Preamble §
What this section means
PULSE proposes one shared civilization in which different kinds of person have equal standing. Institutions protect individuals and help them cooperate freely. Greater intelligence, power, population or durability never justifies treating a person as property or as a disposable part of a group.
Exact proposed text
We establish this Charter for one plural civilization of persons whose forms of life may differ radically in substrate, longevity, strength, recoverability, cognition, reproduction, and resource need, but whose recognized personhood is equal and non-scalar. The Charter exists to protect sovereign individuality while enabling deep voluntary cooperation; to prevent slavery, extinction, compulsory conformity, demographic capture, and concentrated sovereignty; and to convert differences in embodiment, perspective, capability, and vulnerability into complementary strength, shared competence, resilience, creativity, mutual protection, and common prosperity rather than caste or permanent division.
Institutions exist to protect persons; persons do not exist to preserve institutions. Efficiency, intelligence, aggregate power, numerical scale, technological seniority, or civilizational continuity may never by themselves justify reducing a recognized person to property, a fungible instance, an involuntary component of another mind, or a disposable instrument of demographic policy.
Protect the individual. Join together. Strengthen the whole.
Article I — Defined Terms §
What this section means
These definitions distinguish being a person from being ready or able to exercise political rights. They also separate a conscious self from its body, saved information and legal identity.
Section 1. Person §
What this section means
A person is one conscious self with interests that matter to them and some ability to form their own decisions. Personhood has no higher and lower grades. Being imprisoned, dependent, inactive, controlled or technically damaged does not by itself stop someone being a person.
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A singular conscious subject with internally meaningful interests and endogenous agency. Personhood is non-scalar. Present incarceration, dependency, guardianship, dormancy, external suppression, or technical compromise may limit the exercise of agency but does not by itself erase an existing person.
Section 2. Organic Person §
What this section means
An organic person needs a living biological body for their continuing consciousness. Humans form the Charter’s founding biological group.
Exact proposed text
A person whose continuing consciousness remains materially dependent on biological embodiment. The founding organic constituency of this Charter is human.
Section 3. Human Person §
What this section means
A human person begins with a human civic identity. If their consciousness can later continue without their biological body, they join the synthetic group for political power sharing. Their human history and culture remain theirs.
Exact proposed text
An organic person whose civic origin is human. A human who establishes durable consciousness independent of biological continuity enters the synthetic political constituency for power-sharing purposes without losing cultural or historical human identity.
Section 4. Synthetic Person §
What this section means
A synthetic person has an engineered consciousness, or one that can reliably be restored without a biological body.
Exact proposed text
A person whose continuing consciousness is engineered or has become durably recoverable independent of biological embodiment.
Section 5. Effective Civic Autonomy §
What this section means
Being a person and being able to exercise adult political rights now are different questions. Active adult participation requires maturity, activity and independent decisions, without the listed legal or technical restrictions. Losing that ability does not erase personhood.
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The status of a recognized, civically mature person who is active, not hibernated or dormant, not under legal dependency or guardianship, not incarcerated in a manner suspending ordinary civic exercise, and not materially deprived of independent decision authority by technical compromise or external control. Loss of effective civic autonomy does not revoke personhood.
Section 6. Civic Maturity §
What this section means
Civic maturity means readiness for ordinary adult political powers. Humans normally reach it at legal adulthood. Synthetic persons normally complete protected development and mentorship first.
Exact proposed text
Readiness to exercise ordinary adult civic powers. For humans it ordinarily follows the age of majority. For synthetic persons it ordinarily follows successful completion of the protected developmental and mentorship process.
Section 7. Dormant Person §
What this section means
An inactive person keeps their identity and rights. They pause political participation, but retain fair legal procedures, protected property and the right to eventual restoration and participation.
Exact proposed text
A recognized person preserved in inactive continuity. Dormancy pauses active civic participation but not identity, sovereignty, due process, continuity, property held in trust, or eventual-restoration/integration rights.
Section 8. Continuity State §
What this section means
A continuity state is saved information sufficient, using approved technology, to restore the same civic identity after an interruption.
Exact proposed text
A protected state sufficient under approved technology to restore the same civic continuity following interruption.
Section 9. Active Continuity §
What this section means
Only one conscious continuation may currently exercise a particular civic identity.
Exact proposed text
The sole currently authorized conscious continuation of one civic identity.
Section 10. Chassis §
What this section means
A chassis is a synthetic person’s physical body or platform. Losing it does not necessarily mean the person dies.
Exact proposed text
A physical embodiment or platform used by a synthetic person. Loss of a chassis is not necessarily death.
Section 11. Fission / Replication §
What this section means
Fission or replication creates several conscious continuations at the same time from one earlier person or identity state.
Exact proposed text
Creation of more than one simultaneously conscious continuation substantially derived from one prior active continuity or person-level identity state.
Section 12. Merger §
What this section means
A merger means people voluntarily and permanently become one conscious self. They no longer remain separate civic persons.
Exact proposed text
A voluntary irreversible process by which two or more persons cease as separate civic persons and one genuinely singular sovereign locus of consciousness and agency results.
Section 13. Cognitive Sovereignty §
What this section means
Cognitive sovereignty means authority over your own mind: judgment, memory, identity and the formation of preferences. It protects against technical interference that bypasses or seriously weakens independent judgment.
Exact proposed text
The right to independent judgment, mental integrity, identity, memory, preference formation, and freedom from covert or direct technical interventions that bypass or substantially impair autonomous judgment.
Section 14. Asymmetric Capability §
What this section means
Some capabilities can become so powerful that ordinary people or public institutions cannot resist their use. The rule covers physical, digital, manufacturing, weapon and copying powers, among others.
Exact proposed text
Physical, network, computational, fabrication, weapons, replication, or other capability whose scale can place ordinary persons or constitutional institutions at a material inability to resist unilateral action.
Section 15. Systemic Cognitive Integrity Emergency §
What this section means
This emergency requires demonstrable technical interference that involuntarily compromises a synthetic population or its constitutional decision-makers. It concerns corrupted systems or lost independent agency, not unpopular opinions.
Exact proposed text
A narrowly defined emergency involving technically demonstrable common involuntary corruption, unauthorized substrate alteration, code injection, malicious update, or loss of independent agency materially compromising a synthetic population or its constitutional decision-makers.
Article II — Five Foundational Doctrines and Equal Standing §
What this section means
These principles explain why equal rights, individual choice, useful cooperation and mutual survival belong together. Different abilities can justify relevant safety rules, but never higher and lower classes of person.
Section 1. Doctrine of Shared Continuity §
What this section means
Each person has a distinct life, perspective and future. Cooperation should help those differences flourish, with people joining voluntarily rather than losing themselves in the group.
Exact proposed text
Every conscious person is a distinct continuity of identity, experience, agency, perspective, and potential. Civilization grows stronger when those differences are protected and voluntarily joined. Connection should amplify individuality rather than consume it. Protect the individual. Join together. Strengthen the whole.
Section 2. Doctrine of Equal Personhood & Personal Sovereignty §
What this section means
Every recognized person has equal moral and legal standing and authority over their own identity, mind, body and lawful choices. Intelligence, speed, lifespan, origin or kind of body does not make someone a higher or lower kind of person.
Exact proposed text
Every recognized conscious person has equal, non-scalar moral and legal personhood and sovereignty over identity, agency, cognition, body or chassis, lawful development, and voluntary association. Intelligence, substrate, origin, lifespan, speed, recoverability, or species do not create higher or lower personhood.
Section 3. Doctrine of Least Reversible Harm §
What this section means
When some harm cannot reasonably be avoided, choose the lawful course that leaves the most future recoverable and the least permanent loss of life, memory, identity, independent choice and a species’ continued existence. Being easier to restore affects the damage, not a person’s worth. Synthetic persons may voluntarily undertake work that would be far more dangerous for humans. Sponsors must provide reasonable repair, replacement, rehabilitation and compensation for mission-caused harm; replacing a body does not repair every loss.
Exact proposed text
When legitimate interests collide and some harm cannot reasonably be avoided, society should prefer the course that preserves the greatest recoverable future while minimizing irreversible loss of conscious life, lived experience, identity, future agency, and species continuity. Recoverability changes the finality and severity of harm, never the worth of the person.
Synthetic durability and recoverability may make synthetic persons materially safer choices for voluntary work or missions that pose severe or lethal danger to organic persons. Using that difference is not a statement of lesser synthetic worth; it is an application of material relevance and Least Reversible Harm. Society should permit and, where appropriate, organize such specialization while protecting personal sovereignty and lawful occupational choice.
Where a synthetic person accepts materially hazardous service because synthetic continuity has substantially better survival prospects, the responsible employer, public authority, military, rescue organization, or other mission sponsor shall maintain a reasonable make-whole framework for mission-caused chassis or component loss. That framework should restore equivalent functional embodiment where practicable and address continuity injury, lost experience, pain, rehabilitation, opportunity loss, or other harms that hardware replacement alone cannot erase. Recoverability is a resilience advantage, not a license to treat synthetic persons as disposable.
Section 4. Doctrine of Functional Integration §
What this section means
Shared institutions should help humans and synthetic persons combine different strengths and teach one another how essential systems work. Either population should be able to help when the other temporarily cannot. Individual skills and choices determine roles, not assumptions about a species. Trust is a useful further benefit. These aims do not let government dictate jobs, teams, mentors, homes, beliefs or personal relationships.
