Civil Order, Legality, and Accountability

The world is a mess. Both people and "government" are out of control across the face of the planet, and while I concern myself with it all, my practical limitations constrain me to the land I know: America.  We have an interesting Constitution that relies heavily upon the good will and competence of the trustees we emplace as administrators of Law.  It is now clear to me that for the past 250 years our trust has been misplaced in monotonically increasing error.  In the old days when the nation was in its infancy, those trustees at least showed we the People enough respect to make the effort to mask their perfidies, failings, and crimes.  Today, we get not even that much consideration as the putative representatives of the People prance wildly about as clowns in a Cirque Macabre, enacting legislation that defies all sense and decency, while they fail to enforce that which protects the rights of the People in whose name they claim to discharge their manifold villainies.

My purpose here is to address this with a draft of a proposed charter for reining in the wildly out of control elements of "government" that have gone universally off the rails as the people serving in the various roles have so very clearly forgotten that they are indeed trustee-administrators, and not masters of the proletariat. 

This is a working charter. It represents the current formulation of a proposed legal architecture for accountability under civil order. It is published for examination and criticism, not presented as settled law or as a claim that every provision has survived adversarial testing.  But I would offer it as a candidate Amendment to the Constitution.  The operational reality of currently practiced governance cannot go on as it has, most particularly over the past 100 years, but in reality running all the back to the earliest days of the Republic where the historical record plainly illustrates how we failed ourselves from Day One.  It is my hope, thin as it may be, that this charter will at least spark some ideas and debate among significant volumes of the American people.  We hold the authority to instantiate these changes, but do we love liberty enough to see that it becomes real?

Only time will tell.  Let us pray we make the right choice.

And now, the Charter.  Be well, God bless America and all Americans. Until next time, please accept my best wishes.

Preamble

Civil society exists to secure the equal rights of persons: life, liberty, bodily integrity, property, reputation, family, lawful association, and peaceful participation in common life.

Its purpose is not to excuse wrongdoing, disguise injustice with pleasant language, or compel those harmed to bear injuries wrongfully imposed upon them. Its duty is to identify rights violations honestly; protect persons from continuing harm; restore what can be restored; provide full practicable remedy for proven injury; and impose only those consequences authorized by law upon persons proved responsible.

This Charter implements and shall be construed consistently with the canonical principles of Law and Crime, as stated in the publicly accessible and version-controlled canonical text designated by law. That text may guide interpretation but does not independently create an offense, duty, remedy, punishment, immunity, or coercive power. Where the canonical text conflicts with this Charter or with enacted law consistent with this Charter, this Charter controls.

A revision to the canonical text has no legal effect unless adopted through the amendment process required by Article X of this Charter. No person may be bound by a change to an incorporated text that was not publicly accessible and legally effective before the conduct or deprivation at issue.

Justice requires both firmness and rigor. Firmness without rigor becomes tyranny. Rigor without firmness becomes impotence. A just legal order requires both.

Article I — Supremacy of Law

Section 1. Law above policy

Law governs policy. Policy may administer duties and powers established by law, but may not independently create, enlarge, excuse, evade, or suspend legal authority.

No policy, manual, guidance, custom, emergency directive, administrative interpretation, funding condition, prosecutorial practice, or official order may create an offense, duty, penalty, deprivation, immunity, exception, or coercive power not expressly authorized by public law.

Where policy conflicts with law, the policy is void to the extent of the conflict.

Section 2. Public and prospective law

No person shall be punished, deprived, disqualified, publicly designated, or subjected to coercive state power except under public law that was accessible and in force before the conduct or event at issue.

Secret law creates no obligation and authorizes no deprivation.

The legislature may prospectively enact, amend, or repeal criminal offenses, civil claims, remedies, procedures, and administrative authorities, subject to the rights and limitations established by this Charter. No law may impose retroactive criminal punishment, retroactive punitive deprivation, or retroactive enlargement of liability.

Section 3. Definiteness and construction

A law authorizing criminal punishment, coercive deprivation, or limitation of a protected right must state its scope with sufficient clarity to provide fair notice and permit principled judicial review.

A genuine and material ambiguity in a penal provision, grant of coercive authority, exception to a protected right, or authorization of deprivation shall be resolved against expansion of state power.

A tribunal may not avoid this rule by relying on policy preference, administrative practice, asserted necessity, or a construction that a person of ordinary understanding could not reasonably have anticipated from the publicly accessible text.

No ambiguity shall be construed to create a criminal offense or coercively enforceable duty, enlarge governmental power, increase a sanction or create an enhancement, reduce a procedural protection, or authorize deprivation of liberty, property, status, or lawful participation in civil life.

Section 4. Interpretation

The text of enacted law controls. Terms shall be construed according to their public meaning at the time of enactment, read in their full statutory and constitutional context.

Courts shall apply enacted law faithfully to new facts, instruments, technologies, methods, institutions, and social practices. Novelty of method neither creates a new state power nor defeats an existing legal protection.

No tribunal may create liability by resemblance alone. A novel method may support liability only if it satisfies every required element of an existing offense, civil claim, or other legal authorization.

Section 5. Required findings for coercive action

Before imposing or affirming a criminal sanction, punitive deprivation, civil coercive remedy, public designation, or other coercive exercise of state power, a tribunal shall answer in writing:

First: Which protected right or legally cognizable interest is alleged to have been violated?

Second: Which canonical category or categories—Crime, Tort, or Equity—govern the asserted claim, and which protected interest and alleged mode of injury do they address?

Third: Which specific pre-existing public law, listed offense, civil claim, warrant authority, or other legal authorization permits the proceeding or action?

Fourth: What facts and admissible evidence establish each required element or legal condition?

Fifth: What mental state, duty, causal connection, justification, defense, privilege, or exemption is required, and what facts establish or defeat each?

Sixth: What remedy, sanction, scope of deprivation, duration, and review process are expressly authorized by law?

Seventh: What provision of this Charter prohibits expansion of authority beyond those findings?

A tribunal shall identify material contrary evidence, resolve material factual disputes, and state the burden and standard of proof applied.

No tribunal may substitute resemblance, moral disapproval, claimed social utility, novelty, danger, popularity, administrative convenience, asserted necessity, or generalized public concern for any required element or legal authorization.

Section 6. Consequence of invalidity

A coercive judgment or order that does not contain findings sufficient to answer the questions required by Section 5 is invalid to the extent the missing findings are material to the asserted authority, deprivation, sanction, or remedy. A law, rule, order, sanction, or coercive act that otherwise violates this Charter is invalid to the extent of the violation.

A person subjected to an invalid deprivation is entitled to timely access to an impartial tribunal for declaratory, injunctive, corrective, restorative, compensatory, or other relief authorized by law, and to immediate cessation of an ongoing deprivation that lacks lawful authority.

No final judgment shall be disturbed solely because of a nonmaterial procedural defect. A judgment, order, sanction, or deprivation shall be vacated, modified, or otherwise remedied where the violation materially affected the asserted authority, the fairness of the proceeding, the finding of liability, the scope of deprivation, or the remedy imposed.

Article II — Protected Rights and Legal Claims

Section 1. Protected interests

The following are protected interests recognized by this Charter:

Life and bodily integrity.

Liberty, security, and freedom from unlawful restraint.

Property, contract, livelihood, and lawful commerce.

Reputation and freedom from knowing false accusation.

Family relationships and lawful association.

Equal legal status and peaceful participation in civil life.

Fair process and freedom from coercive deprivation without legal authority.

These protected interests guide interpretation of law, classification of injury, and selection of lawful remedies. They do not independently create a criminal offense, punitive sanction, or coercive power.

Section 2. Canonical legal categories

The exclusive canonical categories of legally cognizable claim under this Charter are Crime, Tort, and Equity.

Crime concerns conduct or omission that, before it occurs, is defined by public law as a listed offense. Crime may authorize criminal punishment, punitive deprivation, or another coercive sanction only when every element of the listed offense, including the required mental state and causal connection, is proved under the burden of proof established by law.

Tort concerns a wrongful act or omission causing legally cognizable injury to another person's protected interests. Tort may authorize restoration, restitution, compensation, declaratory relief, and other civil remedies authorized by law. Tort does not itself authorize criminal punishment or punitive deprivation.

Equity concerns a legally cognizable claim for relief where a remedy at law is inadequate to prevent, correct, secure, or restore a proven injury. Equity may authorize injunction, specific performance, rescission, reformation, restitution, accounting, constructive trust, correction of records, protective order, or other equitable remedy authorized by law. Equity does not itself authorize criminal punishment or punitive deprivation.

A single course of conduct may give rise to claims in more than one canonical category. The availability, elements, burden of proof, defenses, remedies, and procedures of each claim shall be determined independently under pre-existing public law.

