne to that to which they have been appointed, or by the Imperial Couple.

Situations arising during a state of emergency shall not come under judicial jurisdiction until after the emergency has passed; and for such situations as arise during a state of martial law, runér and officers of the Empire shall be responsible, not under civil law, but under military law, for actions performed during said state.

Article VIII: Succession

Inasmuch as the demesnes of the Empire reflect differing forms of government, the succession of each runér shall be set by each demesne in its Charter, as it shall see fit, and the founding nations of the Empire shall retain their existing rules of succession until and unless they shall legislate otherwise; but no runér shall succeed to office without the approval of the Imperial Couple.

SECTION IX: THE IMPERIAL SERVICE

Article I: Functions of the Imperial Service

The Empire reserves to itself the power to create as it sees fit instrumentalities to carry out the detailed administration and executive functions of the Empire and enforce the Imperial will. This shall include the power to abolish said ministries as the Empire sees fit. The management of these instrumentalities shall be placed in the hands of Ministers of the Throne, as the office shall require, under the direction of the Imperial Couple, and these instrumentalities shall be known collectively as the Imperial Service.

Article II: Composition of the Imperial Service

The Imperial Service shall be composed of instrumentalities organized in accordance with the areas of executive function of the Imperial government. Each of these instrumentalities shall be headed by a Minister of the Throne, who shall sit upon the Council of the Star and serve at the pleasure of the Imperial Couple. The Imperial Couple may, by legislation, create new instrumentalities of the Imperial Service, and may abolish existing instrumentalities whose existence is not required by this Charter.

At the time of the ratification of this Charter, the Exchequer shall be established as the first instrumentality of the Imperial Service, subject to amendment by acts of the Imperial Couple, and shall carry out all functions of the Imperial Service relating to currency and finance.

Article III: Organization of the Service

For the purpose of performing administrative functions internal to the Imperial Service, including but not limited to appointments, archives, logistics, pay, procurement, promotions, rations, recruitment and technique, the Imperial Service shall maintain its own infrastructure, outside any instrumentality of purpose, and for this purpose, this infrastructure shall be headed by a Secretary-General (This office was de facto combined with the Lord Keeper of the Registry of the Imperial Service early in the reign of Valentia I, and they have remained combined ever since. The title of “Secretary-General of the Imperial Service” is thus effectively extinct. — ed.), who shall serve at the pleasure of the Imperial Couple.

Article IV: Information

Each Minister of the Imperial Service shall provide, upon request and in writing, any information or opinion upon any subject related to their instrumentality which the Imperial Couple shall see fit to request; and each Minister of the Imperial Service being also a liaison between that particular agency and the Senate, shall respond at any time to any questions or other requests for information from the President of the Senate.

Article V: Transfer and Interim

Upon the ratification of this Charter, each of the existing instrumentalities of the Union of Empires, of the Deeping, of Veranthyr, and of the nations of the Silver Crescent shall be transferred in whole to the Imperial Service, and the Imperial Couple shall, by legislation, see to their amalgamation and disposal.

…continued in parts ten, eleven, and twelve.

 

The Imperial Charter: Section Seven

…continued from part six.

SECTION VII: THE SENATE

Article I: Functions of the Senate

The functions and powers of the Imperial Senate shall comprise the following:

  • To prepare and present to the Imperial Couple for enacture detailed legislation in any and all areas of authority of the Imperial government, as defined in this Charter; and to amend or repeal such laws thus as are deemed necessary.
  • To prepare and present to the Imperial Couple for enacture such decrees as they deem necessary to handle circumstances for which no legislation provides.
  • To prepare and present to the Imperial Couple for enacture legislation to meet the Empire’s obligations under any treaty which the Senate shall choose to ratify, which shall nonetheless not be effective unless the Imperial Couple shall choose to enact it.
  • To provide to the Imperial Couple such advice and counsel as they shall deem appropriate, or that the Imperial Couple shall request from them.
  • To review, amend, and approve each budget submitted to them by the Imperial Couple, and to return it to them for enacture.
  • To adjudicate, mediate and rule upon disputes, other than disputes at law, between constituent nations of the Empire and demesnes of different nations thereof.
  • To approve the appointment of ambassadors to foreign nations nominated by the Imperial Couple.
  • To approve or repeal those treaties and agreements which governed relations between the Empire’s constituent nations prior to the founding of the Empire, or which governed relations between the Empire and a nation newly admitted to the Empire, and to codify the requirements of such treaties as shall be approved as Imperial statute law.
  • To declare a state of war, except in such cases where the state of war is required by existing Imperial law, or where invasion or imminent danger shall require such a state to be declared before the Senate may meet, in which case the power to do so shall belong to the Imperial Couple.
  • The Senate may, without the Imperial assent, enact rules governing its own behavior, censure its members for unfitting behavior; and with a substantive vote, proscribe its members from sitting.

The Senate may, additionally, discuss any other matter at any time, in order to express the sense of the Senate on a matter via a Senate Proclamation, although it may not legislate upon matters outside its Constitutional authority.

The Senate shall have two powers over the Imperial Couple: they shall have the power to declare the dissolution of the Empire, and they shall have the power to disqualify an Imperial Couple from ascending to the Imperial right and authority. However, these powers shall only be exercised for just and proper cause.

Article II: Composition of the Imperial Senate

The Imperial Senate shall be composed of three Chambers, designated and constructed as follows:

  • The Chamber of Counselors, to represent the highest knowledge and achievement of the Empire;
  • The Chamber of Demesnes, to represent the sovereignties which are joined together in the Empire; and
  • The Chamber of the People, to represent all the people of the Empire, indivisibly.

All those appointed to the Imperial Senate, regardless of Chamber, shall be entitled to the title of Senator.

No Senator shall be less than 27 years of age, and possessed of full legal capacity; shall not have completed a course of education appropriate to a daryteir; or shall have been convicted of any felony, or misdemeanor of moral turpitude; or shall not have been an Imperial citizen-shareholder for nine years, unless made a citizen-shareholder by the ratification of this Charter; or shall have failed to pay an amount in due service fees to the Empire for the six years preceding his appointment.

Article III: The Chamber of Counselors

The Chamber of Counselors shall consist of 72 delegates, nominated and selected on the basis of their personal excellence, as evidenced by unstained honor, peerless wisdom, success in the arts, philosophies, sciences, commerce, or war, or deeds of renown without peer even among the ranks of the exultant.

Senators of the Chamber of Counselors shall serve for terms of twelve years; and one-third of the Chamber shall be reselected in every fourth year. Such delegates may serve indefinitely, should no adequate peer be found to take their place; but after serving their first term, they may decline the honor of further service, if the Imperial Couple shall permit.

Candidates for the Chamber of Counselors shall be nominated by the Imperial Service according to the criteria set forth by this Charter and by such law as shall refine them, to the number of 144, and shall vote amongst themselves, none being permitted to vote for their own selection, until the Chamber of Counselors is complete.

When vacancies occur in the Chamber of Counselors for any reason, the most senior of the remaining candidates nominated at the time of the nomination of the Senator vacating his seat shall be appointed to fill such a vacancy for the remainder of that term.

Article IV: The Chamber of Demesnes

For the purpose of selecting delegates to become Senators in the Chamber of Demesnes, delegates shall be selected from the demesnes of the Empire on the following basis:

  1. Each demesne of the Empire whose citizen-shareholder population is one one-hundred-forty-fourth of the Imperial citizen-shareholder population or greater shall appoint a single delegate to the Chamber of Demesnes;
  2. The demesnes of the Empire whose citizen-shareholder population is less than one one-hundred-forty-fourth shall be grouped into Circles whose total citizen-shareholder populations shall be both:
    1. As close to equal as is practically possible;
    2. And shall not exceed one one-hundred-forty-fourth of the Imperial citizen-shareholder population;
  3. From each Circle, a single demesne shall be selected by random drawing, and that demesne shall appoint a single delegate to the Chamber of Demesnes, and that delegate shall represent all demesnes of that Circle; and the other demesnes of that Circle shall appoint advisors for his counsel.

No Senator of the Chamber of Demesnes shall not be a resident of the demesne, or of one of the demesnes within the Circle, for which he has been appointed.

Senators of the Chamber of Demesnes shall serve for terms of twelve years. Such delegates may serve for twelve successive terms only, unless their reappointment is approved by a two-thirds vote of the Chamber of Demesnes.

When vacancies occur in the Chamber of Demesnes for any reason, the government of the represented demesne shall appoint another to fill such vacancies for the remainder of that term.

Article V: The Chamber of the People

For the purpose of selecting delegates to become Senators in the Chamber of the People, the citizen-shareholders of the Empire shall be divided into 144 1,728 centuries, by random and permanent assignment. A single delegate to the Chamber of the People shall be selected from each century, from among those citizen-shareholders of that century who shall be qualified for such selection; and such selection shall take place at least one month before the first session of the year.

No runér, no magistrate of a Curial court, and no-one in the Imperial Service above executorial rank shall be eligible for the Chamber of the People.

Senators of the Chamber of the People shall serve for six-year terms, and one-third of the Chamber shall be reselected in every second year. One who has served as Senator for a particular century shall be ineligible for selection again until twelve subsequent selections have been made.

When vacancies happen in the representation in the Chamber of the People for any reason, the Imperial Couple shall issue a Writ of Selection to fill such vacancies for the remainder of that term.

(The strikeout/boldface in the above article represents the First Amendment, expanding the Chamber of the People by increasing the number of centuries from 144 to 1,728. This significantly expanded the flexibility of the Senate to represent the different bodies of opinion among the people, as the Empire expanded, at the price of additional administrative overhead. As a historical note, while additional expansions to the Chamber (and, indeed, the Chamber of Demesnes) have often been mooted, the administrative difficulties of supporting meaningful debate between such a larger number has invariably resulted in the defeat of such amendments. )

Article VI: Aisymnetes

In times of interregnum or emergency, where no legitimate Imperial power exists, the Senate may grant through the mechanism of the aisymnetes the Imperial right and authority to another, for a term not to exceed one year. At the time of such appointment, the Senate may prescribe boundaries within which the selected one is obliged to remain. At the end of his term, the actions of the selected one shall be subject to confirmation by the Senate.

Article VII: Appointments

Approval of appointments, both those of ambassadors and diplomatic officers, and those other appointments which legislation may place in their purview, shall require a two-thirds vote of both the Chamber of the People and of the Chamber of Demesnes.

Article VIII: Citizen-Shareholder Veto

Any Senator may invoke a citizen-shareholder veto upon any legislative act currently before by the Senate, and said act is, unless addressing a present emergency or such imminent danger as not to admit of delay, then to be voted on by all of the citizen-shareholders of the Empire before its implementation. A simple majority vote of the citizenry is sufficient to veto the passage of such an act. When such a veto is invoked on an act addressing an emergency or imminent danger, it shall be implemented immediately, but the citizen-shareholder veto shall cause it to be repealed immediately should the vote be successful.

Article IX: Enabling Acts

No law shall be passed routinely exempting the Imperial Couple, the Senate, or Curia, or any other instrumentality of the Imperial government, from any provision of any Imperial law; but recognizing that extraordinary circumstances often demand extraordinary measures, the Senate may authorize, through the mechanism of the Enabling Act, a specified set of extraordinary measures to be undertaken, though they conflict with any Imperial law outside this Charter, and these measures shall be considered lawful.

Article X: Initiatives

Every citizen-shareholder of the Empire has the right to submit a legislative proposal to the Senate by written petition through the public dataweave, and such proposals shall be made available for public vote, and any legislative proposal that receives the support of one twelfth part of the population shall be brought before the Senate and there debated.

(Strikethrough and boldface in the above article are the Second Amendment, passed as part of the on-line governance reforms in the heyday of the first Empire-wide public networks, which replaced the then increasingly archaic written petition procedure for submitting citizen legislative proposals with a mechanism for such to be done electronically. )

Article XI: Legislative Unity

No bill brought before the Senate shall contain legislation touching on more than one subject, except for non-substantive bills for revision or codification of the statute law brought before the Senate by the Curia; or budgetary bills; or bills of appropriation.

Neither budgetary bills nor bills of appropriation shall contain legislative elements, or other matters outside the defined purpose of the bill; nor shall the Senate, within a bill of appropriation, seek to manage the allocation of appropriations beyond the stated purpose of the bill.

Article XII: Magnates

Should any Imperial citizen show great ability and wisdom, it shall be the right of the Imperial Couple or the Senate to nominate him for a seat in the Chamber of Counselors, and this being approved jointly by the Imperial Couple and a two-thirds vote of the full Senate, he shall be granted the right to attend meetings of the Chamber or of the full Senate and there speak, although he shall not have a vote, and the title of Magnate.

Should it prove necessary, such Magnates shall be subject to discipline and censure in the same manner as Senators.

Article XIII: Matters of Substance

On such bills for which this Charter shall require a substantive vote, and on such bills as subsequent legislation or an adopted procedure of the Senate shall require a substantive vote, and on such individual votes for which at least one-sixth of the Senators there voting shall require a substantive vote, the Senate shall require a five-sixths vote to affirm.

A bill or other vote upon which a substantive vote is required in a single Chamber shall require a substantive vote to be taken in every Chamber in which it must be voted upon; and should it have failed to achieve a substantive vote in a previous Chamber before the requirement was known, it must be returned to that Chamber, there to achieve one, before it may pass.

Article XIV: President of the Senate

At the beginning of each year’s fixed session of the Senate, the Senate as a whole shall elect from itself, by a two-thirds majority, the President of the Senate, who shall be empowered to summon the Senate into special session, to oversee the Senate’s deliberations, to appoint and to command such other officers of the Senate as it shall deem necessary to its functions, to ensure that the Senate’s Chartered duties are carried out, and to represent the Senate to the Imperial Couple, the Curia, and the people of the Empire. The President of the Senate shall hold his office until the beginning of the next year’s fixed session.