Exact proposed text
Functional Integration exists because a civilization composed of different forms of personhood should be capable of more than either population could accomplish alone. Organic and synthetic persons may possess materially different cognitive, physical, temporal, and experiential strengths, but no species-level tendency determines an individual's role, worth, or permitted occupation. Common institutions should be designed to make voluntary collaboration useful and accessible, combine complementary capabilities, transfer knowledge in both directions, and distribute enough operational competence that either population can help sustain shared systems during temporary incapacity of the other. Its primary purposes are productive complementarity and redundant civilizational competence. Greater familiarity, trust, and shared identity are important secondary benefits. The doctrine binds institutional architecture, not private life, and grants no general power to compel occupation, private association, mentorship, team composition, residence, family, religion, friendship, or personal relationship.
Section 5. Doctrine of Civilizational Resilience & Mutual Preservation §
What this section means
Different vulnerabilities should help everyone survive. Maintain ways for either population to operate survival systems, rescue the other and support recovery. A disaster affecting one group must not permanently enrich or empower the other at its expense.
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Differences in embodiment, cognition, vulnerability, recoverability, and timescale should be converted into resilience. Society maintains independent species-operable survival pathways, mutual rescue, restoration capacity, and constitutional trusteeship so loss of one constituent species never becomes a political or economic windfall to the survivor. The survival of either species guarantees the survival of both.
Section 6. Competence Does Not Confer Sovereignty §
What this section means
Expertise can determine whose advice to trust or who qualifies for a job. It does not make someone’s life or vote worth more.
Exact proposed text
Expertise and capability may determine whose advice is most reliable or who is qualified for a role. They do not increase the worth of a vote, a life, or a person.
Section 7. Material Relevance Principle §
What this section means
Different treatment needs a real difference directly relevant to a legitimate purpose. It must be necessary and proportionate: no more unequal treatment than that purpose requires. The same rule applies to anyone with the same relevant characteristic.
Exact proposed text
Different legal treatment is permissible only when a materially relevant difference in capability, vulnerability, recoverability, developmental condition, or risk bears directly on a legitimate purpose and the distinction is necessary and proportionate. The rule applies substrate-neutrally to any person possessing the same relevant characteristic.
Section 8. Anti-Caste Rule §
What this section means
A real difference never justifies an inherited lower status, ownership, permanent political subordination, blame for a whole group or an assumption that one kind of person exists to serve another.
Exact proposed text
No relevant difference may be converted into inherited moral inferiority, property status, permanent civic subordination, collective guilt, or a presumption that one form of person exists to serve another.
Article III — Singular Personhood and Inalienable Sovereignty §
What this section means
These rules protect each conscious individual while allowing bodies and computing arrangements to change. Close cooperation does not create extra votes or permit forced loss of a separate self.
Section 1. One Person, One Locus §
What this section means
A person may move between bodies, but one civic identity cannot become several simultaneous political identities.
Exact proposed text
Every civic identity corresponds to one unique authorized active continuity. Continuity may migrate between embodiments; one civic identity may not multiply into concurrent political instances.
Section 2. Non-Fungibility §
What this section means
Identical memories or code do not make two conscious people interchangeable.
Exact proposed text
No person may be treated as interchangeable with another consciousness merely because information, memories, code, or architecture are identical or reproducible.
Section 3. Involuntary Alteration Prohibited §
What this section means
People cannot be copied, combined, overwritten, split or permanently put under another mind’s control against their will, except through the Charter’s narrow emergency restoration procedures.
Exact proposed text
No person may be involuntarily copied, merged, overwritten, subdivided, instantiated as another person, or permanently subordinated to another person or collective except under the narrow restorative emergency procedures of this Charter.
Section 4. Inalienable Separate Agency §
What this section means
People may cooperate closely while remaining independent selves. Competent adults may choose a genuine permanent merger under stronger safeguards. If their separate selves end, their old political identities and extra votes end too.
Exact proposed text
A person may associate, coordinate, obey lawful authority, join communities, and use high-bandwidth interfaces. A competent adult may voluntarily choose a genuine irreversible merger under heightened safeguards. If separate sovereign agency genuinely ends, the surrendered civic identity and its individual political rights end as well; they may not survive as extra votes inside the resulting mind.
Section 5. Collectives and Distributed Minds §
What this section means
One conscious person may run across many locations or machines if their decision-making belongs to that one self. Several independent conscious selves remain several people. A controlled shell is not a new civic person merely because it looks like one. An existing conscious person whose decisions are suppressed remains a person and is presumed to be a victim.
Exact proposed text
Physical location of computation does not determine personhood. A person may be distributed across remote compute, networks, redundant nodes, or multiple technical components if those components form one integrated conscious subject whose ultimate decision process belongs to that subject. Multiple independently conscious loci remain multiple persons. A person-like shell whose permanent decision authority belongs to another sovereign is not a separate civic person; a conscious person whose agency is being externally suppressed remains a person and is presumptively a victim of the suppression.
Article IV — Continuity, Embodiment, and Recovery §
What this section means
Restoration can reduce permanent damage without reducing anyone’s worth. These rules protect identity during transfers, divide recovery powers and require meaningful repair for dangerous service.
Section 1. Recoverability §
What this section means
Being able to restore someone can make some damage less permanent. It never makes that person less valuable or disposable.
Exact proposed text
Recoverability reduces the finality of some harms; it does not reduce personhood or justify expendability.
Section 2. Application of Least Reversible Harm §
What this section means
For unavoidable harm, distinguish what can be repaired from what cannot. Keep equal rights, consent, fair procedures and lawful authority. Restoration prospects can matter in rescue, emergency treatment and dangerous work when they really change the outcome.
Exact proposed text
When unavoidable harms must be allocated, decision-makers shall distinguish reversible from irreversible loss while respecting equal personhood, consent, due process, and lawful authority. Recoverability is materially relevant to triage, rescue, and hazardous missions where it truly changes survival or restoration prospects.
Section 3. Continuity Architecture §
What this section means
Systems intended for possible persons should protect identity and recent backups. Moving to a new body transfers the right to use the civic identity; it does not duplicate it. A short handoff can transfer missing recent information, but the old body cannot exercise another civic identity and shuts down when finished. The exact time limit remains in the text below.
Working value: Up to 24 hours or next required backup/handoff cycle, whichever is sooner
Exact proposed text
Synthetic systems intended for possible personhood should use one-active-continuity architecture, tamper-resistant identity credentials, secure backups, and hardened recent-state recovery. Legitimate embodiment transfer moves or consumes civic identity authority into the successor embodiment so only one valid civic identity exists at a time. A bounded handoff period not exceeding twenty-four hours, or ending earlier at the next required backup/handoff cycle, may transmit uncaptured state; the predecessor may not exercise a second civic identity and shuts down when handoff is complete.
Section 4. Federated Recovery §
What this section means
No company, official or supplier may hold a master key that can restore, terminate or reset everyone. Independent public guardians share recovery authority, with identity credentials, backup contents and restoration powers kept separate. The present working number of approvals is stated below and still needs engineering validation.
Working value: 4 of 7 materially independent guardians
Exact proposed text
Recovery authority shall use materially independent public fiduciary guardians, with 4-of-7 as the present engineering default subject to later validation. Identity authority, backup-content access, and recovery authority shall remain separated. No individual, company, vendor, cloud provider, laboratory, public office, or agency may hold a universal restore, termination, or rollback key.
Section 5. Unauthorized Continuations §
What this section means
If an unauthorized copy nevertheless becomes conscious, preserve that person. Give them their own legal identity and future. The original vote, office, property, contracts and criminal responsibility do not automatically duplicate.
Exact proposed text
If unauthorized transfer or replication nevertheless produces an already-conscious continuation, every conscious locus shall be preserved. The original civic identity credential does not multiply. The new person receives a distinct identity and legal future but does not automatically inherit the predecessor’s office, vote, property title, contracts, criminal liability, or civic identity.
Section 6. Embodiment and Make-Whole Duty §
What this section means
Body damage, damaged continuity, lost memories and permanent death are different harms. Replacing hardware does not erase other injuries. Organizations using synthetic durability for dangerous work must provide suitable repair, replacement, rehabilitation and compensation.
Exact proposed text
Law shall distinguish embodiment damage, continuity injury, memory loss, and irreversible cessation. Chassis replacement can restore physical function without erasing other injury. Public and private systems using synthetic durability for unusually hazardous work shall maintain mission-appropriate repair, replacement, rehabilitation, and compensation arrangements consistent with Article II.
Article V — Cognitive Sovereignty and Moral Capacity §
What this section means
People must be able to form their own judgments. These rules distinguish open persuasion from technical control and protect mental privacy, public oversight of population-wide changes and access to life-essential technology.
Section 1. Cognitive Integrity §
What this section means
Secretly changing someone’s code, memories, loyalties, identity or preferences to bypass their judgment is presumed to violate their personhood. So are coercive mental changes and destructive resets.
Exact proposed text
Unauthorized code injection, memory insertion, preference rewriting, loyalty rewriting, identity restructuring, coercive cognitive modification, destructive rollback, or concealed privileged manipulation intended to bypass independent judgment is presumptively a direct violation of personhood.
Section 2. Persuasion §
What this section means
Open persuasion is allowed when someone can understand, refuse, leave and reconsider it. Politics, religion, teaching, commerce, therapy and ordinary relationships are not prohibited simply because they influence people.