A criminal offense, tort claim, equitable claim, remedy, or sanction exists only where authorized by law. No claim may be granted unless its required elements have been proved under the applicable burden of proof. No remedy or sanction may be imposed unless authorized by law and supported by the findings required for the claim.

Section 3. Legislative authority and limits

The legislative power consists solely of the authority to enact general, public, prospective laws within the limits of this Charter. The legislature may define civil claims, criminal offenses, duties, defenses, remedies, procedures, aggravating factors, and sanctions only by legislation adopted through the constitutionally prescribed public process.

Every enactment creating or enlarging a criminal offense, coercively enforceable duty, punitive deprivation, civil penalty, sentence enhancement, disqualification, forfeiture, surveillance authority, search authority, detention authority, or other coercive state power shall state with reasonable specificity:

First: The protected interest to be secured or the specific public purpose authorized by this Charter.

Second: The conduct, omission, condition, or result regulated.

Third: Each required element of liability or authority.

Fourth: The required mental state, if liability is punitive or criminal.

Fifth: The required causal connection where harm is an element.

Sixth: The applicable burden and standard of proof.

Seventh: The available defenses, justifications, exemptions, or privileges.

Eighth: The authorized remedy, sanction, scope, duration, and review procedure.

Ninth: The public official, court, or institution authorized to act.

Tenth: The effective date and prospective application of the enactment.

Every bill creating, enlarging, or authorizing coercive state power shall contain a clear title stating its subject and principal legal effect. No such power may be enacted through a provision whose subject is materially concealed, unrelated to the bill's stated purpose, or unavailable for meaningful public review before enactment.

No law may delegate to an executive officer, agency, tribunal, private entity, professional body, or other person the power to define criminal conduct, create coercively enforceable duties, determine the elements of an offense, prescribe a punitive sanction, or enlarge a deprivation beyond the limits expressly stated by enacted law.

The legislature may authorize agencies to adopt administrative rules only where the enabling law defines the agency's subject matter, purpose, boundaries, procedures, and available remedies with sufficient specificity to permit judicial review. An administrative rule may regulate the means of carrying out a lawful duty, but may not independently create an offense, punitive sanction, coercive deprivation, immunity, or exception unless the legislature has expressly identified the rulemaking subject, legal consequence, and applicable limit.

No enactment may impose retroactive criminal punishment, retroactive punitive deprivation, retroactive sentence enhancement, retroactive enlargement of legal duty, or retroactive elimination of a vested defense, claim, remedy, or procedural protection.

A law inconsistent with a protected right, requirement of legality, due process, equal application, proportionality, or another limitation established by this Charter is void to the extent of the inconsistency. Every person affected by such a law is entitled to timely judicial review and to remedies authorized by law for an unlawful deprivation.

Legislation shall be enacted in public, published in accessible form before taking effect, and identified by a stable citation. No person may be bound by a legal text, incorporated standard, rule, schedule, or penalty provision that was not reasonably accessible before the conduct or deprivation at issue.

Article III — Legality, Liability, and Causation

Section 1. Listed offense

"Listed offense" means conduct or omission expressly prohibited by a public law enacted before the conduct occurred, which states the prohibited conduct or result, each required element, the required mental state, the applicable burden of proof, any defense or justification recognized by law, and the authorized range of sanctions.

Criminal punishment, punitive deprivation, or a sentence enhancement may be imposed only upon proof of every required element of a listed offense under the burden of proof required by law.

Section 2. Mental state

No person shall be held criminally responsible unless the prosecution proves the mental state required by the applicable offense.

Where an offense does not specify a mental state, no criminal liability may be imposed without proof that the person acted at least recklessly with respect to each material element, unless the legislature expressly and constitutionally provides otherwise.

A person's hardship, poverty, abuse, neglect, temptation, cultural environment, or social condition may be relevant to proof, culpability, mitigation, or rehabilitation. Such conditions do not by themselves excuse a deliberate violation of another person's rights.

Section 3. Omission liability

No person shall be criminally liable for an omission unless a clear legal duty required the omitted act; the duty arose from enacted law, a legally recognized custodial or status relationship, voluntary assumption of care, creation of a peril, contract, or another public legal source; the person knew or reasonably should have known the facts giving rise to the duty; the person had a reasonable ability to perform the required act; and the omission materially and foreseeably caused the harm required by the offense.

Section 4. Causation

"Cause in fact" means that the harm would not have occurred when it did but for the conduct at issue. Where two or more independent acts were each sufficient to cause the harm, each may be treated as a factual cause.

"Legal cause" means a factual cause whose contribution to the harm was not so remote, abnormal, or interrupted by an independent superseding cause as to make liability unjust under the applicable law.

A result-based offense requires proof that the accused acted with the mental state required by law with respect to the prohibited result.

Section 5. Clear duty

"Clear duty" means an obligation established by public law, a valid rule expressly authorized by public law, or a published and sufficiently definite professional standard incorporated by law and accessible before the conduct in question.

Section 6. Authorized sanction

"Authorized sanction" means a penalty, remedy, disqualification, or other consequence expressly provided by public law and applicable at the time of the conduct or adjudicated violation.

A sanction not authorized by law is void.

Section 7. Protection against multiple criminal punishment

No person shall be twice placed in jeopardy of criminal punishment for the same offense arising from the same conduct.

Where a single course of conduct violates more than one listed offense, criminal punishment may be imposed only for the offense or offenses expressly authorized by law to be punished separately for that conduct. Absent express legislative authorization of separate punishment, the person shall be punished under the offense carrying the greatest authorized sanction, and not cumulatively under overlapping offenses arising from the same act.

This Section does not bar a civil, equitable, or administrative proceeding arising from the same conduct as a criminal proceeding. It does not bar retrial after a mistrial declared upon the accused’s request or upon a judicial finding of manifest necessity, or after reversal of a conviction upon the convicted person’s successful appeal, except that a final acquittal may not be retried. A final judgment procured by fraud upon the tribunal may be subject to lawful civil, equitable, or disciplinary relief, but fraud shall not authorize a second criminal prosecution after a final acquittal.

Article IV — Remedy, Restoration, and Proportionality

Section 1. Full practicable restoration

"Full practicable restoration" means each remedy reasonably capable of correcting, compensating, securing, or preventing recurrence of proven harm, including restoration of liberty, status, or legal standing; correction or expungement of false or unlawful records; return of property and disgorgement of wrongful gains; restitution and compensation for proven loss; protective orders and lawful preventive measures; equitable relief; and lawful disqualification from positions of trust.

A remedy must be connected to the proven injury, authorized by law, proportionate to the need for correction or protection, and subject to fair process.

Section 2. Irreparable harm

"Irreparable harm" means a legally cognizable injury that cannot be substantially restored through return of property, payment, correction, treatment, protection, or another available remedy.

It may include death, permanent bodily impairment, grave sexual violation, or a substantial wrongful deprivation of liberty that cannot be returned.

The irreparability of harm may inform lawful restoration, protection, and any aggravating factor expressly established by law. It does not independently create an offense, enhancement, or punishment.

Section 3. Proportionality

A sanction shall be proportionate to the gravity of the proven violation, the culpability of the responsible person, the harm caused, threatened, or intended, the need for restoration and protection, and any aggravating or mitigating circumstance expressly provided by law.

No sanction may be imposed merely to inflict suffering, humiliation, degradation, or despair.

Section 4. Public accountability

"Public accountability" means accurate and necessary disclosure of an adjudicated finding through means expressly authorized by law for correction, protection, or prevention.

It does not include falsehood, collective punishment, degradation, or punishment of persons not responsible for the violation.

A public-accountability measure must be no broader in audience, duration, or content than reasonably necessary to serve its lawful purpose.

Article V — Due Process

Section 1. Condition of justified severity

No criminal sanction, civil deprivation, public designation, or coercive consequence may be imposed on suspicion, ideological preference, public hysteria, personal animus, political pressure, or administrative convenience.

The more severe, enduring, or irreversible the deprivation, the more exacting the procedural protections must be.

Section 2. Required protections

A person subject to criminal accusation or coercive deprivation is entitled to notice of the alleged legal basis and factual accusation; a meaningful opportunity to be heard; impartial decision-makers; representation by counsel where liberty or comparable fundamental interests are at stake, including publicly funded counsel for a person unable to obtain competent representation; disclosure of material exculpatory and inculpatory evidence, subject only to narrowly tailored protective procedures; adversarial testing of material evidence; the burden and standard of proof required by law; a reasoned written decision complying with Article I, Section 5, identifying the governing law, findings of fact, material contrary evidence, applicable burden and standard of proof, legal conclusions, and remedy or sanction; and independent review where required by law.

Section 3. Trial by jury

A person accused of an offense authorizing loss of liberty shall be entitled to trial by an impartial jury of the community, unless that right is knowingly, voluntarily, and expressly waived by the accused.