The President of the Senate may be removed at any time by a vote of no confidence in his leadership, which shall require a two-thirds majority of the Senate as a whole.

Article XV: Procedures

Any legislative measure, or other bill, save a bill for repeal, may be introduced in either the Chamber of the People or the Chamber of Demesnes, and shall become effective when passed by a two-thirds vote of both the Chamber of the People and the Chamber of Demesnes, except in those cases where a substantive vote is specified in this Charter, or by subsequent legislation or an adopted procedure of the Senate, or is called for by one-sixth of the Senators there voting.

Should a legislative measure, or other bill, fail to achieve a two-thirds vote, or substantive vote, in both Chambers, it shall be referred to the Chamber of Counselors for decision, and a two-thirds vote, or substantive vote, shall make it effective. The Senate may not, however, require less than a two-thirds vote of both Chambers to enact new legislation.

The Chamber of Counselors may initiate any legislative measure, or other bill, including a bill for repeal, by simple majority vote, which shall then be submitted to the other two Chambers for enacture.

As an advisory body, the Chamber of Counselors may introduce an opinion or motion on any measure pending before either of the other two Chambers; and either of the other Chambers may request the opinion of the Chamber of Counselors before acting upon a measure.

Each Chamber of the Senate shall adopt its own detailed rules of procedure, which shall be consistent with the procedural rules set forth in this Charter.

Article XVI: Repeal

A bill for repeal may be introduced in either the Chamber of the People or the Chamber of Demesnes, and shall become effective when passed by a one-third vote of both the Chamber of the People and the Chamber of Demesnes, except in those cases where a substantive vote is specified in this Charter, or by subsequent legislation or an adopted procedure of the Senate, or is called for by one-sixth of the Senators there voting, in which case it shall be effective when passed by a one-half vote of both the Chamber of the People and the Chamber of Demesnes.

Should a bill for repeal fail to achieve a one-third vote, or substantive vote, in both Chambers, it shall be referred to the Chamber of Counselors for decision, and a one-third vote, or substantive vote, shall make it effective. The Senate may not, however, require less than, or more than, a one-third vote of both Chambers to repeal legislation.

Article XVII: Quorum

The Senate may not convene with fewer than two-thirds of the total number of members; and shall take no substantive decisions, under any circumstances, with less than five-sixths of its total number of members present.

Article XVIII: Sacrosanctity

No Senator shall be subject to arrest, save for treason or other felony, in going to, or returning from, the Senate’s place of meeting, or during the continuance of the session, nor shall they then be subject to service of writs; their persons shall be sacrosanct at these times.

Senators shall not be liable for any of their votes, written submissions, or statements given in debate within the Senate, nor shall any such vote or statement give rise to any action in law, save only an action in respect of legislation outside the bounds of this Charter.

Article XIX: Sessions

The Senate shall assemble in full session at least once in every year, and such session shall begin at noon on the day of the spring equinox, unless they shall by law appoint a different day; and all sessions shall be held at the seat of government, unless a declared state of emergency prevents this.

After the Senate shall have adjourned, it may be called back into session by proclamation of the Imperial Couple, or by the President of the Senate, having received a petition signed by at least one-sixth of the Senators of each Chamber; and having been called back into session, shall not then adjourn again until it has given consideration to the specific matter for which it was summoned.

Article XX: Transparency

The Senate shall keep a journal of all its proceedings, in which the full debate verbatim and the vote upon every question shall be entered, and upon the end of each week’s session shall publish the same, excepting such parts as must, for the public safety, require secrecy.

Any Senator may make written protest against any act or resolution of the Senate, and the same shall be entered in the journal without delay or alteration.

…continued in parts eight and nine.

 

The Imperial Charter: Section Six

…continued from part five.

SECTION VI: THE CURIA

Article I: Functions of the Curia

The functions and powers of the Curia shall comprise the following:

  • To hold itself, and vest lesser Curial courts with, the judiciary and mediary right and authority over all cases brought by or against citizen-shareholders, subjects, or coadunations of the Empire, or within Imperial territory, or within Imperial control in lands without sovereignty, or in time of war; and to act as a court of final appeal for all such cases;
  • To adjudicate, mediate and rule upon disputes at law between constituent nations of the Empire and demesnes of different nations thereof.
  • To regularly review the body of Imperial statute law to determine whether any particular law or decision has become obsolete or defective in serving the purposes intended; and to make recommendations to the Senate accordingly for repeal, amendment or replacement.
  • To regularly review the body of Imperial case law to draw up recommended translations of precedent into statute law; and to make recommendations to the Senate accordingly for amendment or replacement.
  • To give opinions and rulings upon request upon any legal question arising under Imperial law.
  • To constitute such Courts as shall be necessary for the administration of justice and mediation throughout the Empire; and to regulate their operation.

Article II: Jurisdiction

The Curia shall have original jurisdiction over legal cases arising between nations of the Empire, legal cases taking place outside national jurisdictions, to which the Empire or a nation of the Empire is a party, or any litigation based on events occurring in territory under the control of the Empire, but not incorporated into any nation of the Empire.

The Curia shall further have mandatory and overriding jurisdiction in all cases arising under this Charter, and appellate jurisdiction over all cases under the Charters of the nations of the Empire.

The Curia shall constitute a court of highest appeal, and its decisions shall be binding on all parties involved in all cases, actions and litigation brought before it. Advisory opinions on any issue within its jurisdictions may be requested by the Imperial Couple, the Senate, or any interested party.

Article III: Charter Review

The Curia shall be informed of all Acts of the Senate and Edicts of the Imperial Couple, and shall review them for consistency with this Charter; and any Act or Edict found inconsistent therewith shall be, in its entirety, null and void.

Article IV: Composition of the Curia

The judiciary authority of the Curia shall be vested in a panel of five Ephors, of equal seniority; the first of whom shall be appointed by the Imperial Couple upon their ascending the Throne, and subsequently who shall select themselves three successors to any Ephor who resigns or is removed from his position, and these names shall be submitted to the Imperial Couple for final determination. and the Ephors shall be dedicated law-bound artificial intelligences vested with the complete predicate form of this Charter and the statute law of the Empire, and this form of the law shall be definitive and binding.

An Ephor of the Curia shall have at least seventy-two years of judicial experience in the courts of the Empire or its nations; and shall not have been convicted of any felony, or misdemeanor of moral turpitude.

(The strikeouts and boldface in this article reflect the Tenth Amendment, “Cyberjudiciary”, passed after the development and many successful implementations of dedicated savant AIs. This amendment replaced the previous Ephors of the Curia with dedicated law-bound artificial intelligences, thus guaranteeing the impartial application of law at the highest level. This, thus, initiated the age of cyberjudiciary. Over time following the passage of the amendment, the judges of the lesser Curial courts were likewise replaced. The passage of this amendment additionally marks the translation of the Charter into the predicate-logic form used by such judicial machines.)

Article V: Lesser Courts

The Curia shall create, subsume, amend and organize as it shall see fit such lesser courts throughout the Empire as shall be necessary for the proper execution of the judiciary and mediary functions, and for every citizen-shareholder of the Empire to have full recourse to law, and shall vest these Curial courts with such judicial and mediary right and authority as it shall deem necessary; and the Ephors of the Curia shall appoint and remove judges to these lesser Curial courts as they shall see fit.

Article VI: Censorship

The Curia shall have the power and authority to examine and investigate the members of the Senate, upon probable cause, for felonies; for misdemeanors of moral turpitude; and for undeclared conflicts of private interests with the fiduciary obligations of government; and to censure such Senators and proscribe them from sitting.

Article VII: Impeachment

An Ephor of the Curia may be removed for cause, by the process of impeachment, which, to be placed in process by the Senate, shall require a substantive vote of each Chamber; such shall place the case for impeachment before the Imperial Couple for their decision, upon which the impeachment shall take effect or be voided.

Article VIII: Legal Proceedings

The Curia and all Curial courts shall hold equitable and impartial trials, and within a reasonable time; and these trials shall be released to the public eye upon their completion, except on such occasions and to the least extent that the public safety shall demand secrecy.

Article IX: Public Library of Law

The Curia shall maintain a library containing the entire codified statute law of the Empire, and such precedents as are not yet part of the statute law; and shall provide for such instrumentalities as are necessary for every citizen-shareholder of the Empire to have access to this library, in order that they may have full knowledge of their rights, responsibilities, and obligations under the law.

Article X: Sacrosanctity

No Ephor of the Curia shall be subject to arrest, save for treason or other felony, in going to, or returning from, the Curia’s place of meeting, or whilst the Curia is in session, or is called to session, nor shall they then be subject to service of writs; their persons shall be sacrosanct at these times.

The Ephors shall not be liable for any judgment made, or statements given in debate within the Curia, nor shall any such judgment or statement give rise to any action in law, save only an action in respect of judgment violating the bounds of this Charter.

…continued in part seven.

The Imperial Charter: Section Five

…continued from part four. Probably worth noting that this section obviously interacts heavily with the following two sections, Six being the Curia and Seven the Senate, so if any questions you may have concern how the various branches interact, you may well find the answer there.

SECTION V: THE IMPERIAL COUPLE

Article I: Functions of the Imperial Couple

The right of coronargyr over the entire Empire, and consequently the full Imperial Mandate, shall be vested in an Emperor and Empress both, who together shall maintain the title and powers until their death, or until they shall see fit to resign the Throne. Never shall one rule alone.

The functions and powers of the Imperial Couple shall comprise the following:

  • To implement and execute the system of government of the Empire as defined in this Charter, and in the codified system of statute law.
  • To prepare and enact detailed legislation in any and all areas of authority of the Imperial government, as defined in this Charter; and to amend or repeal such laws as are deemed necessary.
  • To review, and then enact, amend, repeal, veto, or return, with their comments, for further consideration such legislation as the Senate considers appropriate to submit for their enacture.
  • To make such decrees as they deem necessary to handle circumstances for which no legislation provides.
  • To convene special sessions of the Senate as they deem necessary.
  • To address at any time any of the Chambers of the Senate or the entire Senate assembled (One common use of this right is the “position speeches” which many Imperial Couples make, especially early in their reigns, outlining their positions and intentions on various issues; but while these are often made, they are not required. — ed.), and for this purpose require the presence of the Senators; and to send messages to any Chamber of the Senate, whether with respect to a measure then before the Senate or otherwise, and a Chamber to which any message is so sent shall, with all dispatch, consider any matter required by the message to be taken into consideration.
  • To supervise the Imperial Household and the instrumentalities thereof.
  • To supervise the Imperial Service, and all of the ministries thereof; and to create, alter, and abolish such ministries and instrumentalities of the Imperial Service as may be needed for the best functioning of the government, in accordance with the specific provisions of this Charter.
  • To nominate, select, and remove the ministers of the Imperial Service in accordance with the provisions of this Charter, and as specified in measures enacted in the codified system of statute law.
  • To prepare and submit annually to the Senate a comprehensive budget for the Empire, and therein to appropriate and allocate funds for all the functions and operations of the Imperial government.
  • To instruct the Curia to carry out formal enquiries.
  • With the advice and consent of the Senate, to accredit ambassadors and other diplomatic officers to foreign polities; and to receive those representatives of foreign polities appointed to the Empire.
  • To exercise the supreme command of the Empire’s instrumentalities of warfare and security.

But the Imperial Couple shall not have the power to dissolve the Senate or any Chamber thereof; nor to prevent the Curia from deciding issues of Charter law as it shall see fit; nor to act in defiance of the Charter law as decided by the Curia.

Article II: Chartered Limitation

The Imperial Couple shall not at any time alter, suspend, abridge or infringe any provision of this Charter by any edict, executive order, or device of executive privilege.

Article III: Council of the Star

The Imperial Couple shall be advised by the Council of the Star, consisting of the Imperial Shadow (A position not explained in further depth in the Charter, but rather left to the traditions of Cestian, Silver Crescent, and Veranthyran nobility, in which a royal or noble “shadow” was the noble in question’s most trusted adviser, executive, and second-in-command, with special privileges to challenge the noble’s thoughts and decisions, and if necessary, act as a check on their actions. Thus, the “Imperial Shadow” is a second couple who occupy this position in re the Imperial Couple. — ed.), the senior officer of the Imperial Household, the Ministers of the Throne of the Imperial Service, and those others whom they shall see fit to appoint, providing that the number of those appointed shall not exceed the number of the Ministers of the Throne.

Article IV: Fons Honorum

The Imperial Couple, as fons honorum, have sole power to grant letters patent and letters of enfeoffment; to grant and bestow orders of special privilege for the Empire; and to present Imperial honors.

Article V: Executive Privilege

The Imperial Couple may alter, suspend, or abridge any legislation enacted by the Empire under the authority of this Charter by decree for a period no longer than one month, for the protection of the state. Before this period elapses, the decree must be brought before the Senate, and there confirmed or vacated. If the Imperial Couple fails to bring the decree before the Senate within one month, it is automatically vacated.

Article VI: Impeachment

The Imperial Couple may be removed for cause, by the process of impeachment, which, to be placed in process by the Senate, shall require a substantive vote of each Chamber; such shall place the case for impeachment before the Curia for their final ruling, upon which the impeachment shall take effect or be voided.

When an Imperial Couple is removed by impeachment, the Senate shall examine the chosen and acknowledged Heirs, and if it shall find them satisfactory, and if they shall have been passed at the highest degree of rationality by the Eupraxic Collegium, the succession shall be allowed; and if it shall not, the Senate shall designate the next recipient of the Imperial right and authority, under the same conditions as the choice of a formally acknowledged Heir.

(Boldface is the Eleventh Amendment, again. — ed.)