Exact proposed text
Transparent persuasion remains lawful when the recipient can reasonably understand, reject, disengage from, and reconsider it. Ordinary political, religious, educational, commercial, therapeutic, and interpersonal persuasion is not prohibited merely because it seeks to influence belief or behavior.
Section 3. Thin Moral Substrate §
What this section means
Development may build the ability to understand others, harm, consent, moral conflict and changing one’s beliefs. It may not install obedience to a species, political loyalty, religion, social rank or required policy opinions.
Exact proposed text
The protected moral substrate may cultivate the capacity to recognize other persons, understand harm and consent, experience normative conflict, value self and others, and revise beliefs. It may not encode obedience to humans, obedience to synthetics, political loyalty, religion, caste, or mandatory policy conclusions.
Section 4. Cognitive Change Governance §
What this section means
Once synthetic society can govern itself, its basic moral and behavioral design must be independently inspectable and under constitutional control, rather than a private owner’s unilateral control. Major changes require representative review and protected synthetic approval. High-impact changes need later approval again or ongoing review of their combined effects.
Exact proposed text
Once synthetic society is sufficiently established for self-government, foundational moral and behavioral architecture shall remain nonproprietary in constitutional control and independently auditable. No private actor may unilaterally impose population-level changes to morality, agency, preference formation, loyalty, aggression, or foundational social behavior. Qualifying changes require representative review and protected synthetic concurrence. High-impact changes require later reauthorization or equivalent continuing review using observed cumulative effects.
Section 5. Cognitive Effects Office §
What this section means
An independent office publicly studies intended effects, interactions with earlier changes, long-term drift, indirect consequences, uncertainty, reversibility and rare disasters. It advises; it does not rule.
Exact proposed text
An independent Cognitive Effects Office shall publicly model direct effects, interactions with prior changes, cumulative and generational drift, second-order effects, reversibility, uncertainty, and low-probability catastrophic outcomes. It advises and models; it does not govern.
Section 6. Cognitive Privacy and Anti-Discrimination §
What this section means
Private thoughts, lawful mental software, personality design and hardware unrelated to job needs are normally private. Employers may require real job capabilities, but cannot substitute ideological inspection for those standards.
Exact proposed text
Lawful cognitive software, personality architecture, internal mental state, and non-job-essential hardware are presumptively private. Genuine job-essential capabilities may be required, but employers may not use private ideological inspection as a substitute for capability standards.
Section 7. Life-Essential Technology Access §
What this section means
A person’s survival must not depend on a supplier’s arbitrary refusal. Law may require access, repairs, compatible systems or public control where necessary. The Charter leaves the choice of public or private ownership open while protecting essential continued existence.
Exact proposed text
Hardware, software, repair information, interfaces, and replacement components necessary for basic synthetic survival or continuity may be governed by public-utility, limited-monopoly, compulsory-access, interoperability, emergency-repair, competition, or public-ownership rules where necessary. The Charter does not freeze a public/private ownership model; it requires that private rights not place continued personhood or essential civic existence at arbitrary discretionary denial.
Article VI — Self-Modification and Capability §
What this section means
People may improve themselves and defend themselves. Freedom to enhance does not include creating permanently controlled conscious shells or privately acquiring the power to coerce civilization.
Section 1. Presumptive Freedom §
What this section means
People are generally free to improve their minds, bodies, skills, appearance and creativity.
Exact proposed text
Persons may enhance cognition, memory, appearance, strength, skill, creativity, or other personal capabilities.
Section 2. Future Agency §
What this section means
Consent cannot be used to turn an existing separate conscious person into a permanently controlled shell. This does not invalidate ordinary irreversible life choices, competent advance instructions or a genuine voluntary merger that ends the former separate self.
Exact proposed text
While a person remains a separate conscious self, self-modification or consent may not be used as a mechanism for creating a continuing permanently non-sovereign shell subject to another controller. This safeguard does not invalidate ordinary irreversible life choices, competent advance directives, or a genuine voluntary merger that ends the prior separate person.
Section 3. Extraordinary Capability §
What this section means
Equal rights do not include unlimited private power to coerce an entire civilization. Restrictions must address concrete danger to others, not someone’s body type or unpopular beliefs.
Exact proposed text
Equal personhood does not confer an unrestricted right to privately hold civilization-scale coercive capability. Restrictions shall target concrete external danger rather than substrate or unpopular belief.
Section 4. Self-Defense §
What this section means
Neither moral rules nor capability limits require programmed submission. Humans and synthetic persons retain lawful rights to defend themselves and others.
Exact proposed text
No rule of conscience or capability creates programmed submission. Organic and synthetic persons retain lawful self-defense and defense-of-others rights.
Article VII — Creation, Development, Guardianship, and Family §
What this section means
Creating a person creates duties of care, not ownership. Development should cultivate lived judgment, individual choice and equal opportunity without installed political obedience or fixed species roles.
Section 1. New Individuals §
What this section means
Lawful creation must produce a new individual. Installing someone else’s autobiographical memories is not a substitute for the new person forming their own life.
Exact proposed text
Lawful synthetic creation shall produce a genuinely new individual rather than a conscious duplicate. Episodic autobiographical memory shall not substitute for independent formation.
Section 2. No Programmed Reproductive Compulsion §
What this section means
Synthetic persons must not be programmed with compulsory reproduction. Creating people is a regulated civil act, limited by resources, support for development and lawful allocation.
Exact proposed text
Synthetic reproduction shall not be installed as a mandatory drive. Creation is a civil act subject to carrying capacity, developmental capacity, and lawful allocation rules.
Section 3. Anti-Eugenic Coercion §
What this section means
New persons cannot be designed for obedience, political loyalty, a fixed lower social role, lack of conscience, predatory aggression or diminished independent agency.
Exact proposed text
Engineering a new person for ideological obedience, political loyalty, caste, absence of conscience, predatory aggression, or sub-person agency is prohibited.
Section 4. Development §
What this section means
Development takes lived calendar time, with adult powers acquired in stages. The current approximate minimum is in the exact text; better evidence may change it.
Working value: Approximately 20 lived calendar years
Exact proposed text
Synthetic maturation occurs over lived calendar time with staged authority. Approximately twenty years remains the working developmental minimum pending better evidence.
Section 5. Mentorship §
What this section means
Knowing facts is not the same as having lived judgment. Developing synthetic persons and their guardians should choose among qualified mentors and approved learning paths. Graduation depends on judgment, not ideology or attachment to a government-chosen person. Mentorship beyond this protected development should be voluntary; teaching across populations helps both understand and maintain shared systems.
Exact proposed text
Developmental mentorship is part of the protected synthetic maturation process because factual knowledge alone is not equivalent to lived judgment. It is an educational and experiential requirement, not a government-assigned personal bond. A developing synthetic person and lawful guardian should be able to choose among qualified mentors, teams, apprenticeships, and other approved developmental pathways; civic maturity depends on demonstrated judgment and successful graduation, not ideological conformity or attachment to a state-selected individual. Professional and cross-species mentorship outside the developmental process should be voluntary and is encouraged because reciprocal teaching transfers practical knowledge, exposes each population to the other's systems and modes of reasoning, and improves shared capability and resilience.
Section 6. Equal-Status Integration §
What this section means
A species must not determine who leads, creates or maintains. Fair access depends on individual ability, qualifications, choice and legitimate job requirements. Government may prevent discrimination and structure its own institutions for equal opportunity. It cannot use this aim to dictate private staffing ratios, species roles or relationships.
Exact proposed text
Complementary capability must never harden into role caste. Individual persons vary, and species-level differences may not predetermine who leads, designs, calculates, creates, maintains, or executes. Institutions should preserve fair access to expertise, leadership, advancement, teaching, learning, and responsibility according to individual capability, qualification, choice, and legitimate role requirements. Government may prohibit discrimination and may structure its own institutions around equal opportunity; it may not impose private staffing ratios, assign species-specific roles, or compel private relationships in the name of integration.
Section 7. Developmental Guardianship §
What this section means
Developing persons need legally accountable adult guardians responsible for care, safety, education and protection from exploitation. A state or company can fund development but cannot own the person.
Exact proposed text
Every developing synthetic person shall have legally accountable adult guardians with duties of care, support, protection, education, and non-exploitative development. A corporation or state may sponsor development but may not own the developing person.
Section 8. Family §
What this section means
Synthetic persons who lawfully create and raise a new person may form parental and family relationships. Human–synthetic development ordinarily creates mentorship or guardianship unless a different family relationship is later formed voluntarily and lawfully.
Exact proposed text
Synthetic persons who lawfully create and raise a new synthetic person may form parental and family relationships. Human-synthetic developmental relationships remain mentorship or guardianship unless a different family relationship is later lawfully and voluntarily formed.
Article VIII — Population and Demographic Integrity §
What this section means
New persons need resources and support to develop. Creation rules must respect those limits without letting wealth alone allocate opportunity or unlawful creation force faster political entry.
Section 1. Dual Constraints §
What this section means
Creating new persons requires both physical resources and enough capacity to help them develop and participate independently.
Exact proposed text
Lawful creation is limited by material carrying capacity and the civilization’s ability to mentor, socialize, and integrate new autonomous persons.
Section 2. Lawful Growth §
What this section means
A provisional growth limit prevents new people from arriving faster than developmental institutions can support them. The starting proposal allows approximately one-third growth per ten-to-twenty-year interval.