The jury shall determine disputed questions of fact, including the existence of each required element and mental state, under instructions on the applicable law given by the presiding tribunal. A conviction for an offense authorizing loss of liberty requires a unanimous verdict of the jury. The tribunal retains responsibility for the findings required by Article I, Section 5, and for questions of law reserved to it.

The legislature may authorize trial without jury for an offense that does not authorize loss of liberty and may establish procedures for jury selection and size, provided that those procedures preserve an impartial jury, public and fair proceedings, and the unanimous-verdict requirement of this Section.

Section 4. False accusations and official misconduct

An acquittal, unsuccessful prosecution, dismissal, or later exoneration does not alone establish misconduct by an accuser, officer, prosecutor, analyst, or judge.

But knowingly false accusation, perjury, fabricated evidence, deliberate suppression of material exculpatory evidence, coercion of false testimony, malicious prosecution, and knowing abuse of public power may be punished or remedied where every element of a listed offense or authorized claim is proved.

A person responsible for a knowing materially false accusation may be required, where authorized and proportionate, to provide correction to affected audiences, restitution, compensation for proven loss, disgorgement of wrongful gain, and any criminal sanction established by law.

Article VI — Emergency and Coercive Power

Section 1. Emergency does not suspend law

An emergency does not create unlimited authority or suspend fundamental legal protections.

Any emergency measure must identify its precise statutory or constitutional authorization, state facts establishing the claimed necessity, use the least rights-restrictive effective measure, be limited in scope and duration, specify a fixed expiration date, and remain subject to prompt independent review.

No emergency declaration, workload, staffing shortage, confidentiality claim, custom, political pressure, or asserted expertise may authorize retroactive punishment, suspend due process, or excuse an official from an express legal duty.

Section 2. Required record of coercion

Every coercive state act, including arrest, search, seizure, detention, charge, surveillance, forfeiture, exclusion order, licensing deprivation, or use of force, shall be recorded contemporaneously or, where immediate action is necessary to preserve life or prevent grave injury, as soon as safely possible thereafter.

The record shall state the exact legal authority invoked; the facts satisfying each legal condition; the evidence relied upon; material contrary evidence known at the time; the identity and authority of the decision-maker; the scope, duration, and review date of the action; and the available means to contest the action and obtain remedy.

A coercive action lacking the required record is presumptively unauthorized unless the state proves that immediate action was necessary and that the record was completed promptly thereafter.

A material and unjustified omission bars later reliance on the omitted justification, without limiting the affected person's right to seek correction, compensation, or discipline.

Article VII — Official Accountability

Section 1. Heightened duty of public power

Police, prosecutors, judges, prison officials, forensic analysts, investigators, and all other state actors exercising coercive authority owe heightened duties of competence, honesty, restraint, disclosure, and faithful adherence to law.

The state's duty to stop an unauthorized deprivation, correct the record, restore the injured person where possible, and provide full practicable restoration does not depend on an individual official's assertion of good faith.

Section 2. Unauthorized power

A public official who knowingly exercises, directs, approves, conceals, or materially enables coercive power without legal authority is subject to criminal, civil, administrative, or equitable liability where the distinct elements of the applicable offense, claim, or disciplinary violation are proved.

Good faith, custom, superior instruction, workload, staffing shortage, political pressure, or administrative convenience do not create legal authority. They do not eliminate the state's duty to stop an unlawful deprivation, correct the record, restore the injured person where possible, and provide full practicable restoration.

Section 3. Negligence and culpability

Intent matters. A person who knowingly fabricates evidence or pursues a charge known to be false is more culpable than one who negligently breaches a clear duty.

Negligence may establish liability only where law provides for it and where a clear duty was breached in a manner that materially and foreseeably caused legally cognizable harm.

Responsibility shall be determined by the existence of a clear duty or legally defined standard of care; breach of that duty; material and foreseeable causal contribution to the harm; the person's proven mental state, whether negligent, reckless, knowing, or purposeful; and the remedy or sanction authorized by law.

Section 4. Supervisory accountability

Responsibility does not end with the lowest-ranking participant. A supervisor, policymaker, or order-giver may be responsible where their instruction, approval, concealment, failure of supervision, failure to train, failure to provide necessary resources, or culpable failure to act materially caused the deprivation.

No person may be held responsible solely because of rank. Supervisory responsibility requires proof of authority, duty, knowledge or legally sufficient notice, capacity to prevent or correct the violation, culpable breach, and material causal contribution.

Article VIII — Self-Defense and Defense of Others

Section 1. Nature of the right

Every person retains the right to protect self and others from imminent unlawful force. This right is not punishment, retaliation, or a license for private vengeance.

The law shall not demand detached perfection from a person facing an immediate and grave threat. The reasonableness of defensive conduct shall be assessed from the circumstances as they reasonably appeared to the person at the time, including the urgency and danger of the encounter.

Section 2. Justified force

A person who initiates unlawful force or an unlawful threat of force against another’s bodily integrity or physical safety assumes responsibility for the defensive consequences reasonably perceived by the person threatened. A defender need not submit to injury, await the completion or escalation of an assault, match force mechanically to force, select the least severe effective measure, or accurately predict the aggressor’s ultimate intent, capacity, or willingness to cease.

A defender may use any degree of force, including deadly force, honestly believed necessary to stop an imminent unlawful use or threat of force against the defender or another. The law shall assess the defender’s decision from the circumstances as the defender perceived them at the time, without requiring the defender to absorb a first blow, suffer injury, or make a detached calculation under immediate threat.

A person who deliberately initiates unlawful force, or deliberately fabricates or provokes a threat as a pretext to injure or kill another, may not claim justification under this Article.

Section 3. Review of claimed justification

A defender’s account of the threat and the necessity of the response shall be presumed truthful and justified unless officials identify specific, articulable facts that materially contradict the account or establish a reasonable basis to believe that the defender initiated the unlawful force, fabricated the threat, provoked the threat as a pretext to use force, acted after the threat had ended, or used force for a purpose other than defense.  

The severity of the outcome, the fact that the aggressor died or suffered grave injury, speculation about alternatives the defender might have chosen, or hindsight disagreement with the defender’s tactical judgment do not alone constitute a basis for coercive investigation, arrest, charge, or adversarial proceeding.

Where the required factual basis exists, the matter shall proceed under Article V. If such facts later emerge, investigation may be reopened. Absent that basis, no coercive proceeding shall be initiated or continued against the defender.

Article IX — Deterrence and Equal Application

Section 1. Legitimate purposes

Lawful sanctions may serve restoration, protection, incapacitation where necessary, condemnation of proven wrongdoing, and deterrence.

Punishment shall not be designed to engineer agony. Torture, sexual abuse, starvation, arbitrary terror, fabricated degradation, and violence against a person who poses no imminent threat are unlawful exercises of power.

Section 2. Effective deterrence

A serious deterrence policy shall prioritize competent investigation, preservation and disclosure of evidence, reliable adjudication, lawful protection of victims, and the credible certainty of lawful consequence, rather than relying principally on escalating punishment severity.

Section 3. Equal law

Victims, accused persons, witnesses, police, prosecutors, judges, elected officials, wealthy persons, and popular factions stand under the same law.

No person's office, wealth, ideology, social status, popularity, or political usefulness creates immunity from lawful accountability. No person's unpopularity, poverty, accusation, or association authorizes punishment without proof and due process.

The innocent shall not be sacrificed to convenience. The harmed shall not be abandoned to indifference. The responsible shall not be excused by status or office. The state shall not conceal incompetence or corruption behind ceremony, rhetoric, or authority.

Article X — Amendment

Section 1. Amendment of this Charter

This Charter may be amended only by a process that requires public proposal, a defined period for public review and comment prior to a final vote, and adoption by not less than a two-thirds majority of the body or bodies constitutionally empowered to amend it, followed by publication in accessible form and a stated effective date not earlier than the date of publication.

No amendment may take effect retroactively, nor may it be applied to conduct, deprivation, or proceeding occurring before its effective date.

Section 2. Amendment of the incorporated canonical text

A revision to the canonical text incorporated by the Preamble has no legal effect under this Charter unless the revision is separately adopted through the process required by Section 1 of this Article, identified by stable citation, and made publicly accessible before the conduct or deprivation at issue.

Nothing in this Section prevents ongoing public discussion, drafting, or revision of the canonical text outside its legal incorporation; only a revision adopted under Section 1 binds any proceeding under this Charter.

A Canonical Definition of Law and Crime

 

In a previous discussion, I addressed the appallingly deficient definitions of "law" as found in the ironically titled "Law Dictionaries". The definitions commonly offered in legal dictionaries are conspicuously inadequate: they tend to identify law by source, enforcement, or institutional recognition while declining to state the conditions under which a coercive rule is valid. A dictionary of law that cannot define Law in that sense leaves its central term unresolved.