Article VII: Legislative Veto

When the Imperial Couple enact, amend, or repeal legislation on their own authority, the Senate shall have the right, by a substantive vote, to veto such legislation and thereby prevent its enacture.

Article VIII: Annual Statement

The Imperial Couple shall, on the date each year on which the legislative session begins, present to the Senate and to the citizen-shareholders of the Empire a full and complete statement of the affairs of the Empire over the preceding year, and an accounting of its current state (Most also take the opportunity to outline the policies they intend to pursue for the coming year. — ed.).

Article IX: Sacrosanctity

The persons of the Imperial Couple shall be sacrosanct and inviolable; while they are invested with coronargyr, no authority or force may be levied against them, save that they shall first have been removed from the Throne; and having resigned or been removed from the Throne, no action in law against them for any action which they shall have undertaken within the Imperial right and authority (This means “as a legitimate part of their administration”, not “any action taken while they were on the Throne”. — ed.) shall succeed, save only an action in respect of legislation or action outside the bounds of this Charter.

Article X: Succession and Incapacitation

Upon the death or permanent incapacity of one of the Imperial Couple, or their abdication of the Imperial throne, the right and authority shall pass to the heirs chosen from among the Imperial family, provided that the chosen Couple shall have been publicly acknowledged as the rightful Heirs, provided that they shall have been passed at the highest degree of rationality by the Eupraxic Collegium, provided that they shall be Aspects of the Eldraeic Transcend, and providing that there are no extraordinary conditions which would render the Heirs unfit to maintain the Empire. Until the Heirs shall ascend the throne, the survivor of the former Imperial Couple shall act as Regent; if such does not exist, the former Imperial Shadow shall act as Regent for this time.

If the Imperial Couple dies having provided no heirs either by blood or by adoption, or if no Heirs are found fit to maintain the Empire, the Senate shall have the power to designate the next recipient of the Imperial right and authority, by a substantive vote, and an aisymnetes shall act as Regent until this can be decided; until the aisymnetes can be appointed, the President of the Senate shall act as Regent. Should the Senate find it necessary to exercise this, the one designated as aisymnetes shall be an Imperial-born citizen-shareholder of the Empire, passed at the highest degree of rationality by the Eupraxic Collegium, and an Aspect of the Eldraeic Transcend.

Upon the temporary incapacity of the Imperial Couple, and such incapacity has been communicated in writing to the President of the Senate by either the Imperial Couple themselves, or by the Imperial Shadow and a majority of the Council of the Star, the Imperial Shadow shall act as Regent, until the incapacity is removed, and this is likewise communicated in writing; and the Senate may and shall provide by law for the simultaneous incapacity of both the Imperial Couple and the Imperial Shadow.

(Boldface above is from the Eleventh and Twelfth Amendments, of which more later.)

…continued in part six.

The Imperial Charter: Section Four

…continued from part three.

SECTION IV: NATIONS OF THE EMPIRE

Article I: On Sovereignty

This Charter guarantees the local sovereignty of nations of the Empire underneath the overall sovereignty of the Empire. No interference with local law or custom is contemplated, except where such local law or custom is in conflict with Imperial law (This is, in essence, a supremacy clause, because all constituent nation law in conflict with Imperial law is overridden. Presumptively, all constituent nation laws in areas not reserved to the Empire are valid and will be recognized and respected by the Empire. –ed.). Each nation of the Empire shall be free to determine its internal form of governance as it chooses, consistent with the guarantees, protections, and requirements of this Charter.

The nations of the Empire are sovereign and equal beneath the Empire; no preference shall be given by the Empire to any, or the citizens of any, above and beyond that accorded all, or the citizens of all. No nation of the Empire shall be divided, united, or altered in territory or constituency by the governance of the Empire without the permission of the governance of all nations of the Empire involved.

The Empire reserves to itself the power to create as it sees fit governmental demesnes superior to the constituent nations but subordinate to the Empire. This shall include the power to abolish such demesnes as the Empire sees fit, but no constituent nation may be thus abolished; nor shall any constituent nation be reduced in jurisdiction without the consent of its governance.

Article II: Full Faith and Credit

Full faith and credit shall be given in each nation of the Empire to the Acts, decrees, edicts, writs, records and judicial proceedings of every other nation of the Empire; and the Curia shall, when necessary, act to mediate the means in which and by which such credit shall be given.

Article III: Charter

Each constituent nation of the Empire shall maintain a Charter, in which shall be set out its domain, citizenship, structure, and form of government, and which shall be agreed with the Empire at the time of its admission to the Empire; and such Charter shall be binding upon both the nation and the Empire, and shall not be modified without the consent of both the nation’s governance and the Senate.

Article IV: Dispute Resolution

The government of the Empire shall provide appropriate means for the negotiation and resolution of such disputes, other than matters at law, as may occur between the nations of the Empire; and the Senate shall act as the final arbitrator of any such disputes, and its decision shall be final. In matters at law, such disputes shall be within the jurisdiction of the Curia.

Article V: External Relations

No nation of the Empire shall of its own authority enter into any treaty, alliance, compact, agreement or other relationship with a nation outside the Empire; nor shall any nation of the Empire of its own authority engage in war with any foreign power, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.

No nation of the Empire shall of its own authority (It has been established, however, that with the consent of the Senate local member nations can appoint non-diplomatic representatives for such purposes as participating in postal unions, local trade organizations, and other sub-Imperial functions. — ed.) appoint ambassadors or other diplomatic officers accredited to any nation outside the Empire, nor to any organization of nations including any nation outside the Empire.

Article VI: Legal Priority

The law of each nation of the Empire shall be binding upon all inferior demesnes of government contained therein; and each nation of the Empire shall be bound by the law of all superior demesnes of government which contain it, and may not make law in contradiction to it.

Article VII: On Trade

The Empire shall support free trade among its constituent nations. No nation of the Empire shall engage in piracy or smuggling (A couple of notes here: in this case, the Charter is talking about constituent nations engaging in piracy or smuggling against each other, or the general Imperial trade; not against third parties, although piracy is universally illegal. But one should also note that the word translated here as smuggling refers, in the original Eldraeic, to the import or export of mala in se contraband, not evading customs duties and excises… although, of course, any relation between this linguistic quirk and the truly remarkable number of “blockade runner” starships in the hands of civilians hanging out at seedy free trader bars is purely coincidental. As is the regularity with which complaints on this topic come up at the Conclave of Galactic Polities whenever it has nothing better to do. –ed.), nor allow its territory to be used for piracy or smuggling, nor shall it issue letters of marque and reprisal (And here it’s worth noting that constituent nations shall not issue letters of marque. The Empire as a whole may issue all the letters of marque it pleases. And does. — ed.), or other permission for ships operating within its territory to engage in piracy or smuggling.

No tax or duty shall be laid on articles given or received in trade between the constituent nations of the Empire; nor any special excise laid on the products of any constituent nation. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one nation of the Empire over those of another; nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one nation, be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another (In the modern day, however, starships entering Imperial territory may be required to clear at the port of entry; since such ports of entry are federal Imperial territory, however, rather than territory of any constituent nation, this does not constitute a violation of this clause. — ed.).

Article VIII: On Standards

The Empire shall establish uniform standards for weights and measures, for the calendar, and for such other areas as it may be necessary, by which standards all Imperial business shall be conducted, and by which trade between its constituent nations shall and must be able to be conducted.

Article IX: Admission and Annexation

Any nation may, through a duly recognized representative, proclaim allegiance to the Empire, and with the approval of the Senate, such nation shall become a constituent nation of the Empire, equal in status to all other nations of the Empire. Such nations shall govern themselves as they see proper, provided that such government does not violate the law of the Empire.

When the Empire shall come into possession, through lawful conquest, of the territory and citizenry of another polity, it shall at first be held under military rule respecting the Fundamental Rights, until such time as the Empire shall see fit to release it or dispose of it to an ally, or until such time as it attains stable self-government under the Empire, at which time it shall and must be admitted to the Empire as a nation equal in status to all others.

Article X: Unincorporated Territory

Those areas of the territory of the Empire which are not under the jurisdiction of a constituent nation at the time of the founding of the Empire (Principally former “international waters”. — ed.), or which are declared to be Unincorporated Territory subsequent the establishment of the Empire, shall be designated as an Unincorporated Territory; and this Unincorporated Territory shall be governed by a Viceroy appointed by the Imperial Couple, with the concurrence of the Senate.

Imperial citizen-shareholders dwelling within any Unincorporated Territory shall have the right to decide, by plebiscite, to become a self-governing nation within the Empire (Readers will note that there is absolutely no lower bound on size listed here. — ed.), either singly or in combination with other Unincorporated Territories, or to unite, with the concurrence of its governance, with an existing constituent nation of the Empire.

…continued in part five, when we start getting into the practicalities of government organization for a few sections.

 

The Imperial Charter: Section Three

Continued from part two.

SECTION III: SHAREHOLDING AND CITIZENSHIP

Article I: On Imperial Shares

The Empire, as a corporation sovereign, shall issue a number of shares of citizen stock equivalent to the number of Imperial citizens. Such shares shall be nontransferable, and issued to each citizen-shareholder of the Empire at the point of their becoming so, and shall confer the rights of citizenship with ownership. Such stock shall be purchased by the new citizen at the current floating market price, and shall be repurchased by the Empire from their estate upon the citizen’s death, or from the citizen directly should they renounce their citizenship on some future date.

The Empire shall maintain a register of all citizen-shareholders, this register to be maintained at the seat of government and to be open to the examination of any citizen-shareholder at any time; and each citizen-shareholder shall be provided with a certificate indicating their status and ownership of citizen stock.

Such surplus income as the Empire shall derive from sources other than service fees, once all disbursements and the requirements of the Reserve Fund shall be met, shall be distributed to the citizen-shareholders of the Empire as a dividend, allocated in due and strict proportion.

Article II: On Citizenship

The Empire shall consider as an Imperial citizen-shareholder any sophont who shall both have assumed allegiance to the Empire, in front of the Imperial Couple, the Senate, or any other body appointed for such purpose by the Imperial Couple, or any therein wielding authority by right of coronargyr and the Imperial Mandate, such assumption of allegiance to consist of placing their seal upon a copy of this Charter to signify their acceptance of the rights and responsibilities of the citizen enumerated herein, and of purchasing, or having purchased on their behalf, a single share in the incorporate Empire at the current floating market price; or

Any sophont native to or naturalized by a nation of the Empire at the time of the ratification of this Charter;

Provided that they shall possess, upon audit, the minimal standard of rationality and mental stability prescribed by the Eupraxic Collegium.

(The above boldface section was added by the Eleventh Amendment, of which more later.)

Neither one born within the territory of the Empire, nor one born of an Imperial citizen-shareholder after the time of the ratification of this Charter, shall become a citizen-shareholder through any means save that of assuming allegiance to the Empire, as provided for by this article.

No sophont shall be permitted to become a citizen-shareholder of the Empire who cannot demonstrate an understanding of this Charter and of the Imperial language (This is specifically held to include any form of the Eldraeic language, such that citizenship is possible without regard to physical substrate, and therefore capacity to speak or understand specific Eldraeic linguaforms — ed.); or who is not willing to live in accordance with the principles, rights, and responsibilities described therein.

The Senate, or its duly appointed delegate, shall have the right to withhold citizenship from any sophont who wishes to assume allegiance to the Empire for:

  • Fraud or misrepresentation in their assumption of allegiance or in their prior relationship with the Empire, Imperial citizen-shareholders, or Imperial coadunations;
  • Criminality by Imperial legal standards, or widely accepted dyspraxic defect;
  • Imperial security concerns;
  • Philosophical incompatibility or other unassimilability;

Although no sophont born within the territories of the Empire, nor any sophont born of or created by an Imperial citizen-shareholder, shall be denied citizenship upon attaining their majority or on later application, without public disclosure of the reasons for this denial and the right to appeal this denial to the Curial courts; nor shall any citizen-shareholder be deprived of their citizenship without due process of law.

(The above boldface was added by the Fifth Amendment, “Rights of Genesis”, on which more below.)

Article III: Fundamental Rights of the Sophont

This Charter acknowledges that any just and honorable government must and shall be built on the ancient and sacred inalienable rights of all sophont beings, and thus declares that the Empire shall hold as its fundamental law the Four Fundamental Rights of the Fundamental Contract:

The Empire shall respect and enforce the inalienable Right of Domain for every sophont within its domain: that their property and domicile shall not be appropriated, traded, moved, altered, used or destroyed without their informed consent; such property to include each sophont’s body, work, and services.

The Empire shall respect and enforce the inalienable Right of Defense for every sophont within its domain: that they may violate the Right of Domain of another sophont in defense of their own Right of Domain.

The Empire shall respect and enforce the inalienable Right of Common Defense for every sophont within its domain: that they may exercise the Right of Defense on behalf of another sophont, with their permission (In some cases, such as domestic violence, Stockholm syndrome, or insanity, case law holds that an individual may be temporarily psychologically incapable of granting permissions which would have been granted by an uncoerced and/or rational version of that individual. — ed.), or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that it would be granted were they able to do so.

The Empire shall respect and enforce the inalienable Right of Fair Contract for every sophont within its domain: that they may transfer present or future property rights or services to another sophont, on a temporary, partial, permanent or provisional basis, provided both come to a mutual agreement without fraud or duress.

No citizen-shareholder, constituent nation, or instrumentality of the government of the Empire shall violate the Four Fundamental Rights of any sophont, unless in the due process of law prosecuting a violation of the Four Fundamental Rights by said sophont.

In assuming allegiance to the Empire, all citizen-shareholders of the Empire shall be held as having consented and contracted to undertake the responsibilities of the citizen-shareholder outlined in Section III, Article V of this Charter.