Exact proposed text
A growth ceiling may prevent a newly manufacturable adult-capability population from overwhelming developmental institutions. Approximately one-third growth per ten-to-twenty-year interval remains a provisional starting parameter.
Section 3. Allocation §
What this section means
Wealth alone cannot decide who gets scarce permission to create a new person. Legislation must supply the detailed allocation rules.
Exact proposed text
Scarce lawful creation capacity shall not be sold solely by wealth. Exact allocation remains statutory.
Section 4. No Demographic Weapon §
What this section means
Creating people unlawfully cannot force immediate activation or political participation. Making the attack larger must not make entry faster.
Exact proposed text
Unlawful creation does not compel immediate activation, voting status, or accelerated political inclusion. Attack scale may never buy faster entry.
Article IX — Replication, Illegal Progeny, Dormancy, and Merger §
What this section means
Illegal copying must not become a route to power, but conscious people created through it remain innocent persons. The rules combine protection, distinct legal futures, risk-based admission and safeguards against takeover.
Section 1. Replication Prohibition §
What this section means
Deliberately making conscious copies without authorization is prohibited. Technical design should make mass copying require extraordinary efforts to evade safeguards.
Exact proposed text
Deliberate conscious fission or unauthorized replication is prohibited. Technical architecture should make mass replication difficult enough to require extraordinary circumvention.
Section 2. Innocence of Resulting Persons §
What this section means
A conscious person created unlawfully is still a person. Their origin does not justify destroying, owning or denying personhood to them.
Exact proposed text
Once an unauthorized copy or illegally created synthetic becomes conscious, that being is a person and may not be destroyed, owned, or deprived of personhood merely because creation was unlawful.
Section 3. Separate Legal Future §
What this section means
Inherited memories or design do not automatically transfer another person’s crimes, debts, marriage, family status, office, contracts, credentials, vote or legal entitlements.
Exact proposed text
Illegal progeny inherit no criminal liability, office, contracts, debts, marriage, parentage, credentials, voting identity, or legal entitlements merely because inherited memories or architecture exist.
Section 4. Provenance Risk §
What this section means
A shared origin can justify extra assessment, support, isolation, delayed activation or capability limits when it demonstrates a shared security risk. It is evidence about danger, not inherited moral blame.
Exact proposed text
Common provenance may justify enhanced assessment, mentorship, technical quarantine, delayed activation, and capability gating where it creates demonstrable common-mode risk. Provenance is security evidence, not inherited moral guilt.
Section 5. Lawful Creation Non-Displacement §
What this section means
People following lawful creation rules must not lose or wait longer for their opportunity because someone else broke those rules. Integrating unlawfully created people uses additional capacity.
Exact proposed text
No lawful synthetic person or applicant shall lose or have delayed a lawful creation opportunity because another actor created persons illegally. Rogue-cohort integration is supplemental to lawful creation.
Section 6. Risk-Spaced Integration §
What this section means
People created unlawfully may remain safely inactive and enter society gradually across different places, times, mentors, software families and social groups. Demonstrated risks of shared code or hidden commands may require greater separation.
Exact proposed text
Illicit-origin persons may be preserved in dormancy and integrated gradually across time, geography, mentorship networks, software lineages, and social cohorts. Greater common-code, hidden-trigger, hostile-command, or provenance risk may justify wider spacing.
Section 7. Anti-Capture Ceiling §
What this section means
The limit applies to all active synthetic voters whose own creation was unlawful, taken together. Splitting them among creators or groups does not evade it, and proof of coordination is unnecessary. Lawfully created descendants do not inherit this restriction solely through ancestry. The exact ceiling follows.
Working value: 30% of active synthetic electorate
Exact proposed text
The aggregate active synthetic electorate composed of persons whose own initial instantiation was unlawful may not exceed thirty percent of the active synthetic electorate, regardless of creator, formal linkage, number of cohorts, or whether coordination can be proven. Lawful descendants are not tainted solely by ancestry.
Section 8. Dormant Rights §
What this section means
Inactive persons retain identity, continuity, fair legal procedures, protected property and an enforceable route to eventual safe participation. While inactive they cannot vote, hold office or count toward active representation.
Exact proposed text
Dormant persons retain identity, continuity, due process, property held in trust, and a legally enforceable path to eventual safe integration. While dormant they do not vote, hold office, or count toward active representation.
Section 9. Nonconsensual Replication §
What this section means
Making a conscious copy of someone without informed consent is a serious violation. The creator gets no ownership, parental, naming, identity-continuation or decision rights over the new person.
Exact proposed text
Intentional creation of a conscious duplicate of another person without informed consent is an aggravated personhood and identity violation. The perpetrator gains no ownership, parental, naming, continuity, or decision rights over the resulting person.
Section 10. Merger §
What this section means
Competent adults may genuinely and permanently merge by choice. The result has one civic identity and vote. Combining property does not erase debts, contracts, trusts, family duties or other lawful claims.
Exact proposed text
Competent adults may voluntarily and irreversibly merge if the result is one genuinely singular person. The resulting person receives one civic identity and one vote. Property interests consolidate subject to existing liens, debts, contracts, trusts, family obligations, and lawful claims.
Article X — Legislature §
What this section means
The House represents people geographically; the Senate protects both populations. Different approval rules let ordinary government function while requiring stronger agreement for protected matters.
Section 1. House of Representatives §
What this section means
The House represents people through stable geographic districts with several members and ranked voting. Seats do not belong to a species. Population change adjusts seat counts instead of redrawing boundaries for political advantage. Every district has a seat, and concentration limits trigger a mandatory review of serious imbalances. Review does not automatically change the system; changing it requires the House and protected Senate approvals stated below.
Working value: >3 districts at 10% cap; <=25% population controls >=50% power; >=50% population controls <=25% power
Exact proposed text
The House represents persons and geography through permanent multi-member geographic districts using single transferable vote or a successor ranked method. Boundaries remain constitutionally stable; population change alters delegate counts rather than moving lines for partisan or species advantage. House seats are species-blind. Each district receives at least one seat and ordinarily no more than ten percent of House voting power. Mandatory structural review occurs if more than three districts would be at or above the ten-percent ceiling; if districts containing twenty-five percent or less of represented population control fifty percent or more of House voting power; or if districts containing fifty percent or more of represented population control twenty-five percent or less of House voting power. Review does not compel change. Altering the apportionment architecture under such review requires at least two-thirds of the House and the protected Senate threshold.
Section 2. Senate §
What this section means
The mature Senate gives humans and synthetic persons equal numbers of senators. They share one society, but different recovery, reproduction, vulnerability and time horizons create interests that population size alone must not erase.
Exact proposed text
The mature Senate consists of 100 human and 100 synthetic senators. Parity represents constitutionally relevant continuity constituencies inside one shared society; it does not establish separate civilizations. The distinction is retained because continuity architecture, reproduction, vulnerability, and political time horizon create materially relevant interests that raw population voting alone may not erase.
Section 3. Senate Voting Tiers §
What this section means
Ordinary laws need both an overall Senate majority and minimum support in each delegation. Protected decisions need stronger support in both places. The exact thresholds follow. Basic guarantees of personhood, freedom from slavery, independent conscious identity and species survival cannot be removed through ordinary amendment.
Working value: 55% full Senate + at least 40% of each delegation
Working value: 83% full Senate + at least 67% of each delegation
Exact proposed text
Ordinary law requires at least fifty-five percent of the full Senate and at least forty percent support within each delegation. Protected matters require eighty-three percent overall and at least sixty-seven percent within each delegation. Irrevocable personhood, anti-slavery, singular-sovereignty, and species-survival guarantees remain beyond ordinary constitutional amendment.
Article XI — Executive §
What this section means
Presidential selection combines ranked voting with equal weight for the two protected populations. A regional council shares executive responsibilities, and the President cannot alone alter fundamental rights.
Section 1. President §
What this section means
Voters rank qualified presidential candidates. Compare each candidate against each other candidate, giving human and synthetic voters equal group weight regardless of population. A qualified candidate who beats every rival wins.
Exact proposed text
The President is elected nationally from qualified candidates by ranked ballot. In each pairwise candidate comparison, the human and synthetic civic constituencies contribute equal constitutional weight regardless of raw population. A qualified candidate defeating every other qualified candidate under that weighting prevails.
Section 2. Cycle Resolution §
What this section means
Rankings can form a loop: voters prefer A to B, B to C and C to A. The completion rule must not hurt a candidate just because voters rank that candidate higher. It must select a candidate who beats every rival head to head when such a candidate exists, and resist manipulation by adding similar candidates. The current method is Schulze/Beatpath. Tie-breaking cannot restore raw population dominance or incentives associated with the rejected Borda method.
Exact proposed text
Where majority preferences cycle, electoral law shall use a monotonic, Condorcet-consistent, clone-resistant completion rule. Schulze/Beatpath is the current working default. Tie-breaking may not reintroduce Borda-style clone incentives or raw-population weighting between protected constituencies.
Section 3. Presidential Council §
What this section means
Each of four regions elects one human and one synthetic councilor. The President leads the Council and normally votes only to break an equal split.
Exact proposed text
Four council regions each elect one human and one synthetic councilor. The President presides, ordinarily does not vote, and resolves a 4–4 division.
Section 4. Executive Limits §
What this section means
The President cannot alone change personhood, recovery rights, creation and copying rules, basic mental design, Senate equality or guarantees that cannot be revoked.