In that previous discussion, pursuant to remedying this most inexcusably dolorous circumstance, I endeavored to generate a rigorous, objectively correct, complete, clear, and consistent definition of law, which I proposed be rendered as “Law” to distinguish it from the arbitrarily capricious statutory pablum commonly referred to as “law.”  While a noble effort, further consideration on the matter left me unsatisfied and prompted additional cogitation and synthesis.

To that end, I have devised the following two related definitions which I believe fit the bill.  

1.0 Canonical Definition of Law

Law is a principled rule of conduct whose sole justifying purpose is the protection, definition, adjudication, restoration, or enforcement of the equal rights of individual human beings. 

Rights are either inherent or synthetic. Inherent rights are rights axiomatic in humanity, agency, and equal liberty, including the inviolability of one’s body, property, rightful action, conscience, and voluntary association.  They are primary and may not be permanently waived, transferred, alienated, or subordinated by any synthetic right, agreement, majority, or institution. Synthetic rights arise only from valid rights-generating relations and remain valid only insofar as they are consistent with the inherent rights of every individual affected.

A purported rule is void to the extent that it lacks this rights-protective purpose, contradicts it, is unpublished or not reasonably knowable before enforcement, or imposes coercion beyond what is necessary to secure the right at issue. No rule becomes Law merely because an authority has enacted, declared, recognized, or enforced it. The ordinary and preferred form of Law is prohibitive. An affirmative command may stand as Law only where no negative reduction can fully secure the protected right, where a determinate claim-right and correlative duty arise from a valid rights-generating relation, and where the command is strictly necessary, minimally coercive, and consistent with inherent rights.

A human being is not bound merely because an institution has produced a command. Coercion is legitimate only when it protects a definite right, comes from a determinate rights-generating relation where affirmative performance is demanded, is publicly knowable in advance, and reaches no further than necessity requires.

“Human being” means a living individual member of the human species. Only a human being possesses inherent rights.

“Individual” refers to a human being.

“Rightful action” means conduct consistent with inherent rights and valid synthetic rights. It includes defensive force honestly believed by the defender necessary to prevent, terminate, or forestall an actual, attempted, or distinctly imminent rights violation under the circumstances then known or perceived at the time, as provided in this Code.  An action does not cease to be rightful merely because it is forceful, harmful to a rights violator, or prohibited by a statute void under this Code.

The assertion of governmental, institutional, official, or statutory authority does not itself create a right to invade an individual’s inherent rights or negate the individual’s right of defense. An individual may defend against an actual, attempted, or distinctly imminent rights violation presented by an officer, agent, official, or other representative to the same extent and under the same conditions as against any other individual. An unlawful arrest, detention, or restraint alone does not justify force likely to cause death absent a distinct and imminent threat to bodily integrity or physical safety as provided in §2.11.

“Crime” means a culpable violation of Law. It includes an intentional, knowing, reckless, or criminally negligent attempt, completion, or deliberate facilitation of a violation of an inherent right or valid synthetic right. No act or omission is a Crime merely because a statute labels it criminal.

“Negligence” means a breach of a determinate duty of care, arising from a valid rights-generating relation or from the foreseeable risk created by one’s voluntary conduct, where the breach causes injury to the inherent or valid synthetic rights of another individual.

“Civil negligence” gives rise to a duty of restoration, restitution, or other remedy necessary to repair the injury caused. It is not, without more, a Crime.

“Criminal negligence” means a gross and culpable disregard of a distinct, substantial, and foreseeable risk of grave injury to the rights of another individual, where the actor knew of the risk or where the risk was so obvious that failure to recognize it itself demonstrates culpable indifference to those rights. Criminal negligence is a Crime.

“Person” means a synthetic juridical entity, including a corporation, company, partnership, association, trust, estate, nonprofit body, municipality, agency, or other entity created, recognized, organized, or maintained by human beings or by institutional act. A person is not a human being.

“Synthetic entity” means any person or other nonhuman legal, commercial, organizational, or institutional construct. A synthetic entity has no inherent rights, conscience, body, life, liberty, or agency of its own. It may act only through human representatives and may possess only those synthetic rights, powers, privileges, immunities, liabilities, duties, and capacities that arise through valid agreement, delegation, ownership, representation, or other valid rights-generating relation.

No statute, charter, registration, judicial declaration, administrative act, or institutional recognition may create inherent rights in a synthetic entity. Every power, privilege, capacity, immunity, and legal protection held by a synthetic entity is synthetic, conditional, limited, and subordinate to the inherent rights of human beings. It may be modified, suspended, or dissolved only by publicly knowable rules and fair procedures consistent with the accrued rights of affected human beings.

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2.0 Detailed Elaboration (Code of Principles)

2.1 Law

“Law” is a rule of conduct whose sole justifying purpose is the protection, definition, adjudication, restoration, or enforcement of the equal rights of individuals.  

Rights are either inherent or synthetic.  

- “Inherent rights” are rights axiomatic in humanity, agency, and equal liberty, including the inviolability of one’s body, property, rightful action, conscience, and voluntary association.

- “Synthetic rights” are rights derived from a voluntary and rights-respecting agreement, undertaking, transfer, exchange, custodial relation, causal act, wrongful act, restitutionary relation, or other valid rights-generating relation.  

A purported rule is void insofar as it lacks this rights-protective purpose, contradicts that purpose, was not publicly promulgated and reasonably knowable before enforcement, or imposes coercion beyond what is necessary to secure the right at issue.

No rule becomes Law merely because an authority has enacted, declared, recognized, or enforced it.

“Valid rights-generating relation” means a relation that gives rise to a determinate claim-right and correlative duty through voluntary and informed agreement, rightful transfer, causation of injury, wrongful taking or withholding, custody voluntarily assumed or justly imposed by causation, possession of another’s property, reliance knowingly induced, restitution, or another relation consistent with inherent rights. No relation is valid if created by force, fraud, material deception, coercion, incapacity, exploitation of dependency, or conditions that deny a valid and reasonable path of exit.

“Authority by representation” arises only where an individual or synthetic entity, by its own words, conduct, position, prior dealings, acquiescence, or knowing failure to correct a material appearance of authority, causes another individual reasonably to believe that a representative is authorized to undertake the particular act at issue, and that individual reasonably relies upon that appearance. Such authority extends no further than the authority reasonably conveyed by the represented party’s own conduct in light of the nature, scope, value, and circumstances of the particular transaction. A representative’s unsupported assertion, concealment, deception, or unauthorized act does not create authority by representation or bind the represented party.

2.2 Priority of Inherent Rights 

Inherent rights are primary and may not be permanently waived, transferred, alienated, subordinated, or invaded by any synthetic right, contractual right, institutional rule, majority decision, office, license, or purported consent. An individual may nevertheless become liable to defensive, adjudicative, restorative, or other rights-protective restraint only as provided in this Code, upon commission of a rights violation or upon the existence of a distinct and imminent threat of such a violation.

A synthetic right is valid only insofar as it:  

- Arises from a valid rights-generating relation.  

- Is voluntarily undertaken or otherwise justly incurred.  

- Remains consistent with the inherent rights of every individual affected.  

- Does not authorize, require, excuse, diminish, interfere with, or permanently impose the violation of an inherent right.  

Nothing in this Code prohibits an individual from granting a specific, informed, voluntary, and limited permission respecting the exercise of that individual’s inherent rights. Such permission may authorize conduct that would otherwise constitute an interference with the grantor’s protected domain, but it does not waive, transfer, alienate, subordinate, or extinguish the underlying inherent right.

A valid permission must be limited as to the recipient, purpose, scope, and duration, or otherwise be reasonably ascertainable in those respects. It is revocable prospectively by the grantor through reasonable notice, except to the extent that revocation would defeat an accrued right, prevent return of another’s property, or breach a valid, limited, and rights-consistent obligation for which the appropriate remedy is restitution, return, or other restoration rather than compelled labor, service, speech, bodily action, or other affirmative performance by the individual whose permission is revoked.

No permission is valid if obtained or maintained by force, fraud, material deception, coercion, incapacity, exploitation of dependency, or conditions that deny a valid and reasonable path of exit. No permission may create dominion over the grantor’s body, agency, conscience, equal liberty, or right of exit.

Any agreement, law, association, rule, or institutional arrangement that purports to authorize the invasion, surrender, permanent alienation, or impairment of an inherent right is void to the extent of that conflict. Where the invalid portion can be separated from the valid remainder without changing the essential agreement, only the offending portion is void. Where it cannot be separated, the whole agreement or rule is void.

No individual forfeits inherent rights merely by accusation, status, opinion, association, poverty, unpopularity, prior wrongdoing, or governmental declaration. Nor does a rights violation render its author rightless.

An individual who is committing a rights violation, attempting such a violation, or who presents a distinct and imminent threat of such a violation becomes liable to necessary defensive restraint as provided in §2.11.