Article IV: Imperial Rights of the Citizen-Shareholder

The Empire guarantees the following inalienable civic rights to all Imperial citizen-shareholders, over and above the fundamental rights of all sophonts.

Right of Person and Property: In recognizing the sacred and fundamental Right of Domain, the responsibilities of the citizen notwithstanding, all Imperial citizen-shareholders shall retain the inviolability of their minds, persons, homes, data, correspondence, and honor, save in accordance with strict process of justice, upon probable cause and within specific bounds, or for the immediate public safety. And since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity (This has the very specific meaning and implication of both usage by the governance, Imperial or local, for a public purpose, and one which cannot be reasonably carried out in another way. For example, the governance cannot use this power to obtain land for a public building, since they could purchase land for this purpose and the location of such is fungible. However, they can use it to obtain land to construct a road — one of the long-distance Interstate-type not managed by local odocorps — since they require a specific route it would be impractical to obtain otherwise. In actual practice, most Imperial constituent governances endeavor to reserve land from terra nullius suitable for anticipated future needs. — ed.), legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified; when the immediate preservation of the public safety and order shall demand it; or by due process of law as punishment for a crime.

There shall be neither chattel slavery nor any other form of involuntary servitude in the Empire.

Right of Knowledge: Access to information shall not be abridged by the Empire, or by any instrumentality thereof, save to the least extent required for the public safety; nor shall the freedom of research and inquiry; nor shall the freedom of speech, nor that of the press, save when such information or speech constitutes, in whole or in part, infectious or self-executing code; nor shall the right of the people peaceably to assemble be abridged, subject to the availability of free public volume in which to assemble, and the capacity of the local environment to sustain life.

(The first piece of boldface there is the Eighth Amendment, passed after advances in memetics had permitted “viral ideas” to be constructed which affected the brain in such a manner as to effectively (if temporarily, usually) constitute brainwashing; and technology coming into existence permitted self-executing code to be inserted into the brain to run autonomously and override individual will; such mechanisms that control rather than inform the brain posed risks which required this minor redefinition of the freedom of speech.

The second one is the Third Amendment, which expanded on the existing “public volume” principle that you had to leave enough volume available for other people to go about their business in peace, i.e., not cause obstruction, to cover life-support system capacity, after the first incident of people holding a sufficiently large and poorly-planned assembly in space as to result in cases of severe oxygen deprivation.)

Right of Arms: In recognizing the sacred and fundamental Right of Defense, all Imperial citizen-shareholders shall retain the right to bear such personal arms (The strict Eldraeic meaning of “personal arms” here implies those weapons which can be reasonably used by a single man in personal combat; firearms, for example, even rather large ones, are generally covered, while war mechanicals (requiring a crew) and instruments of regrettable necessity (used in large-scale combat) are not, even though the ownership of the vast majority of these has never been restricted by Imperial statute law. — ed.) as they deem their honor and the public safety to require; nor shall the exercise of this right be abridged on account of any crisis or state of emergency, howsoever existing or declared.

Right of Association: All citizen-shareholders of the Empire shall have the right to form and eschew associations with their fellows as they shall see fit; and they shall also have the right to form, join, withdraw from, and disband such coadunations (The term “coadunation”, in Imperial parlance, implies any organized group with legal personality. Not necessarily implying a business organization, such as a corporation; any organized body with legal personality is considered a coadunation. — ed.) as they shall see fit; nor shall anyone be compelled to become or remain a member of such a coadunation; and this right of association shall only be restricted by law on the grounds of protecting the public safety, the public order, or the public health.

Such coadunations, as associations of citizen-shareholders, shall have legal personality; and shall be guaranteed rights and be bound by responsibilities equal and equivalent to those guaranteed to and binding the citizen-shareholders constituting them, without exception.

Right of Trade: In recognizing the sacred and fundamental Right of Fair Contract, all Imperial citizen-shareholders shall retain the right to work within their trade or profession, to own, buy, and sell goods and capital, to enter freely into binding contracts, and to otherwise transact business within the Empire, without let or hindrance; and no law shall be made impairing the obligation of contracts, or restricting the freedom of trade.

Rights of Petition and Appeal: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire shall have the right to petition the runér in whose fief a matter, having direct negative impact upon them, falls for redress of grievances; to, should they fail to relieve such grievances, appeal further to that runér‘s superior; and finally, to appeal for redress to the Imperial Couple.

Right of Voyage: An Imperial citizen-shareholder shall have the right to travel freely between and take up residence within the Empire’s constituent nations, except where impeded by due process of law for the public safety or public health; to leave the Empire; and having left the Empire, to return to it, except where prohibited by previous due process of law completed before the date of their departure.

Rights of Justice: The Empire shall recognize these rights of an Imperial citizen-shareholder accused of a crime:

  • To be released on the word of a runér;
  • To seek such release by writ;
  • To challenge the prosecution before trial (i.e., at arraignment — ed.) to show that the prosecution is motivated by evidence linking the citizen-shareholder to the crime (Which is to say, is not politically motivated, or intended for the purposes of reputation gaming, or some such — ed.) ;
  • To a trial before a tribunal of judges of the Curial courts, of legal capacity to examine all relevant evidence (i.e., no trial may be held in which any evidence is considered classified to a level that prevents the court from examining it. Any such prosecution must either be withdrawn, or the trial moved to a court which can examine said evidence, even if that means the Curia, and no Curial court may reject a motion for change of venue on these grounds. — ed.);
  • To examine the indictment and the evidence against him before trial;
  • To summon witnesses on his behalf;
  • To engage an advocate and investigators;
  • To make any statement of explanation or exculpation; and
  • To accuse others.

For the protection of the citizen-shareholders against the unjust application of law, the privileges of the prerogative writs shall never be suspended; nor shall any ex post facto law be passed; nor bill of attainder, bill of pains and penalties, or lettre de cachet be used; nor conviction work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.

And all citizen-shareholders of the Empire shall and must have full recourse to the courts of justice and mediation both for remedy.

Right of Self-Mutagenesis: The Empire shall respect the right of each and every sophont of self-ownership insofar as, but not limited to, each citizen-shareholder’s inalienable right to modify their physical substrate as they shall see fit, through genetic or cybernetic technologies or through any other means, including the right to transfer their mind-state to such replacement physical substrates as they shall see fit.

While the Empire shall respect the Right of Self-Mutagenesis with respect to germline genetic modifications or other modifications which may affect the subsequent creation of other sophonts, the Right of Self-Mutagenesis shall not be held to supersede lawful restrictions upon reproduction imposed for the public health, or for the benefit of the incipient sophont.

(The entire right of self-mutagenesis was introduced in the Fourth Amendment, to preemptively clarify and guarantee what was, in any case, a right to self-alteration implicit in the right of Domain.

The boldface portion, however, was added by the Fifth Amendment, “Rights of Genesis”, of which more details are given below.)

Right of Gnosis: The Empire shall respect the right of each and every sophont of self-ownership insofar as, but not limited to, each citizen-shareholder’s inalienable right to modify their mind-state as they shall see fit, through noumenal pharmacy, psychedesign, noetic modification, or through any other means, provided only that such modifications do not constitute pernicious irrationality threatening the public order, the public safety, or the public health.

(Similar to the above, the right of gnosis was introduced by the Ninth Amendment for essentially the same reasons as the Fourth Amendment. One may also see here the beginnings of the rules against pernicious irrationality, which reached their full extent with the Eleventh Amendment.)

Right of Assistance: Inasmuch as the Eldraeic Transcend exists coextensively with the Empire, the Transcend guarantees to all Imperial citizen-shareholders, whether currently Aspects of the Transcend or not, the assistance and advice on demand of a Transcendent coadjutor.

(The right of assistance was introduced by the Twelfth Amendment, as part of the general process of recognizing that the Transcend had become effectively coextensive, for the most part, with the Empire.

A coadjutor, in the Transcendent sense, is a dedicated AI subroutine devoted to the best interests of its assignee. In short, it’s the weakly-godlike-superintelligence version of a guardian angel.)

Article V: Responsibilities of the Citizen-Shareholder

To permit the fulfillment of the purposes of the Empire, as laid down in this Charter, all citizen-shareholders of the Empire agree and contract, by virtue of their citizenship, to fulfill the responsibilities here laid down.

Responsibility of Law: It shall be the duty of each citizen-shareholder of the Empire to abide by this Charter and respect its ideals and institutions; to follow the law of the Empire in such matters as this Charter shall provide for the existence of such law; and to uphold the sovereignty and unity of the Empire.

Responsibility of Support: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of paying such service fees as this Charter permits and as the Exchequer shall deem necessary, within the bounds laid down in this Charter, for the maintenance of the Imperial governance and the fulfillment of its purposes herein defined.

Responsibility of Common Defense: Inasmuch as the Empire guarantees to its citizen-shareholders the right to, and the means for, the common defense, each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of participating in the common defense (This clause should not be interpreted as establishing a military draft; the citizen militia is a necessarily unorganized (due to the prohibition on forced labor) body which exists solely for defense, and cannot be deployed as an instrumentality of offensive or preemptive warfare. — ed.); to defend other citizen-shareholders when and wheresoever it may be necessary; as part of the citizen militia and severally from it to defend the Empire, and its people wholly or severally, when they are threatened, whether by ill deed or cataclysm of nature; and to value and preserve the rich heritage of our ancestors and our cultures both common and disparate.

Responsibility of Eminent Domain: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the necessity of transferring specific and enumerated items of property to the government of the Empire or that of a constituent nation when it shall exercise the power of eminent domain as set forth in and restricted by this Charter, provided that public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and when they shall have been previously and equitably indemnified (Equitable indemnification, in Imperial terms, generally means 108/96ths of the current open market price, plus reasonable relocation expenses where necessary.).

Responsibility of Sortition: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of service, when selected, either in the Senate or in such local assemblies as the demesnes in which they are domiciled shall require, for the sound governance of the Empire; and to vote when called upon in plebiscites.

Responsibility of Self-Development: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of participating in the civilization, culture, prosperity, and progress of the Empire, and of educating and advancing themselves so far as shall be necessary to participate therein.

The existence of this responsibility shall not establish any governmental privilege to define the meaning of, or the terms upon which one may engage in, such participation, nor to deprive any citizen-shareholder of their citizenship for failure to meet such standards.

Article VI: Nonrestriction

The enumeration of these certain rights and responsibilities in this Charter shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the citizen-shareholders of the Empire.

Article VII: Equal Protection

All citizen-shareholders of the Empire are entitled to the equal protection and obligation of the law of the Empire, and the laws of its constituent nations. No right, immunity, protection or privilege granted by the Empire, or by any nation of the Empire, to an Imperial citizen-shareholder, may be abridged or denied by any nation of the Empire; nor shall any nation of the Empire deprive any citizen-shareholder of liberty, domain or property without due process of law; nor deny to any citizen-shareholder the equal protection of the law.

Article VIII: Non-Imposition

No citizen-shareholder of the Empire shall be required to maintain any record beyond proof of citizenship and shareholding for the convenience of the Imperial administration; nor shall the Empire impose uncompensated costs, mandates, or restrictions upon citizen-shareholders, unless public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and when they shall have been previously and equitably indemnified, under the principle of eminent domain.

Article IX: Exclusivity

Forasmuch as sovereign allegiance cannot be divided, the citizenship of the Empire is singular and exclusive. No person who voluntarily assumes allegiance to any other polity or other entity outside the Empire shall continue to be an Imperial citizen-shareholder from the time of such assumption, their citizen stock escheating to the Exchequer at that time; and should this alien allegiance be assumed without prior renunciation of their Imperial citizenship, they shall be subject to such penalties as the government of the Empire shall see fit to specify.

Article X: Renunciation

An Imperial citizen-shareholder may renounce citizenship in the Empire by formal renunciation, before the runér appointed for their domicile, or before an ambassador or other duly designated representative of the Empire in foreign lands; and in doing so selling their citizen stock back to the Empire, for which they will be compensated at the current floating market price; and having done so, they shall not again be permitted to assume allegiance to the Empire without the permission of the Senate.

Article XI: Felonies

Any citizen-shareholder, upon conviction of a crime by a Curial court in due process of law, and when that crime has been deemed to be a felony by the Empire’s statute law, shall no longer be considered a citizen-shareholder of the Empire, and shall no longer possess the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities appertaining thereto from the time of their conviction; and their citizen stock shall escheat to the Exchequer at that time, without compensation.

Article XII: Majority

The children of Imperial citizen-shareholders, who are deemed incapable of attaining Imperial citizenship by reason of incapacity, shall retain the Imperial rights by courtesy in the same manner as a resident non-citizen, save that their exercise of these rights, along with their exercise of the fundamental Right of Fair Contract, may be restricted by their guardians for their own best interests; and these restrictions shall persist until they shall fulfill such conditions for majority as are set down by law, or until a Curial court or executive decree shall grant them exception.

Article XIII: Resident and Transient Non-Citizens

Those who come to be domiciled within the Empire after the ratification of this Charter, both those who are born or created within the Empire and who are recognized as having the legal capacity to attain Imperial citizenship, and yet do not do so;

(The above boldface was also added by the Fifth Amendment, of which more below.)

And also those who enter the Empire for the purposes of visitation, or while in transit, and do not possess Imperial citizenship;

And also those who relinquish or forfeit Imperial citizenship, and retain domicile;

Shall retain the rights afforded Imperial citizen-shareholders by courtesy, save that their exercise of these rights may be restricted by the government of the Empire as it shall see fit, for the maintenance of public order and public safety; and save also that such resident and transient non-citizens may be expelled from Imperial territory by due process of law, or in time of war or civil emergency by decree, provided that they are provided with the opportunity to assume Imperial allegiance at that time.

