# The constitution in plain language

By dhilipsiva. Prose: CC BY 4.0.

Canonical: https://dhilipsiva.dev/rights-nobody-has-to-earn/constitution/

These articles restate the constitution the book describes, in plain language. The formal source decides where they differ: each article names the rule families that implement it, the contract or decision that governs them, and the tests that check them. An article marked core lies, in the part it names, beyond amendment.

## Who counts, and what they are owed

### Article 1. Standing

1. Every human being within the republic's jurisdiction or effective control is a person, and every person has standing in law.
2. Standing follows from any one of these: a recorded birth; a first contact recorded by whoever made it; presence within the jurisdiction; effective control by a public body; or a report, by anyone, that nobody is acting for the person. No document, family, citizenship, registration or matched identity is required, and a temporary name imports nobody else's debts, guilt or relationships.
3. A public body gains no standing under this article.

Rule families: UNIVERSAL-STANDING-RULES. Tested by: book-1/01-the-child-with-nobody.pins.nibli; book-1/source/universal-standing.pins.nibli.

### Article 2. What the record may say

1. The record that decides anything about a person admits only the kinds of entry this constitution names. Wealth, danger, vulnerability, loyalty, a risk score or any other judgment of a person's worth is not a kind of entry, and a record that tries to write one is refused.
2. Confinement, public answerability, severity, a credibility finding and every other adverse conclusion may never be written directly. Each exists only where it follows from recorded entries by the rules, so every adverse conclusion has an act behind it and a finder who can be named and challenged.
3. An absent entry is silence. It is never a finding about the person or the world.

Rule families: Article 0a, Article 0. Tested by: book-1/02-what-the-record-may-say.pins.nibli.

### Article 3. The floor

1. Every person is owed food, shelter, care, learning, bodily safety, material security, expression, belief and company. These form the floor. Each is owed as a debt, by the public bodies Article 6 names, on personhood alone.
2. Nothing makes the floor conditional: not work, wealth, citizenship, documents, conduct, contribution, compliance, a score, anyone's approval or a request. Nobody may be confined, or subjected to any coercive measure, for lacking an item of the floor.
3. Price, debt, property, employment and insurance may never stand between a person and the floor. Money, vouchers or insurance count as provision only where independent evidence shows timely, accessible and adequate access.

Rule families: Article 1. Tested by: book-1/03-what-you-are-owed.pins.nibli; book-1/source/rights-floor.pins.nibli.

### Article 4. Evidence that it arrived

1. That an item of the floor reached a person is shown only by a matching record of receipt attested by a witness authorised for that person and independent of whoever provided it. A provider's own record of its own delivery proves nothing.
2. A witness is authorised for the person rather than by them, so a person who cannot choose one is not left without one. Bodily safety has no receipt: it is answered by the duties of protection. Belief and expression are held as liberties, and nobody is required to show that they believe or speak.
3. A receipt shows that something arrived; it shows nothing about whether the service works for anyone else.

Rule families: DELIVERY-RECEIPT-RULES. Tested by: book-1/04-whether-it-arrived.pins.nibli; tests/pins/delivery; book-1/source/delivery-receipt.pins.nibli.

### Article 5. When there is genuinely not enough

1. A shortage exists only where independent, contestable evidence shows it for a named resource and population, after alternatives, reserves, substitution, coordination and assistance have been examined. A budget choice, a price, delay, withholding, monopoly, a provider's failure or a refusal to buy is not a shortage.
2. In a real shortage every person's minimum is kept wherever the usable supply allows. What cannot be met is recorded as failure and remains owed; a reduced ration never becomes the new minimum.
3. Priority may turn only on urgency, accessibility, imminent irreversible harm, harm from interrupted provision and benefit specific to the resource. Wealth, contribution, conviction, family status, disability stereotype, productivity, usefulness, lifespan, political favour, nationality, citizenship, immigration status, documents and manner of entry are forbidden grounds. Claims equal in every permitted respect are settled by a disclosed rotation or lottery. A claimant whose claim is compared may not attest the allocation that decides it.

Rule families: SCARCITY-AND-CONFLICT-RULES. Tested by: book-1/05-when-there-is-genuinely-not-enough.pins.nibli; tests/pins/scarcity.