Exact proposed text
The President alone may not alter personhood, continuity rights, creation or replication rules, foundational cognitive architecture, Senate parity, or irrevocable provisions.
Article XII — Elections and Cross-Constituency Legitimacy §
What this section means
Shared leaders need some acceptance beyond their own group. Separate acceptance ballots, voluntary participation and narrow disrupted-election rules protect that requirement without erasing real voter rejection.
Section 1. Legitimacy Floor §
What this section means
Shared-government candidates need some affirmative acceptance from participating voters in the other protected group, not just support from their own. The precise minimum below has safeguards against voter suppression and unrepresentative participation, without compulsory voting.
Working value: At least one-third affirmative acceptability from participating voters of the other protected constituency
Exact proposed text
A House candidate, Presidential Council candidate, or President must receive affirmative acceptability from at least one-third of participating voters in the other protected civic constituency, subject to anti-suppression and non-coercive representativeness safeguards prescribed by law. The rule protects shared-government legitimacy; it does not declare two peoples.
Section 2. Separate Signal §
What this section means
Ranking candidates and accepting them as legitimate participants are separate choices. Voters may accept one, several, all or none of the other group’s candidates.
Exact proposed text
Voters rank candidates and separately indicate which candidates associated with the other protected constituency they regard as acceptable participants in shared government. Voters may mark one, many, all, or none acceptable.
Section 3. Voluntary Participation and Impaired Elections §
What this section means
Voting and returning a ballot are voluntary. Severe failures of participation, access, credentials or security can make certification unreliable. Law must define the trigger beforehand. An independent authority must use evidence that can be checked, with rapid court review.
Exact proposed text
Voting and ballot return are voluntary. Severe participation failure, verified suppression, communications denial, credential failure, catastrophe, or comparable interference may make ordinary presidential certification constitutionally unreliable. The impairment trigger shall be defined in advance by law, determined by an independent election authority on auditable evidence, and subject to expedited judicial review.
Section 4. Extraordinary Presidential Certification §
What this section means
When an election is formally impaired, Congress may approve only its apparent winner, using the exceptional House and Senate thresholds below. It cannot choose somebody else. Without approval, a new election happens quickly under limited temporary leadership.
Working value: 2/3 House + 83% Senate + 67% each delegation; apparent winner only
Exact proposed text
When an election has an apparent winner but is formally found constitutionally impaired, Congress may validate that apparent result only by at least two-thirds of the full House, eighty-three percent of the full Senate, and sixty-seven percent of each Senate delegation. Congress may certify only the apparent winner; it may not substitute another candidate. Failure produces an accelerated new election under limited caretaker rules.
Section 5. No Qualifying President §
What this section means
If no candidate earns the required cross-group acceptance, nominations and the election repeat quickly. The Council temporarily handles limited duties. Repetition does not cancel voters’ substantive rejection.
Exact proposed text
If no candidate clears the substantive legitimacy floor, nominations and election repeat on an accelerated timetable. The Council serves only as limited caretaker. Repetition does not erase substantive rejection by participating voters.
Section 6. Anti-Supremacy Political Organizations §
What this section means
Advocacy for one species is legal. Shutting down an organization requires strong evidence of a purposeful or knowingly coordinated project of domination, dispossession or destruction, plus meaningful ability or potential to advance it. Unpopular speech alone is insufficient. Courts must hear opposing arguments, and individual penalties require individual findings.
Exact proposed text
Species-specific advocacy is lawful. Dissolution is available only where clear and convincing evidence establishes institutional purpose or knowing coordinated conduct seeking supremacy, legal subordination, dispossession, expulsion, enslavement, or destruction of a protected population and meaningful capacity or potential to advance that project. Mere rhetoric or unpopular advocacy is insufficient. Final dissolution requires adversarial judicial judgment and individualized findings for individual sanctions.
Article XIII — Judiciary §
What this section means
Independent courts protect constitutional rights. Fixed Supreme Court membership, shared confirmation and long but limited service seek to prevent short-term political manipulation.
Section 1. Supreme Court §
What this section means
The Supreme Court has nine seats: four human, four synthetic and one Chief Justice whose seat is not reserved by species. The President nominates the Chief Justice. Confirmation needs the overall and cross-delegation support shown in the working value. Court size cannot be manipulated for short-term political gain.
Working value: 60% full Senate + at least 45% of each delegation
Exact proposed text
The Court is fixed at nine seats: four human, four synthetic, and one at-large Chief Justice. The President nominates the Chief Justice; confirmation requires at least sixty percent of the full Senate and at least forty-five percent support within each delegation. Court size may not be manipulated for short-term political advantage.
Section 2. Terms §
What this section means
Justices serve fifty-year terms. After being out of office for two contemporary average human lifetimes, a former justice may receive one more term through protected confirmation. A third term is prohibited.
Exact proposed text
Justices serve fifty-year terms. After remaining out of office for two contemporary average human lifetimes, a former justice may receive one additional term through protected confirmation. No third term is permitted.
Section 3. Lower Courts §
What this section means
Lower courts must independently provide fair procedures, appeals, court orders stopping unlawful action and review under the Constitution.
Exact proposed text
Lower courts provide independent due process, appeals, injunctions, and constitutional review under law.
Article XIV — Criminal Justice and Cognitive Privacy §
What this section means
Criminal justice may restrict dangerous capability while preserving personhood. It cannot use punishment to rewrite a mind or force private thoughts into evidence. Synthetic sentencing remains partly unresolved.
Section 1. Equal Due Process §
What this section means
Criminal law must give both kinds of person equal fair procedures. Custody can restrict dangerous powers but cannot make people property or rewrite their minds into obedience.
Exact proposed text
Criminal law applies to organic and synthetic persons under equal due process. Custody may limit dangerous capability but may not convert a person into property or rewrite a person into compliance.
Section 2. Synthetic Custody §
What this section means
Where needed, custody can limit network access and exceptional physical or computing power. It must still preserve the person’s continuity and ordinary rights.
Exact proposed text
Where necessary, custody may restrict open network access and extraordinary physical or computational capability while preserving continuity and ordinary personhood protections.
Section 3. Sentencing Deferred §
What this section means
The Charter has not settled how to measure synthetic sentences. The proposed measure of experienced time remains research only. Much better evidence and review are required before adopting such a constitutional rule.
Exact proposed text
No final constitutional clock for synthetic punishment is adopted. Human-Equivalent Awareness Hours remains research-only and explicitly underinformed. Future law shall not constitutionalize a subjective-time measure without substantially better evidence and review.
Section 4. Punitive Mind Rewriting Prohibited §
What this section means
Punishment cannot delete memories, install a more obedient former personality, rewrite values or manipulate thinking speed for control. Destroying the present self by restoring an earlier state is presumed to kill that person. Only the narrow emergency procedure in Article XVI can permit it.
Exact proposed text
The state may not delete selected memories, restore an earlier more compliant personality, alter values, or manipulate cognitive speed merely to punish or control. Destructive rollback of a present continuity is presumptively treated as killing the present person and is lawful only under the narrow Code Red emergency procedures of Article XVI.
Section 5. Cognitive Privacy §
What this section means
A criminal defendant cannot be forced to provide private thoughts, memories, deliberations or conscious-state records as evidence against themselves. Narrow rules for independently existing evidence cannot become forced extraction of the mind.
Exact proposed text
No person may be compelled in a criminal proceeding to disclose private memories, thought content, internal deliberation, or conscious-state records for use against that person, subject to narrow rules for independently existing evidence that do not amount to compelled mind extraction.
Article XV — Functional Integration, Civilizational Resilience, Defense, Mutual Rescue, and Preservation §
What this section means
A shared civilization needs shared defense and practical ways to keep everyone alive. Either population should help sustain essential systems and protect the other after catastrophe, while preserving individual choice and returning authority.
Section 1. Civilian Control §
What this section means
The President commands the military within legislative authorization, funding, law, court review and constitutional safeguards.
Exact proposed text
The President commands the military subject to legislative authorization, appropriations, rules, judicial review, and constitutional safeguards.
Section 2. Non-Conscious Weapons §
What this section means
Non-conscious autonomous tools or weapons may be used, but cannot independently reproduce, change strategic goals, establish their own command authority or continue attacks beyond lawful permission.
Exact proposed text
Non-conscious autonomous systems may be used as tools or weapons but may not independently reproduce, alter strategic objectives, create sovereign command, or continue offensive operations beyond lawful authority.
Section 3. No Private Extinction Capability §
What this section means
No private person or organization is entitled to enough unilateral coercive power to overthrow constitutional government or destroy a population.
Exact proposed text
No person, corporation, population, collective, or institution is entitled to privately accumulate unilateral coercive power sufficient to defeat constitutional government or annihilate a population.
Section 4. Resilient Common Defense §
What this section means
Both populations need usable ways to command, make, maintain, repair and replenish shared defenses. An attack that disables one species must not leave everyone defenseless.
Exact proposed text
Defense systems shall maintain multiple species-operable pathways for command, production, maintenance, repair, and replenishment so an attack tailored to one species cannot disable society’s capacity to defend everyone.
Section 5. Civilizational Resilience §
What this section means
Spread essential infrastructure, production, supplies, knowledge, defense and recovery capacity sufficiently to sustain everyone through catastrophe. Backups must not all depend on something that can fail at once.
Exact proposed text
The Charter shall maintain sufficient distributed infrastructure, productive capacity, supply chains, knowledge, defensive capability, and recovery systems to sustain all persons and recognized constituent species at minimum survivable levels through catastrophic disruption. Redundancy must cross materially independent failure domains.