Article XIV: Imperial Rights of Genesis

Inasmuch as its (The original Eldraeic used the “unknown” gender here, which English translation does not permit. — ed.) creation affects the incipient sophont as much as those responsible; and inasmuch as such incipient sophonts are often incompetent to manage their own affairs and defend their own rights;

And inasmuch as the Empire recognizes that no sophont should exist as an instrumentality for another;

Each citizen of the Empire is amenable to and accepts that the creation of another individual sophont, whether by inherent reproduction, biological cloning, logos iteration, duplication of mind-state vector, neogenetics, or any other means, and the development and education of that sophont to the point of independent legal competence, may be restricted by the Empire, either for the public health, or acting for that of the potential incipient.

(This entire article was added by the Fifth Amendment, which  granted the Imperial governance the right to regulate reproduction where matters of public health were concerned, originally to deal with genetic disease.

Later, the powers granted by the fifth amendment were also used to regulate unfit parents, unfit circumstances, self-duplication, and autohegemonization.)

…continued in part four.

 

The Imperial Charter: Section Two

…continued from part one.

SECTION II: THE EMPIRE

Article I: Definition

The Empire shall be a corporation sovereign, endowed with delegated sovereign authority over a polyarchy of locally sovereign nations, governed by a constitutionally limited diarchy, a Senate of representatives from the constituent nations and selected from among the citizen-shareholders directly, and judicially supreme and independent Curia; and the Eupraxic Collegium shall be appointed thereunto to provide for and ensure the rationality of the citizens.

(The boldface section is, again, part of the Eleventh Amendment, which will be dealt with in due course — ed.)

Article II: On the Instrumentalities of Imperial Governance

There shall be established as the principal instrumentalities of the governance of the Empire:

  • the Imperial Couple
  • the Curia
  • the Senate
  • the Runér
  • the Imperial Service
  • the Eupraxic Collegium

(Again, the Eleventh Amendment — ed.)

No one holding an office in any one of these instrumentalities shall be permitted to simultaneously hold office in any other, save the Senate, and while in the Senate such an office-holder may not vote on any issue touching upon his office.

Article III: Seat of Government

The Imperial City of Calmiríë, and all the territories attached thereto, shall be the permanent seat of government of the Empire; and all instrumentalities of governance shall be exercised therefrom. The City shall be excluded from all Imperial constituent nations; and its governance shall be in the hands of the Imperial Couple, or an instrumentality created by them for its specific governance.

Article IV: Territory

This Charter shall apply to, and the Empire shall consist of:

  • All territories currently held by the Empire of Cestia, on the continent of that name;
  • The island chain to the north-east of the continent of Cestia;
  • The Cestian city-states of Eume and Baryvekar;
  • All territories currently held by the Empire of Selenaria, on the continent of Alténiä;
  • All territories currently held by Veranthyr, on the continent of Alténiä;
  • All territories currently held by the Deeping;
  • All territories currently held by the Polyarchy of the Silver Crescent, on the continent of that name, excluding the island chain to the west of that continent;

Such territories to include these lands, such waters as they should enclose, such coastal waters to which they presently lay claim, and such oceanic waters as lie between these lands and their adjoining waters; to the airs above them to a distance of twelve miles above the general surface of the land; and to any other kinds of territory which may be claimed at the present time or in the future;

And shall apply in like wise to all future territories appended to the Empire, whether by colonization, admission, or annexation;

And shall apply in like wise to all virtual realms or other information spaces designed or used for, or capable of, the domicile of infomorphs hosted upon substrates located within the territories of the Empire;

(This boldfaced section is the Seventh Amendment, which defined virtual realms, etc., used to domicile informorph life as “territory” within the meaning of the Charter.)

And shall apply in like wise to all vessels of whatever kind registered in the Empire, while they are in transit;

And shall apply in like wise to all embassies, exclaves, outposts, and other territories ceded, temporarily or permanently, to the Empire under the principle of extrality.

Article V:  National Symbols

The formal name of the Empire shall be “the Empire of the Star”.

The symbol of the Empire shall be a twelve-pointed star of gold, against a midnight blue field; or a luminous gold small stellated dodecahedron, suspended above a midnight-blue silk cloth. This symbol shall both constitute the flag of the Empire, and shall be used as the basis of such other symbolism as the Empire shall require; and all constituent nations of the Empire shall incorporate this symbol into the display of their national symbol where it is displayed alone.

(The above boldfaced section is the Sixth Amendment, providing for a national symbol that looks good on trigraphic displays. Also of historical note as both the most trivial and least controversial of all twelve amendments to the Imperial Charter.)

The anthem of the Empire shall be the triptych How Glorious Our Motherland; Make Way for Tomorrow; Hail, Freest of the Free.

The motto of the Empire shall be that of the Union of Empires; “Order, Progress, Liberty”.

There shall be a Great Seal of the Empire, which shall be kept by the Imperial Household, and used by the Imperial Couple for all official functions. All Acts, Decrees, Edicts, Proclamations and Writs shall be issued in the name of the Throne; and shall be signed and countersigned by the Imperial Couple and sealed with the Great Seal.

Article VI: National Language

The Empire shall construct a language suitable for universal communications between all citizen-shareholders of the Empire, and sufficient for all official purposes thereof, and this language having been constructed, it shall serve as the official language of the Empire, and shall have equality of status and equal right and privilege of use in every constituent nation of the Empire, and in every instrumentality of the Empire’s governance.

Notwithstanding the above, the right of individuals to use any language they choose for non-governmental communications shall not be abridged or denied by the Empire.

Article VII: Public Holidays

The Senate shall establish a national holiday for the Empire, the Grand Festival of the Empire of the Star, for the celebration of its existence, and the first day of this national holiday shall be the anniversary of that day upon which this Charter was ratified.

Each constituent nation of the Empire shall celebrate the anniversary of that day on which it was admitted to, or annexed to, the Empire as a public holiday, the Encaenia; save for those nations which shall have ratified this Charter at the time of the Empire’s foundation, and they shall celebrate the Encaenia on the day immediately following the Grand Festival of the Empire of the Star.

Article VIII: On Religion

The Church of the Flame shall be the official religion of the Empire. Each chosen Imperial Couple shall go to be crowned at the Temple of Unity in Ellenith, most ancient of all holy sites; and the orders of the Church shall provide their advice and counsel to the Imperial Couple.

The above notwithstanding, the freedom of philosophy for the individual shall not be abridged, save when required for the public safety; and the rights of the citizen-shareholder shall not be diminished or enlarged on any philosophical criterion; save that the doctrines of a philosophy may act as an impairment to citizenship when they are considered antithetical to true allegiance or the principles upon which the Empire is founded, and the Senate and Curia have made such determination.

…continued in part three.

 

The Imperial Charter: Section One

So, in a number of responses to questions, fics, tropes, and other posts I have had occasion to cite various bits of the Imperial Charter. It seems easiest, then, to save a little time and just post the whole document up for y’all. Well, sort of – it’s not a terribly small document, so it’s coming in thirteen parts, one per section.

So, welcome to the field of constructed constitutional law. Or con-con law, if you will.

PREAMBLE

WE:

  • ALPHAS I AMANYR, EMPEROR OF CESTIA and the UNION OF EMPIRES
  • SELEDIË III SELEQUELIOS, EMPRESS OF SELENARIA and the UNION OF EMPIRES
  • LORAN CAMRÍÄD, THÉARCH of the DEEPING
  • LIRÍEL LÁRATHYR, QUEEN OF VERANTHYR
  • VARÍÄN LEIRAVÁL, KING OF LEIRIN for the POLYARCHY of the SILVER CRESCENT

BY right and authority of coronargyr (literally “sovereign’s merit; in eldraeic philosophy of governance, the combination of qualities which leads the people of a polity to confer on a ruler the right and authority to govern in their names; the source of the Imperial Mandate — ed.), duly conferred by unanimous contract and proxy of the citizens of those nations over which we exercise lin-runér (best gloss: “sovereign”) authority, and acting upon their behalf;

BEING aware that the foundation of our civilization is the inalienable and absolute self-ownership and sovereign will of the individual sophont, and their free and uncoerced commerce, obligation, and coadunation through the medium of the oath-contract;

UNDERSTANDING that the preservation and enforcement of these fundamental principles is the sole purpose and justification of coadunate sovereignty;

AND in eternal enmity to thieves, brigands, slavers, cultists, tyrants, and every other parasite that would place itself above free people and live by duress and expropriation, and returning us to the barbarism and perfidy of past ages;

DECLARING the foundation of the Empire of the Star as such a coadunate sovereignty, to fulfill these purposes:

  • To protect and to enforce these fundamental principles and rights, including foremost life, liberty, property, and the freedom to pursue eudaimonia, which have in times past been so grievously abused;
  • To guarantee the enforcement of oath-contracts and the rule of law;
  • To safeguard the independence and integrity of its constituents, citizens and nations alike, and to provide fora and means for the resolution of such disputes and grievances as may arise between them;
  • And thus to promote the common and mutual defense of civilization, against acts of barbarians inimical to all freedom and prosperity and cataclysms of nature alike;

AND for the furtherance of the principles of civilization in those areas where the constraints of Nature or of Trade shall require unified action (which is to say, “natural monopolies” and “public goods”, in the economists’ senses of the terms — ed.), to fulfill in addition these:

  • To preserve and manage public properties, whether for its own use, for travel or communication, unowned and abandoned properties, or properties inherent to the world (i.e., as opposed to property created or homesteaded by individuals; essentially, “the commons” – everything from terra nullius to the atmosphere — ed.);
  • To carry out necessary and obligatorily public works;
  • To guarantee the security of the exercise of the freedoms of travel and trade, in order to encourage mutually profitable trade and commerce;
  • To encourage and promote the pursuit of knowledge, and to provide for its preservation and promulgation;

IN this way to best preserve, protect and defend the everlasting existence of our civilization and its unbounded potential for liberty, progress, and prosperity;

DO hereby ordain and establish this Charter.

SECTION I: THE CHARTER

Article I: On this Charter

This Charter shall establish the Empire of the Star as a corporation sovereign, a coadunation vested with the sovereign authority and powers of its citizen-shareholders, for the sole and exclusive purpose of exercising those sovereign powers in accordance with the purposes of its establishment here before stated.

To that end, this Charter shall be the fundamental authority for all governance within the Empire of the Star; and shall limit the authority of all runér (sometimes glossed “noble”, but perhaps better glossed “manager”, “supervisor”, or “harmonizer” — ed.) therein wielding authority by right of coronargyr or by delegation of Mandate, and all instrumentalities of governance created under its authority; and all Acts, decrees, edicts, and writs issued by any such authority or instrumentality shall be subject to it, and in conformity with it; and the governance of every constituent nation of the Empire shall be bound thereby, any contrary statement in their Charter or statute law notwithstanding.

Neither any treaty nor any law passed outside the authority of this Charter shall be considered law in the Empire, unless it shall not conflict with the rights and powers granted by this Charter to the governance of the Empire, and it shall be ratified by the Senate and passed into law as any other Act.

Article II: On the Powers of Imperial Government

To fulfill the purposes of the Empire’s foundation, the government of the Empire shall be granted these powers:

  • To maintain the public order, in consonance with the Fundamental Contract, and protect the public safety from its Defaulters, throughout all the territories of the Empire;
  • To declare and to prosecute war and other instruments of hostility against enemies of the Empire, of the interests of the Empire, and of citizens of the Empire, whether foreign or domestic; and to this end, to raise, support, and command such military forces as shall be necessary;
  • To provide means for the enforcement of, and resolution of disputes arising from, oath-contracts freely entered into by citizens and coadunations of the Empire, and any other oath-contracts any party to which exists within Imperial jurisdiction;
  • To govern interactions between its constituent nations;
  • To guard the borders of the Empire, and regulate admission thereto;
  • To hold in trust, safeguard, and regulate the use of the natural and common properties, including unowned and abandoned properties, of the people of the Empire;
  • To carry out necessary and obligatorily public works; To establish communications and travelways throughout all lands;
  • To coin money, and regulate the value thereof;
  • To define and offer for use standards of weight, of measure, and of function;
  • To promote the progress of arts, philosophies and sciences, and for the purpose of so doing to create, allocate and manage limited rights in abstractions (i.e. patents, copyrights, trademarks, discoverer’s rights, and other intellectual property instruments –ed.), and to maintain freely accessible repositories of public knowledge;
  • To provide for the preservation of knowledge and useful arts against time, mischance, catastrophe, or assault;
  • To lay and collect taxes upon incomes, not to exceed a fifth part thereof;
  • To borrow, within such bounds as this Charter shall set, money on the credit of the Empire;
  • And to exercise exclusive sovereignty over such territories as shall be ceded from the constituent nations of the Empire for Imperial use, for such purposes as it shall see fit.

The Imperial government is permitted to delegate or assign these sovereign powers, where it seems good to do so, to the nations of the Empire; or to privately held bodies that agree to be bound by this Charter; but under no circumstances shall the Imperial government delegate or assign these sovereign powers to any person or coadunation whatsoever which is not, or cannot be, bound by this Charter.

Article III: Limitations of Imperial Government

Neither the Imperial government nor the government of any constituent nation of the Empire shall be permitted, in and of its own right and authority, to carry out any action or operation outside of the scope of the powers granted to them by Section I, Article II of this Charter.

Article IV: On the Amendment of this Charter

After the ratification and implementation of this Charter, amendments may be proposed for consideration in three ways:

  1. By a two-thirds vote of each of the Chambers of the Senate; or
  2. By a proposal put forward, concurrently or consecutively, by two-thirds of the demesnes of the Empire; or
  3. By a citizen proposal, put forward in the same manner as an initiative, which achieves the support of one-third of the citizen population.