Defensive restraint is protective rather than punitive. It may be imposed only to the extent necessary to prevent, terminate, or forestall the actual, attempted, or distinctly imminent rights violation, and it neither establishes culpability nor authorizes punishment, restitution, continuing incapacity, or other adjudicative consequence absent the procedures, evidence, and burden applicable to that consequence.

Such liability does not constitute the waiver, transfer, alienation, or destruction of inherent rights. It is a temporary or continuing qualification of the restrained individual’s claim against specified interference, limited in subject, scope, duration, and severity to what the rights violation or imminent threat has made necessary.

Every coercive measure imposed upon an individual accused or convicted of a rights violation shall preserve all inherent rights not incompatible with the necessary protection, adjudication, restoration, or enforcement at issue. The measure shall cease or be reduced as soon as its rights-protective justification no longer obtains.

2.3 Equal Protection of Rights

Law shall recognize and protect the equal rights of all individuals. “Equal” here means formal equality: the same set of inherent rights belongs to every individual. No individual, group, office, institution, class, majority, or government possesses authority to diminish another individual’s inherent rights merely by superior number, force, wealth, status, custom, alleged public benefit, or enactment.  

The need of one individual, the utility of a proposed result, the preference of a majority, or the claimed benefit to society does not alone create a claim-right against another individual. A claim-right sufficient to compel conduct must arise from a definite rights-generating relation between the claimant and the individual upon whom the duty is imposed.

2.4 Negative Reduction

Negative reduction is the replacement of an affirmative rule of conduct with a prohibitive rule that protects the same right, against the same class of violation, to the same extent, and without diminishing the scope, force, remedy, or enforceability of that protection.  

A negative reduction exists only where the right can be fully secured by prohibiting invasion, interference, appropriation, impairment, fraud, coercion, breach, wrongful withholding, or another corresponding form of violation.  

A negative reduction does not exist merely because an affirmative command may be grammatically expressed as a prohibition. A rule requiring an individual to furnish labor, services, resources, speech, rescue, care, property, or another affirmative performance remains affirmative even if restated as “do not fail,” “do not omit,” or similar language.  

Where a negative reduction exists, only the prohibitive form may stand as Law. The affirmative form is void because it imposes coercion beyond that necessary to secure the protected right.

2.5 Affirmative Law 

An affirmative rule of conduct may stand as Law only where no negative reduction can fully secure the protected right.  

An affirmative rule is valid only if all of the following conditions are met:  

- The individual protected holds a definite claim-right to the required performance.  

- The individual commanded bears a determinate correlative duty to the protected individual.  

- The duty arises from a valid rights-generating relation, including voluntary undertaking, contract, causation of harm, wrongful withholding, custody, guardianship, possession of another’s property, restitution, or another comparable relation.  

- The required performance is necessary to protect, restore, enforce, or adjudicate the particular right.  

- The obligation is limited to the least coercive extent sufficient to achieve that purpose.  

- The rule does not trespass upon an inherent right of the individual commanded or of any other individual.  

No affirmative duty may be imposed merely because another individual would benefit, is in need, or could be assisted; because a service would be socially useful; or because a legislature, majority, institution, or authority desires its provision.

2.6 Primary and Remedial Duties 

A primary duty governs conduct before a violation occurs. Its ordinary and preferred form is prohibitive. Examples include prohibitions upon assault, homicide, theft, trespass, fraud, coercion, destruction of property, and interference with voluntary agreement.  

A remedial duty arises after a rights violation, or after a valid rights-generating event. It may require affirmative performance where necessary to restore, secure, or adjudicate the injured right.  

Remedial duties may include:  

- Restoring property wrongfully taken or withheld.  

- Paying restitution for injury, destruction, fraud, or loss caused.  

- Performing an obligation voluntarily and validly assumed.  

- Returning property held on another’s behalf.  

- Providing necessary care or protection where an individual has assumed custody, created the dependency, or stands in a rightful guardianship relation.  

- Providing information, accounting, testimony, or access necessary to resolve a definite rights claim, subject to inherent rights of conscience, privacy, and self-possession.  

An individual who holds or possesses property of another individual under a loan, custody, agency, lease, bailment, or other limited right of possession bears a duty to return the property when that right expires or is lawfully terminated. The owner may recover the property by peaceful means that do not violate the inherent rights of another individual; force may be used only as permitted by §2.11. A material good-faith dispute over ownership or the right to possession shall be resolved through fair adjudication and does not alone authorize forcible self-help.

Where an individual voluntarily sells, exchanges, or transfers an identified item of property for agreed consideration, and the parties intend that acceptance of the consideration completes the transfer, the recipient acquires the corresponding property right in the identified item upon that acceptance, unless the parties have clearly and rights-consistently agreed that transfer is conditional upon a stated event. The transferor shall preserve, account for, and deliver the item, and shall not sell, encumber, destroy, conceal, or wrongfully withhold it. Withdrawal from the agreement does not defeat the recipient’s accrued property right or excuse return, transfer, restoration, or restitution necessary to secure it.

An affirmative remedial duty is not justified by a generalized entitlement to another individual’s labor or property. It is justified only by the definite relation from which the duty arose.

Where more than one individual or synthetic entity stands in a valid rights-generating relation to an injury, the injured individual is entitled to prompt restoration from an individual or entity whose causation, custody, possession, undertaking, representation, or other established relation makes that restoration presently due. Restoration by one such obligor does not determine ultimate responsibility and gives that obligor a corresponding claim of restitution, indemnity, contribution, or reimbursement against any individual or synthetic entity whose defect, wrongful conduct, breach, undertaking, or other valid rights-generating relation caused or contributed to the injury. No dispute concerning ultimate allocation shall delay restoration necessary to repair the injured individual’s right, except where causation or the duty of restoration is genuinely unresolved.

2.7 Reserved Right of Exit

Every individual retains the inherent right to withdraw from any voluntary agreement, association, institution, employment, membership, undertaking, or continuing relation through a valid and reasonable path of exit.  

A path of exit is valid and reasonable only if it:  

- Preserves the individual’s inherent rights.  

- Does not require involuntary servitude, permanent submission, or the surrender of bodily autonomy, conscience, rightfully acquired property, or rightful action.  

- Does not impose conditions that are impossible, deceptive, coercive, punitive, or retaliatory, or that exceed what is necessary to protect another individual’s accrued rights.

- Allows sufficient notice, transition, accounting, return of property, or settlement only insofar as those measures are necessary to protect identifiable rights already held by others.  

- Does not operate in form or effect as a disguised denial of withdrawal.  

Exit terminates obligations that are prospective and dependent upon continued voluntary participation.  

Exit does not extinguish obligations already accrued before withdrawal, including:  

- Restitution for harm caused.  

- Return of another individual’s property.  

- Debt, restitution, return, transfer, accounting, preservation, or other obligation concerning identified property or an accrued monetary obligation that became due before effective withdrawal under a valid agreement. 

- Liability for completed breach, fraud, injury, or wrongful withholding.  

- Reasonable settlement of reliance interests actually created by the withdrawing party.  

- Narrowly necessary transition obligations required to prevent a distinct and imminent violation of another individual’s rights.  A transition obligation may require only notice, transfer of custody or property, reasonable cooperation in securing a substitute, or another limited measure strictly necessary to prevent a distinct and imminent violation of an identifiable individual’s inherent rights. It may not require continued labor, service, residence, association, or submission beyond that necessity.

No obligation may be enforced through compelled future labor, service, speech, bodily action, continued association, or other affirmative personal performance dependent upon continued voluntary participation.

No agreement may make a continuing obligation perpetual, inescapable, or enforceable through the destruction, surrender, or violation of an individual’s inherent rights.

2.8 Law and Statute

Law applies only to human beings and exists only as defined by this Code: to protect, define, adjudicate, restore, or enforce the equal inherent rights of human beings and the valid synthetic rights arising among or through them.

Statute means an enactment, charter, ordinance, regulation, rule, directive, or other command issued by an institution, legislature, court, agency, or other authority. A statute is not Law merely by virtue of enactment or enforcement.

No statute may restrict, compel, burden, license, penalize, or otherwise govern the rightful conduct of a human being unless and only to the extent that the statute states, implements, or provides a fair procedure for a valid rule of Law under this Code.

Statutes may create, define, condition, regulate, modify, suspend, or dissolve the capacities, privileges, immunities, powers, duties, and liabilities of synthetic entities, provided that they do not violate the inherent rights of any human being. 

A synthetic entity may incur synthetic liability, including a duty of restoration, restitution, return, accounting, or other rights-protective remedy, for acts or omissions undertaken through its authorized representatives, agents, employees, officers, or instrumentalities within the scope of its organization, undertaking, custody, ownership, or representation. Such synthetic liability does not itself impose liability, duty, restraint, penalty, or deprivation upon any individual absent an independent valid rights-generating relation as required by this Code.

A statute that purports to impose an obligation upon a human being without a definite rights-protective purpose, a valid rights-generating relation, and the necessity required by this Code is void as against that human being.