### Article 6. Who owes, and what follows

1. The State owes every person the floor. The common tier finances it, equalises it and backstops it for everyone; a region owes provision, and a locality reach and delivery, wherever the person is recorded as present.
2. Where a body is certified as failing by a source and an independent reviewer, neither of them the failing body, the tier above assumes continuity while the failing body's own duty stands. Where a tier fails at scale, the Constitutional Court must decide whether the failure is an unconstitutional state of affairs; its declaration obliges the Assembly to adopt a public plan with reasons, deadlines and an end, and a certified silence from the Assembly obliges the Court to order interim measures securing the minimum and the treasury to give the minimum the first claim on funds.
3. The rights advocate owes every person the start of assistance and representation without waiting for a request. A duty whose responding office stays silent passes to a separate alternate. No failure of any office costs the person owed their standing, floor or liberty.

Rule families: Article 1b, Article 1c, OBLIGATIONS-RULES. Tested by: book-1/06-who-owes-and-what-follows.pins.nibli; tests/pins/obligations; book-1/source/obligations.pins.nibli.

## The life the design leaves alone

### Article 7. Freedom that needs no permission

1. Nobody needs anyone's permission to learn, speak, publish, believe or not believe, worship, associate, assemble, inquire, create, communicate in their own language, or share friendship, leisure and mutual aid. No public body may require permission for these or register a person's belief, opinion or membership.
2. A restriction is lawful only where evidence shows harm to others' rights or to the commons. Offence, disagreement and an official view of the truth are not grounds. It must use the least restrictive effective means, reach no further than its stated scope, target no viewpoint or identity, be reviewed independently with a challenge that suspends it, and end.
3. Privacy, bodily choice, conscience, association and family form are held against public power, and a restriction of movement needs its own supported ground.

Rule families: KNOWLEDGE-AND-FREE-FIELD-RULES, LIBERTY-ECOLOGY-RULES. Tested by: book-1/08-what-nobody-has-to-ask-permission-for.pins.nibli; tests/pins/knowledge; book-1/source/liberty-environment.pins.nibli.

### Article 8. Work, pay and contribution

1. Every person may choose, refuse, leave and change work without losing any part of the floor. Labour protection covers every form of ownership and every worker whose work is controlled by or dependent on another, whatever a contract calls them.
2. A duty of minimum service binds a provider or the parties to a dispute, never a named worker, and refusing it is never a crime. Pay, profit, supplements and incentives above the floor are lawful and left to democratic law. A contributory supplement, a promise of pay or a certificate of competence rests on its own record and serves only its own purpose.
3. The constitution confers no public status for contribution, and no record of work or teaching may rank a person's worth.

Rule families: INCOME-SECURITY-RULES, QUALIFICATIONS-COMPENSATION-RULES, Article 3. Tested by: book-1/09-work-pay-and-contribution.pins.nibli; book-1/source/income-security.pins.nibli; book-1/source/qualifications-compensation.pins.nibli.

### Article 9. Property, enterprise and public finance

1. Public, cooperative, commons, mutual, nonprofit, household and private enterprise are all lawful, and none has constitutional priority, a guaranteed share or immunity. Property, contract and enterprise are protected liberties bounded by the floor, equality, labour rights, the core liberties, due process and the commons.
2. Where an independent, contestable finding shows that a private body controls an essential, dominant, gatekeeping or dependency-creating function, that function owes access, continuity, reasons, portability, audit, challenge and remedy. Nothing else about the body is public.
3. Taxes as a whole reflect capacity to contribute. Borrowing is left to legislation under reporting, audit and disclosure of risk, with no fixed numerical limit, and debt never takes priority over the floor or the commons. The common tier keeps a public unit of account and a payment route that needs no digital device.

Rule families: ECONOMIC-CONSTITUTION-RULES, PUBLIC-SCALE-VOCABULARY-RULES. Tested by: book-1/10-what-money-cannot-buy.pins.nibli; book-1/source/economic-constitution.pins.nibli; book-1/source/public-scale-vocabulary.pins.nibli.