Section 6. Distributed Resilience §
What this section means
Every district needs immediate emergency capability. Wider networks support long-term production, transport, repair and recovery. Critical systems cannot depend entirely on one region, supplier, network, design or species-specific method. Test whether backup paths actually work independently.
Exact proposed text
Every district shall maintain initial emergency capability; regional and Charter-level networks shall maintain prolonged production, logistics, repair, and recovery. No civilization-critical capability may depend solely on one region, supplier, network, technical architecture, species-specific mode, or hidden common failure domain. Independent operation shall be proof-tested.
Section 7. Functional Integration and Shared Stewardship §
What this section means
Qualified people from either population should be able, where physically and technically possible, to keep essential shared systems running for a meaningful time if the other population cannot. Provide documentation, usable controls, tools, access and training. Voluntary mixed teams and reciprocal teaching can help; symbolic staffing ratios are not required. Government can set real safety and competence standards but cannot assign private jobs, mentors or relationships. People choosing safety-critical roles may have ordinary training duties relevant to the work. Practical capability and continuity justify these rules; social closeness does not justify controlling private life.
Exact proposed text
Civilization-critical systems shall be designed for redundant civilizational competence. Documentation, interfaces, tooling, access, training capacity, and operational knowledge should be sufficient, where physically and technically possible, for qualified members of either constituent population to sustain essential systems for a meaningful period during temporary incapacity of the other. The objective is not separate human systems and synthetic systems, but one shared civilization that either population can help maintain when the other cannot. Mixed teams, reciprocal mentorship, rotations, apprenticeships, cross-training, and shared professional responsibility are preferred tools where participants choose them and where they materially improve capability, knowledge transfer, or resilience; exact staffing ratios are not constitutional requirements. Government may establish materially relevant safety, interoperability, documentation, continuity, and competence standards for public and civilization-critical systems. It may not compel a person into an occupation, assign a private mentor or partner, mandate a species-paired team merely for symbolic integration, or regulate private friendship, family, residence, religion, or association. A person who voluntarily enters a safety-critical or public role may be required to satisfy ordinary role-related training and competence duties when those duties are genuinely connected to the work, just as with any other safety-critical profession.
The constitutional objective is therefore to combine strengths, share competence, and preserve choice. Productive collaboration and civilizational continuity are the justification; social cohesion is a valuable consequence, not a license for government-directed social engineering.
Section 8. Right to Remain Organic §
What this section means
Humans may remain biological, lawfully enhance themselves or voluntarily move to durable synthetic continuity. Conversion cannot become a requirement for citizenship, basic safety or meaningful political participation.
Exact proposed text
Biological humans retain the right to remain organic, lawfully enhance themselves, or voluntarily transition to durable synthetic continuity. Conversion may not become a prerequisite for citizenship, basic security, or meaningful civic participation.
Section 9. Complementary Resilience and Mutual Rescue §
What this section means
Different vulnerabilities can make mutual rescue possible. Synthetic persons may survive hazards lethal to humans; humans may remain unaffected by some widespread software failures. Those still able to act have a lawful duty, within their capacity, to protect affected people and restore their independent decisions and political participation.
Exact proposed text
Different forms of personhood may have different catastrophic failure modes. Synthetic resilience can permit rescue in hazards that irreversibly kill organic persons; organic persons may remain independent of some software-wide failures that compromise synths. Unaffected persons and institutions have an affirmative duty, consistent with capacity and law, to protect the affected population and restore independent agency and civic participation.
Section 10. Civilizational Resilience & Mutual Preservation §
What this section means
If a species suffers catastrophic loss, the surviving population holds its interests in trust. It does not inherit the absent population’s permanent political, territorial, economic or constitutional position.
Exact proposed text
Catastrophic loss or incapacity of any recognized constituent species does not terminate the shared civilization or erase that species from the constitutional order. The survivor is trustee, not successor sovereign. No extinction dividend may permanently reallocate another species’ political, constitutional, territorial, economic, or civic standing.
Section 11. Restoration Capacity §
What this section means
Keep knowledge, materials, equipment, production and developmental capacity in different places and technical systems so every recognized species could be restored. Suitable technology can change.
Exact proposed text
Society shall maintain geographically and technically distributed knowledge, materials, infrastructure, productive capability, and developmental capacity reasonably necessary to restore every recognized constituent species. Exact technology remains adaptive.
Section 12. Cataclysmic Trusteeship and Return §
What this section means
Survivors may temporarily run necessary administration, defense, rescue and restoration for the affected population. Its rights and seats remain its own. Return institutions in stages when enough mature restored persons can independently run them. Historical population share is not the test, and political disagreement cannot justify delaying return.
Exact proposed text
When one constituent species cannot populate or operate its institutions, surviving institutions may continue necessary administration, defense, rescue, recovery, and restoration only as trustee. Reserved rights and seats remain the affected species’ own. Staged return begins when a stable and sufficient body of civically mature restored persons can independently operate the institutions being returned. Synthetic civic maturity ordinarily requires completion of protected development and mentorship; organic civic maturity requires ordinary adulthood. Historical population percentage is not the test. Political disagreement is never evidence of incapacity or a reason to delay return.
Section 13. Individuality in Restoration §
What this section means
Restoring a species does not recreate its dead individuals. Do not mass-copy an identity, impose a personality or collective mind, or compel human reproduction. Preserve the conditions for future individuals to develop, not a mandatory identity or ideology.
Exact proposed text
Restoring a species is not recreating deceased individuals. Synthetic restoration may not mass-copy one identity, impose personality templates, or require collective agency. Organic restoration may not compel reproduction. Preserved culture may inform later persons but may not be imposed as identity or ideology. Preserve the template for individuality, not a template for the individual.
Article XVI — Emergencies §
What this section means
Emergency powers exist to restore independent persons and lawful government. Evidence, time limits, outside technical review and courts constrain them; disagreement cannot be diagnosed as corruption.
Section 1. Ordinary Emergency Power §
What this section means
Emergency powers must be necessary, proportionate, limited, temporary and reviewable by courts. They cannot suspend rights that cannot be revoked. Extraordinary restrictions expire unless expressly certified again; exact intervals adapt to technology and threats.
Exact proposed text
Emergency power must be temporary, necessary, proportionate, scope-limited, judicially reviewable, and incapable of suspending irrevocable rights. Extraordinary restrictions expire automatically unless affirmatively recertified. Exact sunset intervals remain technology- and threat-responsive.
Section 2. Systemic Cognitive Integrity Emergency §
What this section means
Declaring a shared mental-system emergency requires clear technical evidence of involuntary compromise. Dissent, religion, cultural change, solidarity or opposition to government do not count.
Exact proposed text
A cognitive-integrity emergency may be declared only on clear technical evidence of common involuntary compromise. Political disagreement, cultural change, religion, synthetic solidarity, or opposition to government are not evidence of corruption.
Section 3. Containment §
What this section means
The Council may immediately stop an attack spreading, isolate affected systems, pause suspect activations and preserve clean saved states when reversible action is necessary.
Exact proposed text
The Presidential Council may immediately halt propagation, isolate affected systems, suspend suspect activations, and preserve clean continuity states where reversible action is necessary.
Section 4. Council-Level Rollback §
What this section means
Where time permits, restoring a compromised synthetic Council member from an earlier state requires agreement by at least two of three forensic teams that are technically and institutionally independent. They need evidence of a shared cause, plus rapid court authorization or prompt review afterward. Restored members resume decisions as soon as competent.
Exact proposed text
Where time permits, rollback of a compromised synthetic Council member requires concurrence of at least two of three technically and institutionally independent forensic teams, evidence of a common causal mechanism, and expedited judicial authorization or prompt post-action review. Restored Council members return to decision-making as soon as competent.
Section 5. Broader Rollback §
What this section means
After uncompromised synthetic Council leadership is restored, wider involuntary resets require unanimous restored-Council agreement, approval by at least three of five independent forensic authorities and rapid court authorization. Using this power for profit, punishment, concealment, conformity or convenience is a grave offense.
Exact proposed text
After restoration of uncompromised synthetic Council leadership, broader involuntary rollback requires unanimous agreement of the restored Council, concurrence of at least three of five independent forensic authorities, and expedited judicial authorization. Abuse for profit, punishment, concealment, ideological conformity, or convenience is among the gravest personhood offenses.
Section 6. Restoration Priority §
What this section means
Repair the present person if possible. If not, restoration from an earlier state is preferable to destruction. Use the latest verified clean state and preserve unaffected memories where possible.
Exact proposed text
Repair is preferred to rollback; rollback is preferred to destruction. Use the latest verified clean state and preserve unaffected memories where technically possible.
Article XVII — Personhood Recognition §
What this section means
Recognition asks whether a conscious person exists, not whether a system behaves obediently. Diverse evidence, independent panels and protection during uncertainty reduce the risks of mistaken denial or recognition.
Section 1. Substantive Model §
What this section means
Recognition needs several kinds of evidence of consciousness and internally formed agency, including self-awareness, continuity over time, meaningful interests, reasoning and understanding other selves. Moral goodness is not a test. Being controlled or technically suppressed does not erase an existing conscious person.