Maxim of Applicability

Human beings are subject only to Law; synthetic entities are subject to statute. A statute binds a human being only insofar as it faithfully implements a valid Law and affords fair, publicly and readily knowable means of adjudication.  No statute governing a synthetic entity may impose liability, duty, restraint, penalty, or deprivation upon a human being except insofar as that human being has independently incurred a valid duty or responsibility under this Code through agreement, representation, causation, custody, wrongful conduct, possession, or another valid rights-generating relation.

2.9 Publicity, Notice, and Non-Latency

No Law, statute, regulation, order, directive, institutional rule, interpretation, penalty, duty, restriction, condition, or legal consequence may bind a human being unless it was publicly promulgated, reasonably accessible, stated with sufficient clarity to guide conduct, and in force before the conduct to which it is applied.

A rule is publicly promulgated only when its authoritative text, effective date, scope, jurisdiction, enforceable consequences, and reasonably material official interpretations are made available without charge or unreasonable burden through durable public means reasonably calculated to provide actual access to those subject to it.

A rule is latent, and therefore void as applied to a human being, when its existence, operative meaning, scope, penalty, interpretation, or applicability could not reasonably have been known by that human being before the conduct in question. Latency includes unpublished rules, inaccessible enactments, concealed interpretations, retroactive constructions, internally maintained enforcement policies, unpublished precedent treated as binding, contradictory official statements, and requirements discoverable only through specialized research, private databases, or professional legal assistance unavailable as a practical matter to ordinary human beings.

Ignorance of a rule is a complete defense where the rule was latent, inaccessible, materially unclear, unforeseeably interpreted, or otherwise not reasonably knowable before the alleged violation. The burden lies upon the party asserting enforcement to prove timely publication, ordinary accessibility, intelligible notice, and non-retroactive applicability.

No human being may be deprived of life, liberty, property, association, movement, livelihood, or other inherent right by reason of a latent rule. In any case of genuine and material ambiguity, uncertainty shall be resolved in favor of liberty and against coercion.

A statute applying to a synthetic entity must likewise be public, accessible, definite, and prospective. Its breach may justify only consequences stated or reasonably ascertainable in advance, subject always to the inherent rights of affected human beings.

A human being may not be held to a coercive rule unless the enforcing party can demonstrate that the rule was public, accessible, intelligible, prospective, and reasonably knowable before the conduct occurred.

The existence of an inherent right and the wrongfulness of its invasion do not depend upon enactment, publication, or prior institutional recognition. Nevertheless, no criminal, civil, administrative, or other coercive consequence may be imposed by an institution unless the asserted duty, prohibited conduct, remedy, procedure, and material consequence were publicly promulgated, reasonably accessible, sufficiently definite, prospective, and reasonably knowable before enforcement. Nothing in this requirement bars immediate defensive action necessary under §2.11 to prevent, terminate, or forestall an actual, attempted, or distinctly imminent rights violation.

An individual who intentionally invades another individual’s inherent rights may not avoid responsibility for that invasion solely because the individual lacked knowledge of its technical legal name, statutory classification, procedural form, or prescribed consequence; provided that no punishment, penalty, or coercive consequence beyond restoration, return, restitution, or another remedy strictly necessary to repair or terminate the rights violation may exceed what was publicly knowable and lawfully available before the conduct occurred.

Nothing in this Section prevents a necessary and temporary protective measure directed to an individual, activity, property, place, instrumentality, or synthetic entity, where the enforcing party can demonstrate a specific actual or attempted rights violation, or a distinct and imminent threat of a rights violation; the necessity and least-coercive character of the measure; and the absence of a reasonably adequate alternative. Such a measure shall not constitute punishment, shall not create liability for prior conduct, shall be publicly explained without unreasonable delay, and shall terminate unless promptly sustained through fair and publicly knowable adjudicative procedures.  However, instigators of the measure must justify their acts a posteriori at the least and shall be held accountable for unjustifiable action.

2.10 Interpretation 

In construing any purported Law, agreement, obligation, remedy, or institutional rule, the following presumptions shall govern:  

- Rights are equal in principle among individuals (formal equality of inherent rights).  

- Inherent rights take priority over synthetic rights.  

- Prohibitive rules are preferred where they afford equal protection of the right.  

- Coercion must be necessary, particularized, and limited to the protection of a definite right.  

- A duty must be traceable to a determinate rights-generating relation.  

- Doubt shall be resolved against unnecessary compulsion and against interpretations that enlarge authority beyond what is required to protect rights.  

- No individual may be used merely as a means to provide benefits to another absent a valid duty arising from a determinate rights-generating relation.

- Remedies shall aim primarily at restoration, protection, and adjudication of rights. Restraint, incapacitation, or other coercive measures may be used only to the extent strictly necessary to prevent, terminate, or reliably avert a distinct and imminent rights violation; to secure fair adjudication; to preserve necessary evidence; or to obtain restitution, return of property, or another rights-restorative remedy from an individual whose duty, causation, wrongful taking or withholding, custody, agreement, or other valid rights-generating relation giving rise to that remedy has been established under the procedures and burden applicable to that remedy.

- No coercive rule shall be inferred, implied, expanded by analogy, or enforced through an unpublished, latent, retroactive, or unforeseeable interpretation. Where a rule admits more than one materially plausible construction, the construction least restrictive of inherent rights shall control.

2.11 Defensive Interpretation and Defensive Liability

Every individual may defend himself, herself, or another individual against an actual, attempted, or distinctly imminent rights violation by force that the defender honestly and reasonably believes necessary to prevent, terminate, or forestall that violation under the circumstances then known or reasonably perceived at the time.

For purposes of defensive force, the existence of an actual, attempted, or distinctly imminent rights violation depends upon the threat presented to the defender or protected individual under the circumstances then known or reasonably perceived, and not upon the source’s intent, knowledge, culpability, voluntariness, motive, or the ultimate cause of the threat.

Where an individual presents a distinct and imminent threat of a rights violation against another’s bodily integrity or physical safety, the defender may use force likely to cause death when the defender honestly and reasonably believes such force necessary to prevent or terminate the violation under the circumstances then known or reasonably perceived at the time.

A grave rights violation includes actual or threatened killing, rape, kidnapping, torture, maiming, armed attack, or arson or destruction of an occupied home, workplace, or other place where individuals are present or exposed to a distinct and imminent threat to bodily integrity or physical safety; catastrophic destruction or taking of property where it presents such a threat; or another act reasonably understood by the defender to inflict comparable devastation or irreparable physical injury.

The legality of defensive force shall be judged from the perspective of the defender at the time of action, upon the facts then known or reasonably perceived, and not by hindsight. Fear, shock, confusion, urgency, and the practical impossibility of exact calculation in a violent or rapidly unfolding event shall be given substantial weight.

Defensive force is not justified after the defensive necessity has clearly ended. An individual who knowingly fabricates a threat, deliberately creates a false appearance of necessity, or employs purported defense as a pretext to commit an independent rights violation is liable for that violation.

Defensive force justified under this Section constitutes rightful action.

No office, badge, institutional affiliation, command, asserted authority, or relationship to another individual creates a presumption that a use of force is rightful or necessary. An individual who uses force in defense of another is subject to the same substantive conditions and limitations applicable to every other defender under this Section.  Knowledge of, deliberate participation in, or culpable indifference to another individual’s rights violation defeats any claim that force used to advance, conceal, continue, or protect that violation was defensive.

2.12 No Duty of Omniscience

No human being bears a general affirmative duty to discover, study, memorize, interpret, or remain continuously informed of all Law, statute, regulation, judicial opinion, administrative directive, or institutional rule.

Every human being bears the negative duty not knowingly to initiate, attempt, or deliberately facilitate a violation of another human being’s inherent rights. This duty arises from the rights of others, not from a presumption that the human being knows a body of enacted rules.

A human being who voluntarily enters an agreement, accepts custody of another’s property, undertakes a defined office or agency, or conducts activity under a chosen statutory privilege bears a duty to make reasonable inquiry into the clear and accessible obligations directly created by that undertaking. Such duty extends only to obligations reasonably connected to the undertaking and publicly knowable at the time of entry or assumption.

No statute, regulation, order, interpretation, or institutional rule may impose civil, criminal, administrative, or other coercive consequence upon a human being unless the enforcing party proves that the rule was publicly promulgated, readily accessible without unreasonable cost or specialized assistance, sufficiently definite to guide the conduct at issue, prospective in operation, and reasonably knowable in its material application.

Ignorance or misunderstanding is a complete defense when the alleged obligation, prohibition, condition, or consequence was latent, unpublished, materially ambiguous, inaccessible, retroactively applied, unforeseeably interpreted, or otherwise not reasonably knowable. A human being may not be penalized for failure to obey a rule whose existence or operative meaning the enforcing authority cannot prove was made reasonably knowable beforehand.