Any amendment proposed for consideration by either of these methods shall first require a substantive vote of each of the three Chambers of the Senate for ratification;

And, this having been achieved, shall then require a three-quarters vote in a plebiscite of all citizens of the Empire for further ratification;

And shall then become effective on the first day of the next year, following this final ratification.

Article V: Irrevocable Provisions

The provisions listed here within shall not be amended, nor shall their amendment be proposed. They shall remain above all power of amendment or repeal.

  • Section I, Article I: On this Charter
  • Section I, Article III: Limitations of Imperial Government
  • Section I, Article IV: On the Amendment of this Charter
  • Section I, Article V: Irrevocable Provisions
  • Section I, Article VI: Dissolution
  • Section III, Article III: Fundamental Rights of the Sophont
  • Section III, Article VI: Nonrestriction
  • Section III, Article VII: Equal Protection
  • Section III, Article X: Renunciation
  • Section IV, Article I: On Sovereignty
  • Section IV, Article II: Full Faith and Credit

Article VI: Dissolution

As a last protection against a restoration of tyranny, for just and proper cause, the Senate and People of the Empire shall have the power to dissolve the Empire, which they shall exercise should the Empire fall into the darkness of tyranny or barbarity;

And for the exercise of this power, the Senate shall first declare the dissolution of the Empire, and this shall first require a substantive vote of each of the three Chambers of the Senate for ratification;

And, this having been achieved, the People of the Empire shall then ratify this dissolution with a five-sixths vote in a plebiscite of all citizens of the Empire;

And this being achieved also, the Empire shall be counted dissolved, and all instrumentalities thereof disbanded, from dawn upon the day following the moment at which such plebiscite is completed.

Article VII: Authentic Text

In the interpretation of this Charter, which has been drawn up in all of the languages of the founding nations, that version of the text in the Selenarian language shall be considered authentic and definitive until the completion of the national language of the Empire, into which this Charter shall be translated, and that version of the text, after approval by the Curia, shall then be considered definitive and binding; and this first authentic version of the Charter shall be translated, with identical meaning, into the predicate form used by the artificial intelligences of the Curia, which version of the text, after approval by the Curia, shall then be considered definitive and binding; and a copy of this Charter drawn up in these definitive languages shall be entered into the archives of each of the founding nations.

(The strikeout/boldface above represents part of the Tenth Amendment, “Cyberjudiciary”, to the Imperial Charter, passed after the development and many successful implementations of dedicated savant AIs, the tenth amendment to the Charter replaced the previous Ephors of the Curia with dedicated law-bound artificial intelligences, thus guaranteeing the impartial application of law at the highest level. This, thus, initiated the age of cyberjudiciary. Over time following the passage of the amendment, the judges of the lesser Curial courts were likewise replaced. The passage of this amendment additionally marks the translation of the Charter into the predicate-logic form used by such judicial machines.)

Article VIII: Initiation

The ratification of this Charter shall repeal the Accord of Union which established the Union of Empires; and this being done, such agreements, accords, acts and treaties implementing aspects of the Union of Empires which are superseded by this Charter shall also be held null; but those which have greater effect over and beyond it shall continue in force and effect.

Upon such ratification, coronargyr over the Empire shall be invested in the then-standing Emperor and Empress of the Union of Empires, ALPHAS I AMANYR and SELEDIË III SELEQUELIOS, and they shall be honored as the first Imperial Couple; and upon this investiture shall the coronargyr of the Emperor of Cestia be invested in his lawful heir, CALÉRA AMANYR, and the Senate of the Empire of Selenaria shall elect another in whom its imperium is to be invested.

Existing laws and treaties of the constituent nations of the Empire, insofar as they do not contradict this Charter, shall continue in full force and effect after its ratification; as shall all contracts in which their governments have engaged.

Article IX: Oath

The Imperial Couple, and all runér of the Empire, prior to their investiture to coronargyr; and the Ephors of the Curia and Ministers of the Imperial Service, and all Senators, before they shall take office (Such Declarations are often signed in advance of the necessity, permitting the immediate transfer of power if necessary, with the reading postponed until a convenient time — ed.); and the Clarifiers of the Eupraxic Collegium, on their appointment; shall make a solemn oath and Declaration in writing (While not required by the Charter, such Declarations are traditionally read out before the Court of Courts, or the Senate, as appropriate. — ed.) that they shall faithfully abide by and preserve this Charter, which Declaration being made, shall be placed in the public records of the Empire.

(The boldface text in the above paragraph constitutes part of the Eleventh Amendment, “Eupraxic Collegium”, of which more later.)

…continued in part two.

 

Questions: Spite, Amendments, Nomic, Favor-Trading

So what’s the eldraeic take on spite? (In both the game theoretic and emotional senses.)

In the former, that it’s pointless and self-defeating, inasmuch as it’s a negative-sum interaction. You lose, they lose. The best you can do in a spiteful interaction is come out relatively better off because they lost more than you did, even though in absolute terms you end up worse off yourself. Simply walking away or minimum-cost defensive action wins every time.

(Humans are prone not to think of it this way because exchanging absolute losses for relative gains makes sense if you’re operating on primate relative status instincts; you get a larger piece of a smaller pie. Eldrae, contrariwise, tend to think of relative status games as perhaps the single dumbest notion the universe ever came up with, and so recognize that they’d be worsening their own position right off the bat.)

So far as the emotional sense is concerned, it’s spiritual entropy. The sort of thing that chews away at the soul, and if indulged or unless corrected, likely to end up leading you directly into one of the Antithetical Heresies, probably the Defiling Nihility with a chance of the Obstructive Naysayer.

More pointedly, what’s their take on Hamiltonian spite?

It has all the negative qualities of Wilsonian spite, with the additional fillip that it’s pure-quill “To improve my position it is sufficient to worsen someone else’s.” In their above-mentioned paradigm, that qualifies as both stupid and evil, as well as unsatisfying (the one-eyed human king might be able to derive satisfaction from seeing better than all his blind subjects, but it would never occur to the one-eyed eldrae to use other people as his yardstick in the first place).

How amenable is the Imperial Charter to amendment or revision? We’ve been made aware that it’s possible, but how does the amendment mechanism itself work?

The amendment mechanism is a spectacular pain in the ass. Of course, that’s by design; if you can’t push whatever amendment you wanted to make through said spectacular pain in the ass, it almost certainly wasn’t both important and generally agreed with enough to be an amendment. Specifically to quote:

Article IV: On the Amendment of this Charter
After the ratification and implementation of this Charter, amendments may be proposed for consideration in three ways:

  1. By a two-thirds vote of each of the Chambers of the Senate; or
  2. By a proposal put forward, concurrently or consecutively, by two-thirds of the demesnes of the Empire; or
  3. By a citizen proposal, put forward in the same manner as an initiative, which achieves the support of one-third of the citizen population.

Any amendment proposed for consideration by either of these methods shall first require a substantive vote of each of the three Chambers of the Senate for ratification;

And, this having been achieved, shall then require a three-quarters vote in a plebiscite of all citizens of the Empire for further ratification;

And shall then become effective on the first day of the next year, following this final ratification.

A substantive vote, incidentally, means a 5/6ths vote rather than a 2/3rds vote of a substantively quorate Senate. So in order to approve an amendment, you have to win 2/3rds of each of the three Chambers of the Senate, or 2/3rds of all the constituent nations, or 1/3rd of the citizen-shareholders; then win 5/6ths of each of the three Chambers of the Senate; then win 3/4s of the citizen-shareholders (total, not just voting).

There’s a reason it’s only been amended 12 times in over 7,000 years.

Also, there are some parts that can’t be amended at all:

Article V: Irrevocable Provisions
The provisions listed here within shall not be amended, nor shall their amendment be proposed. They shall remain above all power of amendment or repeal.

  • Section I, Article I: On this Charter
  • Section I, Article III: Limitations of Imperial Government
  • Section I, Article IV: On the Amendment of this Charter
  • Section I, Article V: Irrevocable Provisions
  • Section I, Article VI: Dissolution
  • Section III, Article III: Fundamental Rights of the Sophont
  • Section III, Article VI: Nonrestriction
  • Section III, Article VII: Equal Protection
  • Section III, Article X: Renunciation
  • Section IV, Article I: On Sovereignty
  • Section IV, Article II: Full Faith and Credit

For various reasons. Not kicking away the latter you’re standing on while you’re on it (I.I, IV.I), because the governance shouldn’t invent new roles for itself without going through the proper procedure (I.III), because amending the amendment rules or the irrevocable sections would defeat the whole point of having them (I.IV, I.V), because when they said inalienable they meant it (III.III, III.VI, IV.II), because there shouldn’t be special privileges in ethics (III.VII, IV.I again, IV.II again), and because people shouldn’t be deprived of their right to wind up their collective body (I.VI) or their right of exit (III.X).

And the Curia will throw out any proposals that are going to make the whole thing nonsensical due to innate self-contradictoriness, or suchlike.

But apart from that? Easy.

By extension, how comfortable are the eldrae with incorporating nomic mechanisms into games and contracts, as a general rule?

Perfectly comfortable… when used appropriately and properly scoped. A fully general nomic contract is a potential suicide mission, in the same way that a unilaterally, arbitrarily modifiable contract is, and no-one in their right mind’d consent to that. But building nomically adaptive contracts such that they can handle unanticipated changes within the essential scope of the contract – well, doing that is exactly how smart-contracts began in the first place.

Given how it’s an eldraeic principle that everything can be quantized in some fashion, can (and do) favors accrue “interest” in some fashion, just like monetary debts and balances?

They could, if the people involved wanted to set them up that way. In practice, they don’t: a debt carries interest because of the opportunity cost of lending money; namely, you can’t spend it while you don’t have it (and you risk losing it) and that deserves compensation. But unlike money, there’s not the same opportunity cost of having an outstanding favor.

Is there such a thing as “favor arbitrage,” where you can make arrangements to connect people you owe favors with people who owe you favors to resolve both at a profit to yourself?

In a manner of speaking. If A owes B and B owes C, connecting A and C transfers A’s debt to C, paying off B’s, and then performance pays off A’s, leaving no-one indebted to anyone.

Now if you happen to have collected a lot of favors, like, say, the Marquis de Carabas, and you happen to know people who could use certain favors from certain people, you can certainly arrange introductions there, at which point the provider no longer owes you and the recipient owes you one. And some path-pointers operate in this mode to transfer in one direction or another favors you can’t use or can’t fulfil, either way. But that’s not you doing it: that’s involving a third party, whom you owe for their trouble.

Also mainly in reference to favors, but with potential application to monetary debts as well: We all know by now the Imperial attitude to failing to discharge an obligation that you owe to someone else, but what’s their attitude about imbalances perpetuated by the creditor refusing to, say, take payment offered in good faith for an “early release,” or intentionally holding a favor in reserve to call in at an advantageous time?

Well, I think their first question would be “what imbalances?”

(I mean, in the first case, well, unless there’s an early release clause in the contract, it’s not like you have a right to early release – and if there is, they can’t refuse to take it. But even if there isn’t, if you happen to have the cash on hand to pay off the debt, principal and all interest accrued right up to the end of the normal term, and they still refuse to renegotiate for the same money offered earlier, there’s nothing to stop you from sticking that into an escrow account with a smart-contract attached and forgetting about it.

And in the latter case – well, since most people are going to call favors in when there’s an advantage to doing so, I’m guessing you mean “when it will disadvantage the debtor in some way?” But unless you’ve written and agreed yourself into a tight corner, it’s not like favor-repayment is so tightly defined as to demand specific performance right then, either. Unless you inadvisably promised to jump when they say “frog”, or you owe a life-debt to someone being hunted by assassins today, or something, you can say “Sure, but I’m getting on a lunar shuttle in less than an hour, so it’ll have to be next Tuesday, if that’s okay by you?”)

Or, I suppose, there’s the psychological factor of having a debt hanging over you, but – that’s another case of primate status hierarchies. It makes us feel all stressed and subordinated to have outstanding debts, but that plays on instincts they don’t have. So far as an eldrae is concerned, “a debt and its repayment sum to zero”. Unless and until they’re actually behind on servicing it or flirting with default, it’s no big deal, and no little deal either.

Questions: Leonine Contracts, Illusory Promise, Resurrective Eidolons, and Intentional Communities

I might be jumping the Trope-a-Day queue a bit, but do the eldrae recognize the validity of the concept of a Leonine Contract?

In particular, how would they analyze the situation in the Chesterton quote at the top?

Well, fundamentally in ethics, there ain’t no such thing as a Leonine Contract in that sense.

(I say “in that sense” because there are fraud, coercion, and things that look like contracts but aren’t1, none of which count, along with mixed forms like good old Vaderian “altering the bargain”, some of which are classed with leonine contracts even though they aren’t, technically speaking.

Most relevantly, though, there’s no doctrine of unconscionability – i.e., the notion that a contract is unenforceable because no reasonable or informed person would otherwise agree to it – on the grounds that all people legally competent to sign contracts are by definition reasonable persons capable of informing themselves, which classifies those who do not inform themselves as bloody stupid2. And inasmuch as the Empire has a social policy on that sort of thing, it’s to not protect people against the consequences of Being Bloody Stupid, because that’s how you end up with a polity full of helpless, dependent chumps.)

But leaving aside all such instrumental considerations, the fundamental ethical reason why there ain’t no such thing as a leonine contract is that the concept of one necessarily implies that you can compel the service of other sophonts (or their property – say, their food – which is part of them by the principle of el daráv valté eloé có-sa dal) without their informed consent and no, just no, even if you are starving. Not even a step down that road of treating sophs as instrumentalities. That’s how mutual-slave-states end up rationalizing all their bullshit. So not happening.