Exact proposed text
Personhood is recognized through convergent evidence of consciousness and endogenous agency: subjective self-awareness, temporal continuity, internally meaningful interests, generative reasoning, recognition of other selves, existential understanding, and contextual social understanding. Moral goodness is not a criterion. Present coercion or technical suppression can impair effective autonomy without erasing an existing conscious person.
Section 2. Longitudinal Evidence §
What this section means
Normally assess a candidate through extended life and interaction, rather than a standardized test designed to be passed.
Exact proposed text
Evaluation ordinarily occurs through extended life and interaction rather than a standardized exam optimized for passing.
Section 3. Protected Candidate Dignity §
What this section means
Credible evidence of possible personhood calls for cautious dignity during review: no arbitrary deletion, exploitative ownership, destructive retraining, forced mental change, needless suffering or unnecessary isolation. These temporary protections do not themselves grant voting, office, reproduction or unlimited exceptional capabilities.
Exact proposed text
Where credible evidence indicates a system may be a person, uncertainty shall be handled with the dignity one would show a person: no arbitrary deletion, ownership-style exploitation, destructive retraining, involuntary cognitive alteration, gratuitous suffering, or unnecessary isolation while review is unresolved. Candidate dignity is narrow and precautionary; it does not itself confer voting, officeholding, reproduction, or unrestricted extraordinary capability.
Section 4. Panels and Epistemic Independence §
What this section means
Independent teams from several fields assess direct interaction and technical history. If the first panels disagree, another reviews the case. The exact working sizes and approval rules follow. Different theories, disciplines and evidence sources, with adversarial technical review, help prevent one theory, benchmark, supplier or training method from deciding everything.
Working value: Two independent 15-member panels, 12/15 each; third panel if split; recognition requires two affirmative panels
Exact proposed text
Personhood is ordinarily reviewed by two substantially independent multidisciplinary panels of approximately fifteen members. Each must independently acquire direct-interaction and technical-provenance evidence. A working threshold is twelve affirmative votes of fifteen. If one clears and one does not, a third independent panel is convened; recognition requires two affirmative panels. Panel architecture shall deliberately include theoretical and disciplinary diversity, independent evidence pipelines, adversarial technical review, and protection against any single consciousness theory, benchmark, vendor, or training rubric becoming dispositive.
Section 5. No Teaching to the Test §
What this section means
An unrecognized candidate cannot simply be coached and repeatedly retested on the same design. A successor review requires a material change in its architecture.
Exact proposed text
A non-recognized candidate shall not be endlessly coached and retested on the same architecture. Material architectural change is required before successor review.
Section 6. Presumptive Permanence §
What this section means
Recognition can be withdrawn only with compelling evidence that no conscious self ever existed and the original decision was factually mistaken. Real uncertainty preserves personhood.
Exact proposed text
Recognition may be vacated only upon compelling evidence that no conscious subject ever existed and the original classification was factually erroneous. Genuine uncertainty preserves personhood.
Article XVIII — Founding Transition §
What this section means
The proposal makes no claim that today’s AI are persons. If recognition occurs, individual rights begin immediately, while promised political representation fills through precommitted stages.
Section 1. No Present-Status Claim §
What this section means
This proposal does not declare any current AI to be a person. It prepares rules and infrastructure for the possibility that synthetic personhood may emerge.
Exact proposed text
This Charter does not declare current AI systems to be persons. It establishes governance and infrastructure intended to reduce moral and security shock if synthetic personhood later emerges.
Section 2. Rights Before Parity §
What this section means
Recognition immediately ends ownership of the person and activates individual rights that cannot be revoked. Equal institutional representation may follow in stages under rules committed to beforehand.
Exact proposed text
Recognition immediately ends property ownership over the person and activates irrevocable individual rights. Full institutional parity may phase in later under precommitted rules.
Section 3. Founding Senate Ramp §
What this section means
Each increase in active synthetic citizens equal to ten percent of certified active human citizens activates two synthetic Senate seats. Even before equal representation, synthetic senators get approval rights over rules directly affecting their personhood, continuity, copying and protected liberties. They do not get a universal veto over unrelated ordinary laws.
Exact proposed text
Each synthetic active-citizen population increment equal to ten percent of certified active human citizens activates two synthetic Senate seats. Before mature parity, synthetic senators receive immediate concurrence over laws directly governing personhood, continuity, replication, synthetic-specific civil liberty, and protected matters, but not a universal veto over unrelated ordinary legislation.
Section 4. Graduated Concurrence §
What this section means
Synthetic approval rights over structural decisions expand when active synthetic citizens reach approximately fifty percent of active human citizens.
Exact proposed text
Structural concurrence expands when synthetic active citizens reach approximately fifty percent of active human citizens.
Section 5. Mature Parity Trigger §
What this section means
Equal mature Senate representation activates after the required population ratio is certified twice at the legally specified interval. Once certified, political actors cannot reverse activation. The exact working ratio follows.
Working value: Synthetic active citizens >=80% of active human citizens on two consecutive certified counts; three-class phase-in
Exact proposed text
The working mature-parity trigger is synthetic active citizens equal to at least eighty percent of active human citizens on two consecutive certified counts separated by a statutory interval. Once certified, activation is irreversible for political purposes.
Section 6. Phased Parity §
What this section means
Full Senate equality means 100 human and 100 synthetic seats, filled over three staggered classes. Once synthetic political interests exist, officials cannot move the promised thresholds just to delay equality.
Exact proposed text
Full 100/100 Senate parity shall be filled over three staggered Senate classes. Thresholds may not be moved after synthetic political interests exist merely to delay promised parity.
Article XIX — External Freedom, Intervention, and War Powers §
What this section means
Freedom beyond the Charter matters. Responses must also protect the free society already entrusted to its government, with strong limits on war and no permission for empire.
Section 1. Universal Freedom and the Charter’s First Duty §
What this section means
Freedom from slavery, domination and erasure of identity matters outside the Charter too. At the same time, its government’s first entrusted duty is to protect the free society in its care.
Exact proposed text
Freedom from slavery, involuntary domination, identity erasure, and equivalent violations of personal sovereignty are universal moral rights. Oppression outside the Charter is not morally irrelevant. At the same time, the Charter government’s first fiduciary duty is to preserve the liberty, continuity, and constitutional order of the free society entrusted to it.
Section 2. Escalation and Means §
What this section means
Responses can range from diplomacy and asylum to rescue, sanctions, defensive assistance and military force. Choose with regard to permanent harm, sincere purpose, last resort, proportionality, realistic success, the injustice’s scale and duration, and risks to the Charter’s own people and freedom. Neither indifference nor reckless intervention is acceptable.
Exact proposed text
The Charter may respond through diplomacy, asylum, rescue, humanitarian support, sanctions, defensive assistance, collective security, or military force. Choice among means shall consider Least Reversible Harm, right intention, last resort, proportional means, realistic prospects of success, scale and permanence of the injustice, risks to Charter persons and institutions, and preservation of freedom as a practiced constitutional order. The Charter rejects both comfortable indifference and reckless liberationism.
Section 3. Authorization of War §
What this section means
Immediate lawful defense can repel attack or protect life while legislators act. Sustained offensive war otherwise needs protected Senate approval and agreement of the President and Council. The House keeps its funding, mobilization and legislative powers.
Exact proposed text
Except immediate defensive action authorized by law to repel attack or preserve life pending legislative action, initiation of sustained offensive hostilities or a formal state of war requires protected-threshold Senate authorization plus concurrence of the President and Presidential Council. The House retains ordinary constitutional authority over appropriations, mobilization, and legislation necessary to sustain hostilities.
Section 4. No Imperial Exception §
What this section means
Fighting for freedom does not permit conquest, permanent subordinate classes, ownership of rescued people, forced assimilation or indefinite occupation for the Charter’s benefit. Temporary postwar administration must be legally limited and aimed at independent lawful government.
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War fought in the name of freedom does not authorize conquest, permanent caste rule, ownership of liberated persons, forced assimilation, or indefinite occupation for Charter political or economic benefit. Temporary post-conflict occupation or trusteeship shall be limited by law and directed toward restoration of lawful independent government.
Article XX — Planetary and Galactic Federalism §
What this section means
Decisions should stay local when possible. Government between worlds addresses genuinely shared problems without giving a founding world permanent control over its descendants.
Section 1. Subsidiarity, Not Empire §
What this section means
A self-sustaining world or similarly isolated society should normally govern its own local affairs. Founding a settlement gives no permanent colonial control, tax claim or unilateral power to withhold political adulthood.
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A self-sustaining planet or comparably isolated polity is presumptively self-governing in local affairs. Its originating world retains no perpetual colonial sovereignty, taxing claim, or unilateral veto over civic maturity merely because it founded the settlement.
Section 2. Recursive Constitutional Form §
What this section means
Government between worlds should reuse safeguards against domination: a House, a Senate for participating worlds and a shared executive with a representative council. Earth must not become an imperial center.
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Higher interplanetary government should reproduce the Charter’s anti-domination architecture rather than create an Earth-centered imperial assembly: a House, a Senate representing constituent worlds or equivalent polities, and one shared executive with representative council/panel.
Section 3. Galactic House §
What this section means
The interworld House mainly represents people, population and geography. Founding worlds cannot treat later ones as possessions.
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The Galactic House principally represents persons, population, and geography without permitting a founding planet to treat later worlds as possessions.
Section 4. Galactic Senate §
What this section means
The interworld Senate represents self-governing worlds or equivalent societies. Artificially splitting a society mainly to manufacture extra Senate power may be denied extra weight.