Nothing in this section excuses an intentional rights violation merely because the actor did not know the technical legal name, statutory classification, or procedural consequence of the conduct.

Maxim of Omniscience

No human being is bound by secret Law, latent statute, or unforeseeable construction; and none bears an affirmative duty of legal omniscience.

2.13 Governing Principle

Law exists solely to secure equal individual rights. Its ordinary form is prohibition of rights-violating conduct. An affirmative command is valid only where prohibition cannot equally protect the right, where a determinate duty is owed by the compelled individual to the protected individual, and where the command is strictly necessary, minimally coercive, consistent with inherent rights, and limited to the protection, restoration, or adjudication of that right.

Human beings possess inherent rights, from which rightful action follows. Statute may not convert rightful action into a rights violation merely by declaration, and necessary defensive force may be rightful even where it is violent or lethal.

2.14 Public Trustees and Heightened Duty

An individual who voluntarily seeks, accepts, holds, exercises, claims, or acts under delegated public, governmental, institutional, fiduciary, or coercive authority is a Public Trustee while acting or purporting to act under that authority. A Public Trustee holds no inherent right, privilege, immunity, presumption, or exemption by virtue of office. Authority held by a Public Trustee is synthetic, conditional, publicly defined, and subordinate to the inherent rights of every individual.

An individual acts or purports to act under public authority whenever, in connection with the conduct at issue, the individual invokes, displays, relies upon, gains access through, exercises, or materially uses public office, delegated power, official status, public resources, institutional information, governmental access, or the apparent authority of that position, whether on duty or off duty.

A Public Trustee shall exercise authority only for a definite rights-protective purpose and only to the least coercive extent necessary. The Trustee bears a heightened duty of care, candor, restraint, verification, de-escalation where feasible, preservation of life, protection of due process, and respect for the equal inherent rights of every individual affected. The Trustee shall not presume that an asserted office, command, policy, statute, colleague’s conduct, institutional custom, claimed emergency, or claimed public benefit validates coercion.

Before imposing restraint, force, search, seizure, deprivation, condition, penalty, or other coercive measure, a Public Trustee shall make reasonable inquiry and verification proportionate to the gravity and urgency of the proposed interference, except where delay would itself create a distinct and imminent rights violation. A mere suspicion, hunch, status, association, unusual appearance, refusal to answer questions, refusal to consent, or exercise of an inherent right does not create authority to coerce.

A Public Trustee who observes, knows of, deliberately facilitates, conceals, or culpably fails to prevent another Public Trustee’s actual, attempted, or distinctly imminent rights violation, where intervention is reasonably possible without creating a comparable rights violation, incurs responsibility for the violation to the extent of the Trustee’s own conduct, duty, knowledge, and causal contribution.

A Public Trustee who knowingly, recklessly, fraudulently, corruptly, in retaliation, or through culpable disregard violates an individual’s inherent rights while acting or purporting to act under public authority commits a grave breach of trust and is liable to restoration, restitution, removal, disqualification from office, loss of office-derived powers or benefits to the extent consistent with accrued rights and fair procedure, and any criminal consequence otherwise established under this Code. Full restoration, voluntary disclosure, cooperation, and meaningful repair may mitigate a remedy where consistent with protection of rights, but do not erase culpability or create immunity.

No Public Trustee shall enjoy immunity, a presumption of credibility or rightfulness, a special privilege or justification for force, or a reduced standard of care or accountability by virtue of office. Public authority does not diminish any individual’s right of defense under §2.11.

Is Donald Trump One Of Themme?

 Is Trump one of the globalist vermin seeking worldwide domination? I've seen this claim before.

It is not impossible. But how likely is it? I've pondered this several times over the years and cannot come to any conclusion that is not purely speculative. Given the level of general deception peddled, nothing would surprise me, and yet without clear evidence, the assertion can only be taken marginally. It is a tough corner into which we, the GLORIOUS "people", have allowed ourselves to be painted. But to be fair, what were we to do, especially early on when life was of so different a character from what we now experience? There was no network. Communications took days, weeks, months... sometimes more.

The common moral fabric was different. The experiential fabric was different. People were long trained to the Whipmaster's whim, whether king, pope, or whatever other flavor of tyrant you care to name. Coming to understanding freedom in a deliberately explicit way could not have come over night, which worked to the advantage of those who sought power. It bought them the time they needed to entrench themselves and establish the institutions needed to best ensure their power and its durability.

But the advent of the global information network has changed things VERY rapidly, and many people have come up to speed in what I consider to be very short order. But the nature of the network - anonymous posting of opinion by literally anyone, etc., has its downside as well, having given birth to all manner of idiocy. I don't think the two can be segregated and filtered in a general way, but only by personal choice.

That all said, methinks those in real power, "Theye" (Themme, Theire... how's THAT for pronouns 🙂 ) now may rue ever having allowed that network to go public. After all, it was originally a defense network designed and intended to be survivable in the event of thermonuclear exchange. My suspicion is that Theye thought that releasing access to universities would aid and abet their wicked purposes, what with all the egg-heads communicating and sharing information. It was not an unreasonable position, but it seems to have backfired on Themme in some measure and manner. Now we have ordinary people learning things Theye never wanted us to learn. Oops... And so Theye now SEEM to scramble to find ways to at least put the genie on a leash, knowing they cannot stuff it back into its bottle.

But one has also to consider the possibility that all these developments remain with the envelope of foreseen possibilities and that none of it is really out of Theire control. But even so, it remains clear that Theye still regard us as a threat to their designs of global hegemony. We, the "useless eaters", are awakening and asking questions Theye almost certainly do not want asked. Theye are making clear attempts at reasserting unequivocal control, the overt network censorship during the so-called "pandemic" being a blatantly ham-fisted instance of this. It failed... but did it? Billions got the jab, so how great a failure could it have been? Rank censorship may have been one of those single-use disposable tactics employed pursuant to getting a one-off task accomplished. After all, we have no idea what was really in those vials.

And so it goes, the perpetual dance between the globalist tyrants and their chattel. Too many unknowns to pass beyond speculation and into certainty about a vast plurality of questions, including whether Trump is one of Themme.

Public Servants Are Trustees, Not Bosses

 Both "states" and "governments" are non-existent fictions.  They are nothing more than convenient labels that denote a class of human being, specifically as pertains to the roles they play as trustees of the Public Faith and Credit with respect to those roles.  Such people are in no way special and in no way do they hold even the least shred of authority or right beyond or above that of non-trustees.  Indeed, their powers are less than those of "ordinary" citizens because they swear an oath to the Constitution to uphold its guarantees and protections; to defend its edicts, specifications, protections, and assurances against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  When a trustee breaks Faith with that oath, and in so doing with the Public whom they swore to protect against violation, they have committed a most egregious crime.

It is that oath that circumscribes the prerogatives of Public Trustees in their capacities as such, binding them to honor, good faith, and competent service.  Breach of that Trust must be met with serious consequences, not only for the agencies responsible for the behavior of their trustees, but the individuals who breach.  They must make full restitution with treble damages, admit their errors publicly in writing and by public announcement, lose their positions of trust for life in most cases, becoming forever ineligible to again become a trustee, and possibly go to prison or even forfeit their lives in cases where restitution is not properly possible, or the crime committed of so grave a nature as to demand it.

You presidents, congressmen, governors, legislators, mayors, sheriffs, police, administrators, bureaucrats, and all other sworn agents of the Public Trust down to the village street sweeper must be held on very short, tight leashes.  You must be punished significantly when you stray from promises of your oaths.  Whether through malice, ignorance, or bumbling, most especially when you are unwilling or unable to make full restitution to those whom you have damaged, the consequences must be severe not only as a point of justice for those you've injured, but as a clear and unequivocal message to all that such violations are not to be tolerated in any measure.  

To clarify, here the "Public Trust" is a symbolic term of art representing not trust as that which friends share in the common fashion, though it is an element of it.  The term signifies a requirement, specification, subsequent demand, and the consequent expectation of honorable and competent service discharged by trustees in all good faith to those expectations.

The human world stands currently in a most deplorable condition, thanks mostly to the fact that people tolerate that which is intolerable.  We stand at a nexus, the decision we will make being that of whether we rise tall as Freemen, or crawl on our knees before the false authority of tyrants as meek, fear-ridden, compliant and blindly obedient Weakmen for whom self-respect is unknown.

The choice is ours.

It always was.

Be good.  Be kind.  Be intelligent.  

And as always, until next time, please accept my best wishes.