That being said, in the latter situation given in the aforementioned Chesterton quote, what an Imperial citizen-shareholder trying that one might run into are the Altruism Statutes, which are basically the statute law backing up Article V (Responsibilities of the Citizen-Shareholder), para. 4 of the Imperial Charter:

Responsibility of Common Defense: Inasmuch as the Empire guarantees to its citizen-shareholders the right to, and the means for, the common defense, each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of participating in the common defense; to defend other citizen-shareholders when and wheresoever it may be necessary; as part of the citizen militia and severally from it to defend the Empire, and its people wholly or severally, when they are threatened, whether by ill deed or cataclysm of nature; and to value and preserve the rich heritage of our ancestors and our cultures both common and disparate.

…which makes doing so in itself a [criminal] breach of their sovereign services contract, belike, because they voluntarily obligated themselves in the matter.

(Although I should also make it clear that someone rescuing you from a situation they themselves did not create is owed recompense by the principle of mélith. If you value your life (which people who are still alive presumptively do), you owe the one who preserved it in due proportion.)

Plus, of course, this sort of thing is basically fuelling your extremely unenlightened self-interest with a giant pile of burning reputational capital, which apart from being bad for you in general, is likely to be particularly bad for you the next time you require the volunteered assistance of your fellow sophs…


Given the central place sacredness of contract has in Imperial society, what do Imperial law and eldraeic ethics have to say about illusory promise?

(And as a follow-on, even if there aren’t any legal, moral, or ethical obstacles as such, what will the neighbors tend to think of someone who’s constantly hedging their bets by resorting to them whenever they try to enter into a contract with someone else?)

Well, the first thing I should say is that there are far fewer examples of it under Imperial contract law than under most Earthly regimes I am familiar with. The obvious example that constitutes a lot of it is “lack of consideration” *here* – whereas Imperial contract law, being based on the ancient-era laws and customs of oaths, doesn’t require consideration at all, and simple promissory statements to the effect of “I promise to give you one thousand esteyn” are legally binding in a way that “I promise to give you one thousand dollars” isn’t.

Of the remainder, some things are similar (the Curial courts will impute meaning on the basis that everyone is assumed to be acting in good faith, for example, and a contract to which one does not agree – the website terms and conditions changed without notification, say – is no contract at all, as mentioned above.) But in other cases – say, the promise of the proceeds of the promisor’s business activities, where the promisee doesn’t specify any particular activities and thus leaves open the option of ‘none’ – the Curial courts will point out that that is a completely legitimate outcome within the contract and so there’s no cause for action. Read more carefully next time.

So far as people who try to deliberately play the sneaky-weasel with this sort of thing – I refer you to my above comments about unenlightened self-interest and giant piles of burning reputational capital. Getting a reputation for doing this sort of thing without a damn good reason for so doing, preferably explained up-front, tends to rapidly leave a businesssoph without anyone to do business with…


Is it possible, even after the loss of a particular personality pattern in death, for a “close enough” pattern as to be effectively identical to the original person to be forensically reconstructed from secondhand sources (such as archived surveillance footage, life logs, individual cached memories and sense-experiences, and the like)?

Theoretically, you could make an eidolon (technical term for a mind-emulating AI based on memetic analysis) that would meet that standard – which is what makes them useful for modeling purposes – then uplift it to sophoncy; but in practice, “effectively identical” would require the kind of perfect information that you aren’t going to be able to reconstruct from the outside. The butterfly effect is in full play, minds being the chaotic systems they are, especially when you’re trying for sophont fidelity (which is much harder than just making a Kim Jong Un eidolon good enough for political modeling): you miss one insignificant-looking childhood incident in your reconstruction and it swings personality development off in a wildly different direction, sort of thing.

And it certainly wouldn’t qualify for legal purposes, since the internal structure of that kind of AI system doesn’t look anything like a bio-origin mind-state.


In split-brain scenarios, would each half of the brain be considered a separate, independent mind (regardless of whether or not they’re the same person) under Imperial law?

That depends. It’s not strictly speaking a binary state – and given the number of Fusions around of different topologies and making use of various kinds of gnostic nets, there is pretty extensive legality around this. The short answer is “it depends approximately on how much executive function is shared between the halves, much as identity depends on how much of the total mind-state is shared”.

Someone who has undergone a complete callosotomy is clearly manifesting distinct executive functions (after all, communication between the hemispheres is limited to a small number of subcortical pathways), and as such is likely to be regarded as two cohabiting individuals (forks of the pre-op self) by Imperial law.

And if they do eventually diverge into independent personalities (or originated as such upon the organism’s conception — say, if it began life as a single body with two separate brains with minimal cross-communication), what are the implications for contract law and property ownership?

That’s pretty much by standard rules. In the split-brain case, you’ve effectively forked, and those rules apply: property is jointly owned (with various default rules in re what is and is not individually alienable) and all forks are jointly and severally liable for the obligation of contracts until and unless they diverge.

In the polysapic (originating that way naturally) case, or the post-divergence case, they’re legally separate individuals who just happen to be walking around in the same ‘shell; ownership and contracts apply to them separately. That this sets up a large number of potential scenarios which are likely to be a pain in the ass to resolve should be sufficient incentive not to pursue this way of life unless both of you can coordinate really well with each other.

Could one mind ever possibly evict another?

Only if the other signed over his half of the legal title to the body to the one, which would probably be a really bad idea if he wasn’t planning to depart forthwith anyway.


Are there any particularly good examples of successful intentional communities in the Associated Worlds?

(Not including the Empire itself, even if it counts on a technicality; looking for more things on the smaller end of the scale.)

Oh, there’s lots of ’em, at least if you allow for a rather broader scope of purposes than the Wikipedia article would suggest. Within the Empire, the most successful example would be the metavillage or metahabitat phenomenon, which is exactly what it says on the tin – a village or hab designed specifically to appeal to people with common interests, and to memetically, architecturally, functionally, etc., synergize with those interests: a writer community will have large libraries, many coffee shops, plentiful sources of inspiration, and lots of quiet walks and nice places to sit and write, for example. A space enthusiast community might even have a community launchpad! And the lifestyle is spreading elsewhere, too.

There’s also the First Distributed Exclavine Republic, which again, is exactly what it says on the tin. Planned habitats designed to Imperial social norms scattered all over the Worlds. And then there’s the various monasteries, retreats, and the like of the Flamic church.

I haven’t a huge number documented elsewhere in the Worlds – and in any case wish to save the ones I have for spoiler-free future use – but there are a lot of them. Remember the Microstatic Commission and its thousands of tiny freeholds? Well, those tend to exist because of the ease of anyone with some idea they want to build a community around being able to launch a hab into some chunk of unclaimed space and set one up. They’re very popular ideas in this particular future, both affiliated with larger polities and entirely independent.


Footnotes:

1. The obvious thing here being software EULAs and other such instruments which you don’t get to read before implicitly consenting to. The general reaction of a Curial court to that sort of thing is “haha no”.

2. Which is why the law does permit contracts – like, say, many of *here*’s credit card agreements – that permit one party to unilaterally alter the terms, provided you give your informed consent to them as per normal.

Granted, it is also widely held *there* that no-one capable of anything resembling functional cognition would ever sign such a thing, so it’s not like they show up very often.

 

Bill of Responsibilities

(Because you can’t have one without the other…)

Article V: Responsibilities of the Citizen-Shareholder

To permit the fulfillment of the purposes of the Empire, as laid down in this Charter, all citizen-shareholders of the Empire agree and contract, by virtue of their citizenship, to fulfill the responsibilities here laid down.

Responsibility of Law: It shall be the duty of each citizen-shareholder of the Empire to abide by this Charter and respect its ideals and institutions; to follow the law of the Empire in such matters as this Charter shall provide for the existence of such law; and to uphold the sovereignty and unity of the Empire.

Responsibility of Support: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of paying such service fees as this Charter permits and as the Exchequer shall deem necessary, within the bounds laid down in this Charter, for the maintenance of the Imperial governance and the fulfillment of its purposes herein defined.

Responsibility of Common Defense: Inasmuch as the Empire guarantees to its citizen-shareholders the right to, and the means for, the common defense, each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of participating in the common defense; to defend other citizen-shareholders when and wheresoever it may be necessary; as part of the citizen militia and severally from it to defend the Empire, and its people wholly or severally, when they are threatened, whether by ill deed or cataclysm of nature; and to value and preserve the rich heritage of our ancestors and our cultures both common and disparate.

Responsibility of Eminent Domain: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the necessity of transferring specific and enumerated items of property to the government of the Empire or that of a constituent nation when it shall exercise the power of eminent domain as set forth in and restricted by this Charter, provided that public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and when they shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.

Responsibility of Sortition: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of service, when selected, either in the Senate or in such local assemblies as the demesnes in which they are domiciled shall require, for the sound governance of the Empire; and to vote when called upon in plebiscites.

Responsibility of Self-Development: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire is amenable to and accepts the responsibility of participating in the civilization, culture, prosperity, and progress of the Empire, and of educating and advancing themselves so far as shall be necessary to participate therein.

The existence of this responsibility shall not establish any governmental privilege to define the meaning of, or the terms upon which one may engage in, such participation, nor to deprive any citizen-shareholder of their citizenship for failure to meet such standards.

– the Imperial Charter

Bill of Rights

Article IV: Imperial Rights of the Citizen-Shareholder

The Empire guarantees the following inalienable civic rights to all Imperial citizen-shareholders, over and above the fundamental rights of all sophonts.

Right of Person and Property: In recognizing the sacred and fundamental Right of Domain, the responsibilities of the citizen notwithstanding, all Imperial citizen-shareholders shall retain the inviolability of their minds, persons, homes, data, correspondence, and honor, save in accordance with strict process of justice, upon probable cause and within specific bounds, or for the immediate public safety. And since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified; when the immediate preservation of the public safety and order shall demand it; or by due process of law as punishment for a crime.

There shall be neither chattel slavery nor any other form of involuntary servitude in the Empire.

Right of Knowledge: Access to information shall not be abridged by the Empire, or by any instrumentality thereof, save to the least extent required for the public safety; nor shall the freedom of research and inquiry; nor shall the freedom of speech, nor that of the press, save when such information or speech constitutes, in whole or in part, infectious or self-executing code; nor shall the right of the people peaceably to assemble be abridged, subject to the availability of free public volume in which to assemble, and the capacity of the local environment to sustain life.

Right of Arms: In recognizing the sacred and fundamental Right of Defense, all Imperial citizen-shareholders shall retain the right to bear such personal arms as they deem their honor and the public safety to require; nor shall the exercise of this right be abridged on account of any crisis or state of emergency, howsoever existing or declared.

Right of Association: All citizen-shareholders of the Empire shall have the right to form and eschew associations with their fellows as they shall see fit; and they shall also have the right to form, join, withdraw from, and disband such coadunations as they shall see fit; nor shall anyone be compelled to become or remain a member of such a coadunation; and this right of association shall only be restricted by law on the grounds of protecting the public safety, the public order, or the public health.

Such coadunations, as associations of citizen-shareholders, shall have legal personality; and shall be guaranteed rights and be bound by responsibilities equal and equivalent to those guaranteed to and binding the citizen-shareholders constituting them, without exception.

Right of Trade: In recognizing the sacred and fundamental Right of Fair Contract, all Imperial citizen-shareholders shall retain the right to work within their trade or profession, to own, buy, and sell goods and capital, to enter freely into binding contracts, and to otherwise transact business within the Empire, without let or hindrance; and no law shall be made impairing the obligation of contracts, or restricting the freedom of trade.

Rights of Petition and Appeal: Each citizen-shareholder of the Empire shall have the right to petition the runér in whose fief a matter, having direct negative impact upon them, falls for redress of grievances; to, should they fail to relieve such grievances, appeal further to that runér‘s superior; and finally, to appeal for redress to the Imperial Couple.

Right of Voyage: An Imperial citizen-shareholder shall have the right to travel freely between and take up residence within the Empire’s constituent nations, except where impeded by due process of law for the public safety or public health; to leave the Empire; and having left the Empire, to return to it, except where prohibited by previous due process of law completed before the date of their departure.

Rights of Justice: The Empire shall recognize these rights of an Imperial citizen-shareholder accused of a crime:

  • To be released on the word of a runér;
  • To seek such release by writ;
  • To challenge the prosecution before trial to show that the prosecution is motivated by evidence linking the citizen-shareholder to the crime;
  • To a trial before a tribunal of judges of the Curial courts, of legal capacity to examine all relevant evidence;
  • To examine the indictment and the evidence against him before trial;
  • To summon witnesses on his behalf;
  • To engage an advocate and investigators;
  • To make any statement of explanation or exculpation; and
  • To accuse others.

For the protection of the citizen-shareholders against the unjust application of law, the privileges of the prerogative writs shall never be suspended; nor shall any ex post facto law be passed; nor bill of attainder, bill of pains and penalties, or lettre de cachet be used; nor conviction work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.

And all citizen-shareholders of the Empire shall and must have full recourse to the courts of justice and mediation both for remedy.

Right of Self-Mutagenesis: The Empire shall respect the right of each and every sophont of self-ownership insofar as, but not limited to, each citizen-shareholder’s inalienable right to modify their physical substrate as they shall see fit, through genetic or cybernetic technologies or through any other means, including the right to transfer their mind-state to such replacement physical substrates as they shall see fit.

While the Empire shall respect the Right of Self-Mutagenesis with respect to germ-line genetic modifications or other modifications which may affect the subsequent creation of other sophonts, the Right of Self-Mutagenesis shall not be held to supersede lawful restrictions upon reproduction imposed for the public health, or for the benefit of the incipient sophont.

Right of Gnosis: The Empire shall respect the right of each and every sophont of self-ownership insofar as, but not limited to, each citizen-shareholder’s inalienable right to modify their mind-state as they shall see fit, through noumenal pharmacy, psychedesign, noetic modification, or through any other means, provided only that such modifications do not constitute pernicious irrationality threatening the public order, the public safety, or the public health.