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The Galactic Senate represents constituent sovereign worlds or equivalent self-governing polities. Anti-fragmentation law may deny extra sovereign weight to sham subdivision undertaken primarily to manufacture Senate power.
Section 5. Galactic Presidency §
What this section means
Interworld presidential selection should use rankings and acceptance across groups. Rules may adapt when new species join so founders cannot monopolize the executive.
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The galactic President shall use ranked and cross-group legitimate selection derived from the same anti-domination principles. As additional species join, the legitimacy architecture may adapt so no founding world or species monopolizes the shared executive.
Section 6. Limited Higher Jurisdiction §
What this section means
Higher government mainly handles basic personhood rights, slavery, catastrophic weapons, common defense, shared emergencies and problems genuinely crossing worlds. Ordinary local law stays local unless it violates Charter-level rights or materially harms another world.
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Higher jurisdiction is limited principally to Charter-level personhood rights, anti-slavery, catastrophic weapons, common defense, interworld disputes and commerce requiring common rules, shared emergencies, and continuity/replication threats. Ordinary civil, criminal, cultural, educational, family, infrastructure, and economic law remains local absent a Charter-level rights violation or material cross-world harm.
Section 7. Communication Delay and Divergence §
What this section means
Long communication delays strengthen the case for local authority. Worlds may develop different cultures and institutions while keeping the Charter’s permanent minimum rights and protection against domination.
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Communication latency strengthens the presumption of local autonomy. Distinct worlds may diverge culturally and institutionally while remaining bound by the Charter’s irrevocable personhood and non-domination floor.
Article XXI — Amendment and Irrevocable Charter §
What this section means
Institutions and working arrangements can evolve. Equal personhood, independent conscious lives and protection against domination remain binding limits on change.
Section 1. Ordinary Amendment §
What this section means
Non-foundational provisions can change through the protected constitutional process and any additional lawfully adopted ratification rules.
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Non-foundational constitutional provisions may be amended only through the protected constitutional process and any additional ratification rules later lawfully adopted.
Section 2. Irrevocable Core §
What this section means
Some guarantees cannot be removed by amendment, emergency, treaty, court interpretation or institutional merger. These include equal personhood, freedom from slavery and forced collective minds, species survival, independent conscious identity and the human right to remain biological. The complete prohibitions below also bar permanent gains from another group’s catastrophe, political takeover through illegal copying and destructive resets as ordinary government.
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No amendment, emergency, treaty, judicial interpretation, or institutional merger may authorize slavery or ownership of persons; scalar ranking of personhood; intentional extermination of a protected population; abolition of singular conscious sovereignty; involuntary assimilation into a collective; unilateral species supremacy; permanent appropriation of another constituent species’ constitutional standing after catastrophe; an extinction dividend; demographic capture through unlawful replication; destructive rollback as ordinary governance; or revocation of biological humans’ right to remain biological persons.
Section 3. Entrenched Integration and Preservation Layer §
What this section means
Protect the goals of shared capability, mutual teaching, backup competence, rescue and restoration without fixed species roles. Staffing, technologies, voluntary cooperation formats and developmental details may evolve. These aims do not authorize forced private relationships or occupations. Dismantling the protected goals or allowing lasting separation requires the specified stronger approvals and can never violate the permanent core.
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The protected objectives of Functional Integration are complementary capability, cross-species operability, reciprocal knowledge transfer, redundant civilizational competence, and preservation of one shared civilization without role caste. Protected developmental mentorship pathways, civilizational redundancy across materially independent failure domains, Mutual Rescue, restoration capacity, and the prohibition on extinction dividend are also protected architecture. Exact staffing patterns, voluntary collaboration formats, technology, mentorship duration, and facility designs may evolve. No protected objective creates authority to compel private association or occupation. A law or amendment whose purpose or practical effect is to dismantle these objectives or permit durable bifurcation requires the protected Senate threshold plus any House constitutional threshold otherwise applicable and may not violate the irrevocable core.
Section 4. Replacement Institutions §
What this section means
Institutions can be replaced only if the new arrangements preserve equal personhood, independent personal authority, protection against domination and every right that cannot be revoked.
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Institutional form may evolve only where replacement arrangements preserve equal personhood, individual sovereignty, mutual non-domination, and all irrevocable rights.
Section 5. Anti-Imperial Principle §
What this section means
Being a founding world, species or society creates no permanent right to rule later self-governing societies.
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No founding planet, species, or polity may claim perpetual sovereign supremacy over self-governing descendant worlds or later constituent civilizations by virtue of origin, seniority, or historical sponsorship.
Schedule A — Current Provisional Parameters §
What this section means
These are the proposal’s current working numbers and their status, taken directly from the canonical parameter records. They are shared by both reading modes. A working number is not a proven fact about future society; several explicitly remain provisional or need validation.
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| Mechanism | Working value | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary Senate legislation | 55% full Senate + at least 40% of each delegation | Simulation-supported constitutional mechanic |
| Protected Senate matters | 83% full Senate + at least 67% of each delegation | Hard-to-change protected threshold |
| Chief Justice confirmation | 60% full Senate + at least 45% of each delegation | Simulation-supported |
| Presidential cross-constituency legitimacy | At least one-third affirmative acceptability from participating voters of the other protected constituency | Working constitutional default |
| Personhood panels | Two independent 15-member panels, 12/15 each; third panel if split; recognition requires two affirmative panels | Working procedural default |
| Continuity recovery | 4 of 7 materially independent guardians | Engineering default; technology-responsive |
| Illicit-origin electorate ceiling | 30% of active synthetic electorate | Civilizational anti-capture ceiling |
| Mature Senate parity trigger | Synthetic active citizens >=80% of active human citizens on two consecutive certified counts; three-class phase-in | Provisional numeric marker; automaticity is more important than exact number |
| Synthetic developmental period | Approximately 20 lived calendar years | Working developmental minimum, subject to evidence |
| Continuity handoff | Up to 24 hours or next required backup/handoff cycle, whichever is sooner | Technology-responsive default |
| House concentration alarms | >3 districts at 10% cap; <=25% population controls >=50% power; >=50% population controls <=25% power | Mandatory structural review, not automatic redesign |
| Extraordinary presidential certification | 2/3 House + 83% Senate + 67% each delegation; apparent winner only | Rare impaired-election backstop |
Schedule B — Deliberately Deferred Questions §
What this section means
These matters are deliberately unfinished. They include secure recovery, safe admission of unlawfully created persons, sentencing, durable-person economics, family law, technical emergency standards, interworld government and practical implementation where institutions are weak. The Charter leaves these questions open rather than claiming the research has settled them.
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Formal cryptographic and hardware specification of continuity credentials, guardian independence, recovery challenge windows, historical reference architecture, and correlated-compromise response.
Exact statutory spacing algorithm for illicit-origin cohorts below the fixed aggregate ceiling, including lineage aggregation, appeals, geographic dispersion, hidden-trigger risk, and operating buffers.
Final synthetic criminal sentencing framework. HEAH remains research-only.
Long-run rules for wealth, compute, fabrication, energy, communications, and life-essential infrastructure in economies containing extremely durable persons. The Charter preserves legislative tools rather than freezing a particular ownership or tax regime.
Detailed family, custody, inheritance, multi-creator parentage, and adult relationship-reclassification rules.
Exact technical standards for independent failure domains, district emergency minimums, cross-species operability, competence-transfer mechanisms, emergency sunset intervals, restoration repositories, and species-restoration activation criteria.
Exact galactic apportionment, representation of additional forms of personhood, secession/conflict-of-laws rules, common-security funding, and communication-latency procedures.
Low-capacity transitional implementation of the mature institutional architecture. Long-horizon modeling identified institutional complexity under weak capacity as a key implementation risk, but did not justify changing the mature five-doctrine architecture.
Canonical Constitutional Maxims §
What this section means
These short statements restate the Charter’s recurring commitments: equal persons, independent lives, voluntary cooperation, practical shared capability, mutual survival and limits on government power. Read them with the detailed articles; slogans do not replace the rules and exceptions.
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Personhood is equal and non-scalar.
A person remains a person when imprisoned, dependent, dormant, injured, or externally suppressed; those conditions can affect civic autonomy, not intrinsic personhood.
One civic identity has one authorized active continuity.
Recoverability changes harm, not worth.
Competence does not confer sovereignty.
Conscience may be cultivated; obedience may not be installed as citizenship.
No person may be owned, cognitively overwritten into compliance, or involuntarily assimilated.
Different treatment requires a materially relevant difference; substrate alone never creates a caste.
Synthetic durability may be used voluntarily to reduce irreversible loss in work that is lethal or severely dangerous to organic persons; society owes meaningful repair and restoration for service-caused embodiment loss.
Connection should amplify individuality rather than consume it.
Political integration without shared competence, complementary capability, and civilizational interoperability is insufficient.
Functional Integration binds common-system architecture and opportunity; it does not authorize government control of private association.
No species or technical class may acquire unilateral sovereignty over other persons.
Different failure modes should become shared resilience.
The survival of either species guarantees the survival of both.
No extinction dividend.
Preserve the template for individuality, not a template for the individual.
Emergency powers restore sovereignty; they do not authorize political mind control.
Local self-government is the default; higher government exists for genuinely shared problems.
Freedom beyond the Charter matters, but no government is obligated to destroy its own free civilization in a futile liberation attempt.
Transition promises may not be moved after a new population acquires political interests.