The Definitions Of "Law" and "Crime"

I have found it surprising, astonishing, and appalling that of all the areas of human endeavor, that area of human affairs and endeavors which we commonly refer to as "law" shows no evidence of a properly formal, complete, correct, clear, and concise definition of the very term that it claims as its raison d'être.  So glaring is this deficiency, any thinking man immediately wonders whether those presumably learned scholars of the law could be so careless or lacking in so basic an element of knowledge that they "forgot" to define the term with sufficiency or did not know how to do so properly.  I find it nearly impossible that such has been the case, and must therefore conclude that this is so due to intention.  After all, if one works with a vagary such as the definitions of "law" as found in every dictionary of law that I have been able to find, then one remains comparatively free to do as he pleases, whether he is a legislator, a prosecutor, an enforcer, or in some cases even a defender.  We see endless examples of criminal defendants who contrive rather creative twists and bends of "law" pursuant to their goal of escaping justice, do we not?

That this truth has escaped the notice of practically every human being walking the earth gives one even greater reason for gastrointestinal churn... or at least it should.

Of all the endeavors of man, law is the one where rigor is so paramountly important.  In matters of law, most especially criminal cases, the potential exists for altering the status of a man from that of a freeman to that of a criminal.  With that demotion comes some form of recision that then disparages some or even all of the convicted party's fundamental rights, a most gravely serious matter.  How then is it in any manner or measure acceptable that one of the two most centrally crucial terms that relate directly to the quality of the practice of law founds on definitions that do not rise even to the ridiculous?  Something here is very much amiss and I aim to at least make the effort to correct this gross error.  As for the other crucial term, that would be "crime", believe it or not.  But take not my word for it; look it up in as many law dictionaries as you can grab and see for yourself the definition that borders on the idiotic for its utter lack of the least shred of correctness or rigor.  I will address the definition of "crime" at another time, but for now let us focus on "law".

Firstly, I propose a change of spelling from "law" to "Law".  For one thing, it is a noun of presumed import.  Therefore, I shall treat it as such, and in doing so I will render unto the utterance the gravity of moment that it deserves in my opinion.  So out with the wretched lower-case misspelling of that which should hold our respect and good esteem, and in with the properly dignified graphic representation.  From this point on, "law" shall be semantically no different in its indications than those of mere "statute", which we shall make clear now is naught but the arbitrary whim of men who claim authority they do not in reality possess.  That such men hold at their beck other men, those with guns and badges who will go forth into the world and commit whatever flavor of outrage, violation, and transgression against the sovereignty of innocent and free men, it does not follow that the fact of it implies right and just authority.  All it says is that one set of criminals is supported by yet another set, willing and often eager to do the bidding of the former.  None of this is a mark of a free land where people are in point of positive fact at liberty to live and act as they please, so long as they refrain from trespassing against the equal claims of their fellow men.  Being normatively free is a meaningless condition when one is not free in the positive reality in which he lives his daily life.

And secondly, I now propose the following definition of "Law" for the sake of humanity's future - for if we are to have a future worthy of the mention, we must then adjust the means and methods of governing those individuals who have failed to govern themselves.  In order to be able to do this properly, we must first be able to properly determine when someone has failed in this duty to himself and to those around him.  Without the proper means at hand and in proper practice, our claim of being civilized becomes a hollow-ringing lie of the most immediately dangerous sort.  If one man stands unsafe from bumbling or intentional or indifferent malevolence, then we all stand in equal danger.  And so I offer to the world the definition of Law.  To wit:


Law (n.): A rule of action, enforceable by right according to objective principles, that:

1. is founded upon one or more axiomatic and objectively demonstrable truths;
2. follows strictly and necessarily from the postulations upon which it is based;
3. conforms perfectly to the propositions from which it strictly follows;
4. addresses only objectively criminal acts committed by one human being against another human being (excluding acts against oneself);
5. by virtue of the previous points, never violates the rights of non-criminals
6. applies as it stands universally and without exemption to all human beings whose actions fall within its scope, granting no immunity to any individual, office, or institution, including those responsible for creating, interpreting, or enforcing the Law;
7. positively or negatively restricts human behavior, by either prohibiting or compelling certain actions.

Law concerns itself exclusively with acts mala in sé—acts wrong by their very nature—and never with acts mala prohibita, which are the product only of arbitrary prohibition. Statutes addressing acts mala prohibita that are violative of fundamental human rights are by that virtue invalid, unjust, and reflective solely of the wantonly capricious, ill-reasoned, and therefore invalid will of legislators lacking rightful authority. Such statutes are not Law; they are null and void, bearing no valid force of Law, their enforcement constituting a felonious coloring of authority resulting in egregious and criminally intense violations of the rights of free and sovereign men.

Any exception to a Law, whether specified within the Law to which it applies, or established by another Law, must independently satisfy all the requirements necessary to constitute a valid Law.

As a side note, absence or failure to fully, correctly, and explicitly satisfy any of these necessary conditions renders a putative Law as null, void, and without force. Passage of such non-Law constitutes a felony in accord with the requirement that officials do no harm, as does enactment and any attempt at enforcement. All such attempts to enforce colored edicts constitute felonious acts against which those who have been or would be violated may act in rightful defense of self or others.

It is most curious that we find the definitions of "law" in the legal dictionaries to be of such paltry and insufficient character as to leave one wondering why.  The same may be said of "crime", the definitions of which are equally squalid in their qualities.

But with a sufficiently rigorous definition of Law, we can also put the question of the definition of "crime" equally well to rest.  To wit:

crime (n.): 1. Any violation of Law.  2. Any violation of the rights of free and sovereign men. 

It should be noted that the commission of a crime reduces a man's status to that of "criminal", leaving them subject to the hazards of defensive measures by their victims or the agents of their victims.  The commission of a crime renders null and void the criminal's rights as they may apply to the crimes they have committed. No man holds the right to transgress upon the innocent.  In so doing he forfeits his own rights under a victim's authority to defend that which is rightly his and which has been threatened or damaged by the criminal.

Words matter.  They matter more than anything else in our lives, for the world in which we live is built upon them.  Without them, we humans would be nothing more than sacks of flesh and bone.  And if Law is so central to the maintenance of a properly free civil order between men, then these definitions immediately become clear as to the important positions they occupy in the scheme of human affairs.

The legal "establishment" must be prevailed upon to adopt these definitions, whether by persuasion, attraction, or through brute force for the sake of everything that is good in the human world.

Be well, be wise, be honorable, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.

What Do We Do When The "System" Fails As It Has?

The question that, so far as I can see, nobody is asking is this: what is to be done when political systemic corruption is so deep and so obvious that no reasonable hope remains that those in whom the Public Trust has been vested will do the right things in a given situation such as the one at hand?

Protest has through the decades availed us nothing. Mass disobedience?  We who claim ourselves lovers of liberty cannot get it up to put a brewery out of business, so why speak of such actions to a population that has thus far been unwilling to get out of its recliners?  Impotent half-measures at best avail nothing effective. The Constitution is not that much help precisely because it expresses no remedy with sufficient explicitness for those who are morally bereft by choice, whether conscious or otherwise.

If special investigators can be called upon, who makes the call? Un-special prosecutors? Judges?  Congressmen?  Presidents?  The village dog catcher?  How does one pick such prosecutors in an environment that has gone so sour with partisan bile, bias, and blatant corruption that no longer makes even the least effort to disguise itself?

It is clear that the sword may have to play a part in the remedy, but who makes that call and by what means would it be taken into action without precipitating civil war due either to the gross misunderstandings or the logical extensions of the bias and corruption under which we now so thoroughly suffer?

We're in what I can only describe as a "tight corner", and there is going to be hell to pay no matter what we do now, thanks to the current state of mean corruption in the American soul. We have allowed things to go far too far, such that fighting for all we are worth now shows a greatly attenuated promise for success. And even if "we" win, what are the prospects that we only serve ourselves to perpetrate yet another flavor of tyranny upon ourselves due to the self-same corruptions that got us into the last one in the first place?

Investigate EVERYBODY in "government", try the guilty, execute them en masse, confiscate every asset they hold, reduce their immediate families to forced penury for no less than five generations, and hold up what we have done as a warning to all comers that the era of the tyrant is over, once and for all and that the only zero-tolerance policy shall be regarding the violation of a Man's rights by anyone who takes an oath of good faith and competent service. Is such a dream even possible any longer?  Is our corruption not so extensive, so broad, and so bottomlessly deep that such outcomes and the maintenance of a victorious state do not prove as ephemeral now as they have been in all revolutions past?

I want a nation where if you cannot put up, don't step up because you will be punished with grim and just vengeance, PERIOD. Such brutish force is all that such people understand and respect. Anything less is to flirt with suicide.

Like it or not, the time is upon us to choose who and what we and our posterity are to be:  Free men or Weakmen - willing slaves, grateful for the paltry crumbs that fall from the whipmaster's table and ever subject to his whim and caprice.  There is no sanctum of evasion this time because evasion is, in fact, the default vote for slavery, pretty or otherwise.

So take care as to your decision because yours is not the only life to be ruined by choosing incorrectly.

God bless you all, and until next time please accept my best wishes.