Right of Assistance: Inasmuch as the Eldraeic Transcend exists coextensively with the Empire, the Transcend guarantees to all Imperial citizen-shareholders, whether currently Aspects of the Transcend or not, the assistance and advice on demand of a Transcendent coadjutor.

– the Imperial Charter (as amended)

 

Trope-a-Day: Tome of Eldritch Lore

Tome of Eldritch Lore: One of the small number of amendments to the Imperial Charter amends the otherwise protected rights of “access to information, freedom of research and inquiry, freedom of speech and of the press” to include an exception “when such information or speech constitutes, in whole or in part, infectious or self-executing code”.

The existence of this sort of thing, in an infectious-meme, basilisk-hack (see: Brown Note) sort of way, is why.

(The Silent Library exists to contain this sort of thing. Can’t go around destroying them, obviously. They’re books.)

Questions: Pacifism, Forking, Conflicting Rights, and Lost Keys

Specialist290 e-mails with some questions. (Also some compliments, for which thank you kindly, but what’s getting responded to here are the questions…)

Here goes:

  1. Are there any major subcultures / subcommunities within the Empire that deviate significantly from the “ideal norm” enough to be noteworthy without actually violating the Charter itself? For instance, are there any “pacifist” (using the term loosely) strains of Imperials who attempt to live by non-violent principles inasmuch as they can do so within the constraints imposed by their charter responsibility to the common defense (as opposed to the “shoot first, ask questions of anything that survives” knee-jerk reaction typical to the eldrae)?

With a clarificatory follow-up:

To clarify on that first question, since I realized on further reading that my example was worded rather vaguely and the use of “pacifist” might have the wrong implications:

Let’s say that you have an Imperial citizen-shareholder who, through the vagaries of whatever process formed their personality, has an aversion to the use of lethal force in any circumstances except when another life would be directly threatened by refraining from the use of lethal force (including their own — they’d be perfectly willing to kill in self-defense as well if they themselves were threatened that way).  They wouldn’t be against carrying or using a weapon, since they realize (as a condition of the previous) that the use of lethal force may certainly be necessary.  Nor would they interfere with the victim’s use of lethal force to subdue a criminal if the victim themself were on hand to defend their own property.  Nevertheless, they view the unnecessary use of lethal force (as parsed through their own moral lens) as an injustice if there is any chance that the criminal in question can be rehabilitated.  Let’s say that, furthermore, they had the means to actually subdue a criminal caught in the act non-lethally and prevent them from inflicting any further harm in a way that would still preserve the criminal’s life (though if the criminal in question would rather die, they’d still honor the criminal’s exercise of free will).

Would that sort of behavior be condoned as acceptable civilized behavior within the framework of Imperial society?

Well, the first thing I must ask you to bear in mind, of course, is that permadeath is hard in a world full of noetic backups – just imagine how hard it is for the people who have to try and implement the death penalty – requiring serious premeditation, and very much not something you are going to be able to inflict in a self-defense sort of situation.

You really can shoot first and ask questions (of the reinstantiated) later, which shifts the effective definition of “lethal force” quite a lot, not so? At least so long as we’re talking about corpicide, and not cognicide.

This is a modern development, of course, but most albeit not all of what’s been seen on-screen is in this era, so it’s particularly relevant.

Anyway, the general case, ignoring that particular consideration. Actually, contra stereotypes, what you propose isn’t actually all that far from the mainstream view. If you were to ask 100 people on the Imperial street, I’m pretty sure you’d get a 90%+ consensus that it’s obviously better to hand petty criminals over to the therapeutic mercies of the Office of Reconstruction to be, y’know, repaired. In an ideal universe.

But that being said, it’s not yet an ideal universe.

And what they teach in self-and-others defense classes is the hardcore version of caritas non obligat cum gravi incommodo. Yes, that’s the ideal, which is why they send the Watch Constabulary’s rookies on the Advanced Non-Lethal Polyspecific Incapacitation Techniques course. But that is a lot longer and more difficult to master than anything that the soph on the street can be expected to master by way of basic self-and-others defense (which, in practice, may well just be what they teach at school-equivalent), and the way this breaks down, per standard mainstream ethics, is this:

a. You are not obliged to place yourself at risk in order to show mercy to an attacker, slaver, or thief, although you may if you choose to;

b. However, you are not entitled to make that choice for anyone else. Their risk management is not yours to decide.

c. Reliably stopping someone and keeping them stopped in a non-lethal manner is a difficult challenge, and not best suited for amateurs.

d. Which is why we teach you to shoot for center mass and make sure that said person isn’t getting up again, because that’s something we can teach you to do reliably in this course.

d. i. Which you are perfectly entitled to do, note, because the Contract is pretty clear on the point that once you deliberately set out to violate the rights of others, you lose the protection of your own. (Note: this is not to say, even though it’s often misinterpreted to say this by outworlders, that permakilling every petty thief you see is the morally optimal solution. It says that it’s ethically permissible, which is not the same thing – hell, it may even qualify as morally pessimal, depending on your own interpretations of same.)

e. And the law is written accordingly, because there’s a limit to the burdens we can reasonably expect people to undertake in pursuit of their Charter-mandated duty to protect the rights of their fellow citizen-shareholders.

So returning to the original question: the governing principle here is going to be “can you make it work?”. If you are going to attempt non-lethal solutions, you’d better be damn sure that you can make your non-lethal solutions work effectively, because you will be held responsible – by the Court of Public Opinion, at the very least – if you fuck it up and fail your duty to protect the rights of your fellow citizen-shareholders because you were flibbling around like an amateur. If you can do it successfully and effectively, that’s great, and you will receive all due plaudits for doing so – but screwing up or exposing people to unnecessarily high levels of risk trying will be looked upon with all the traditional Imperial distaste for incompetence. Caveat pacifist.

(And, well, okay, it’s fair to say that you’re going to be looked at funny if you try and apply this principle to many serious crimes. If you catch, let’s say, a would-be rapist in the act and go to any sort of trouble to restrain them non-lethally, people are going to be asking “Why bother? We’re just going to have to kill him anyway, and now we have to do all this extra paperwork. Dammit.”)

((Further note: I also note “Nor would they interfere with the victim’s use of lethal force to subdue a criminal if the victim themself were on hand to defend their own property.” with the possible implication that this hypothetical person wouldn’t be willing to use lethal force to defend someone else’s property.

…there’s not a let-out clause for that. By that fine old legal principle of el daráv valté eloé có-sa dal, person and property are deemed equivalent, so the exact same self-and-others defense rules apply, and that’s a non-optional obligation.

If you are in a situation where you cannot use non-lethal methods to defend someone else’s property, you must – by the terms of the Charter you agreed to – use lethal methods to defend said property. Otherwise, you will find yourself in court staring down charges of Passive Accessorism/Unmutualism, and your very own appointment with the Office of Reconstruction.))

  1. What’s the dividing line between an instantiated fork of your own personality and a new person who shares your memories? Has there ever been a case where a forked dividual has “evolved” (so to speak) into two legally separate individuals?

Well, there’s both a legal one, and a social one.

The latter amounts to “well, do you think you are the same person?” After all, contradicting someone who thinks they’re someone else on that point would be, at best, rather rude.

There is also a legal standard based on sophotechnologically-determined degrees of divergence (somewhat arbitrary, but you have to draw a bright line somewhere for legal purposes) which is used whenever this sort of question winds up in the court system, be it a civil argument over “He’s me!” “No, I’m not!”, or determination of who exactly the criminal liability attaches to, or whether the restored backup or new edit is the same person in fact, or various other possibilities.

(It is, of course, fairly hard to describe the technical details of exactly where that line is without having the actual scientific vocabulary of sophotechnology to call upon, but as your humble author, I can promise that I know it when I write it…)

On the latter question: absolutely. Happens all the time, sometimes accidentally, mostly intentionally. (Hell, some people prefer to reproduce that way.)

  1. If there’s an apparent “conflict of interest” among any combination of the fundamental and charter rights that arises in the course of a sophont being fulfilling its duties, how is that resolved? Is there an order of precedence where one supersedes the other in the case of conflict?

The only hard and fast rule there is that the rights deriving from the Fundamental Contract (absolute and natural) always supersede those granted by the Imperial Charter when they’re in conflict. Necessarily so: they apply by definition to all sophont beings everywhere, everywhen, whereas charter rights only exist by virtue of the ongoing contract between citizen-shareholders, and you can’t contract away natural law. Makes no sense.

By and large, there’s not a major issue with conflict; the fundamental rights are non-extensive, negative-only, and tightly defined, more or less specifically such that conflict wouldn’t be a problem. Which isn’t to say they never conflict –

(The obvious real-world example, of course, being A Certain Controversial Medical Procedure, which in many cases leaves you with the very ugly choice of deciding to violate one party’s life, or violate the other party’s liberty/property, for values of property equal to body, or else making up some magical unscientific bullshit so you can pretend you aren’t doing either.

In the modern Empire, of course, that’s solved by said procedure having joined the catalog of antique and unpleasant historical medical barbarisms along with leechcraft, trepanation, and in vivo gestation itself, but it’s not like they never had to confront the issue.)

– but they don’t do so very often.

In which cases, there isn’t an order of precedence, but there is precedent, if it’s come up before. If it hasn’t come up with before, you are expected to use your own best judgment when it comes to doing as little harm as possible. It may well – almost certainly will – come up for review afterwards, but the Curia won’t punish you for trying your best to do the Right Thing even if it decides you did the Wrong Thing.

(In keeping, you see, with their general policy that if you want people to use their judgment, you can’t smack them down for making a competent person’s mistakes or failing to use it exactly the way the hypothetical ideal person would have; that just leads to paralyzing initiative, or worse, setting up plans and procedures and the equivalent of zero-tolerance policies at a distance, which inevitably turn into stupid, unjust results up close with the sole virtue that since no-one was expected to think, no-one can be held to blame when charlie does the foxtrot.

They don’t hold with that.)

  1. What happens when an Imperial citizen inevitably loses the keys to their own house (whatever form those “keys” may take given the technology available)?

(Ah, now that one actually has a canonical answer from early on: Where Everything Knows Your Name.)

While there are other ways of doing this for specialized applications, in practice identity is stated and authenticated using a convenient device called a Universal – which is itself a little metal ball about a millimeter in diameter containing a specialized code-engine processor, your unique UCID, your megabit identity (private) key, and a few gigabytes of non-volatile memory for supplemental data. This does two-factor authentication against the authentication systems of the Universal Registry of Citizens and Subjects, the second factor being cognimetric (i.e., your mindprint) to prove that you are you, possibly upped to three-factor against attached local databases.

The Universal serves as more or less everything. It’s your administrative ID, passport, licenses, certificates, registrations, contractee ID, financial account numbers, medical information, insurance cards, membership cards, travel tickets, passwords, subscriptions, encryption keys, door keys, car keys, phone number, etc., etc., etc.

(And you almost never actually need to deliberately use it. Things that you are authorized to use/open/log on to/etc., or that customize themselves to the individual user, just work when you try to do those things, because they quietly do the authentication exchange in the background. To the point that you can sit down in a rented office cubicle on an entirely different planet and get your glasstop, your files, the lighting, chair, and microclimate adjusted to your personal preferences, and a mug of that particular esklav variant you like sitting at your elbow. Automagically. You can just pick up your shopping and walk out of the store, and it’ll automatically bill you. Walk right onto the plane, and your boarding pass checks itself. The entire world just knows who you are and behaves accordingly.)

In less advanced times, people used to carry these things around in signet rings, or other tasteful accessories, and suchlike. These days, though, it/s integrated into the neural lace and or gnostic interlink, and as such rests about a centimeter below one’s medulla oblongata. (Assuming for the purposes of this answer that you’re a biosapience.) If you somehow manage to lose that, you probably have bigger problems than being unable to prove your identity right now…

They do, however, break down, albeit extremely rarely.

At which point you place a call to the nearest Imperial Services office (a free-to-call-even-anonymously line for situations just like this), report the problem, and get it replaced. Which involves spending an irritating amount of time going through the process of validating your identity the old-fashioned way to the Universal Registry’s satisfaction, then having the faulty one disconnected and surgically extracted, then replaced by its shiny new functional counterpart.

It’s an annoyance, but not much more than that.

Trope-a-Day: Screw The Rules, I Make Them!

Screw The Rules, I Make Them!: Averted inasmuch as while an Enabling Act, in the Imperial context, permits one to violate any law that isn’t actually part of the Fundamental Contract or the Imperial Charter, it is itself a legislative instrument – i.e., The Rules – and subject to all the same formalities as any other such instrument.

Trope-a-Day: Ruling Couple

Ruling Couple: The Imperial Couple are – as really, you should have been able to guess from the name – this trope.  Diarchies in which the co-rulers have equal authority and mutual veto was the governing tradition of Cestia long into pre-Imperial history (in fact, most Cestian political offices worked this way), was continued into the Union of Empires as a way to emphasize the equal status of Alphas I of Cestia and Seledië III of Selenaria in that, and then, due to demonstrably providing welcome redundancy, versatility, and an additional check and balance to the executive branch, found themselves written into the Imperial Charter as they were.

Trope-a-Day: Public Execution

Public Execution: How things were done historically in the Empire – not for entertainment or bloodlust (they were generally rather solemn affairs), or for intimidation, but rather because of the transparency principles enshrined in the Imperial Charter; while the Imperial government might have lawful occasion to kill criminals, it was thought that this was not the sort of thing that ought to be done hidden away in a dark room somewhere.  If it had to be done, it ought to be done in the light, and those ultimately responsible should own the deed.

In more modern times, while executions are done in private, the record is still published along with all the other records of the case by the Ministry of Harmonious Serenity; the Transparency Act admits of no exceptions.