### Article 10. Equal treatment

1. Every person is owed equal and effective protection. Discrimination is judged by its purpose or its effect, on any ground, including combined grounds, without a single comparator. It covers direct and indirect discrimination, denial of accommodation, segregation, harassment and retaliation, by public bodies and by the private bodies that provide employment, housing, education, care, finance, utilities, transport and dominant communication.
2. Accessibility is owed in advance, and reasonable accommodation to each person who needs it; undue burden is judged across the whole responsible institution, and the person always keeps an effective alternative. A persistent disparity shifts the burden of justification in an equality case but never proves a person guilty.
3. Positive measures, including targets, are lawful and required where ordinary measures cannot remove an evidenced structural disadvantage, each with evidence, independent review and an end.

Rule families: SUBSTANTIVE-EQUALITY-RULES, SUBSTANTIVE-EQUALITY-ORDINARY-RULES. Tested by: book-1/11-the-same-route-for-everyone.pins.nibli; tests/pins/equality; book-1/source/substantive-equality.pins.nibli.

### Article 11. The environment and the commons

1. Every present person has a right to clean, healthy and sustainable environmental conditions, separate from the floor and enforceable before any item of the floor is lost.
2. Climate and atmosphere, air, fresh and marine waters, soil, biodiversity, habitats, ecosystem integrity and connectivity, regenerative capacity, and the inheritance of land and nonrenewable resources are protected on separate axes, and a gain on one never pays for a loss on another. Their ceilings are set by democratic law within an independently reviewed scientific envelope.
3. A Future Conditions Guardian, independent and collegial, may demand assessment and reasons and may pause an irreversible authorisation, on evidence of serious or irreversible harm, until an expedited independent review decides. It holds no veto. Where an essential human service and an ecological ceiling cannot both be met at once, the least harmful route keeps the person's immediate provision, records the breach as a breach, and obliges transition and repair.

Rule families: ECOLOGICAL-ANIMAL-RULES, LIBERTY-ECOLOGY-RULES. Tested by: book-1/12-a-place-in-which-life-remains-possible.pins.nibli; tests/pins/ecology; book-1/source/liberty-environment.pins.nibli.

### Article 12. Animals

1. A sentient or credibly sentient animal is protected in its own right. Vertebrates, cephalopods and decapod crustaceans are presumed sentient; independent evidence of a realistic possibility of sentience extends protection to others. An animal is neither a person nor a thing whose protection an owner may waive.
2. Severe avoidable suffering is forbidden, and so is killing or severe suffering solely for spectacle, gambling, amusement, sport or trophy, prestige, fashion, cosmetics or marketing, novelty, convenience or profit. Every controlled use owes a welfare baseline. A lethal, invasive or high-severity use needs a serious purpose from a closed list, necessity, no reasonably available less harmful alternative, the least harmful method and independent review first.
3. An animal may be used to produce food only where the people it would feed have no safe, accessible, nutritionally adequate and less harmful alternative within reach; this rule may be amended, but never so as to license severe avoidable suffering. An Animal Protection Advocate, separate from the Guardian, may bring the animal's claim, and so may any person or qualified association.

Rule families: ECOLOGICAL-ANIMAL-RULES. Tested by: book-1/13-creatures-without-a-ballot.pins.nibli; tests/pins/ecology.

### Article 13. Roles in a person's life

1. A child is an independent holder of rights and is heard without any minimum age. Parentage, care, household, support, property and decision-making are separate roles, each a power held for the person over named decisions and open to challenge, and a family may have more than two legal parents.
2. Adults choose, change and refuse the people who support their decisions. Support comes before any substitute decision, and only where a person's will cannot be read after support may a bounded, reviewed interpretation of their will act. No one is placed under general guardianship or loses agency for age, disability, diagnosis or setting.
3. The pregnant person decides whether a pregnancy continues. Public continuity of care is immediate and cannot be delegated. Adult kinship creates no duty of personal care, and domestic privacy shelters no violence, coercion or neglect.

Rule families: FAMILY-LIFE-COURSE-RULES, FAMILY-LIFE-ORDINARY-RULES, Article 2. Tested by: book-1/14-holding-a-role-in-somebodys-life.pins.nibli; tests/pins/family-life; book-1/source/family-life-course.pins.nibli.

### Article 14. Arriving and belonging

1. Help follows presence, whatever a person's status. Asking for food, care, schooling or a court never enrols, records or reports a person for enforcement.
2. No one may be returned to a place where they face persecution, torture or comparable grave harm, and no group may be expelled collectively. Asylum is a right to a fair determination with an advocate, an interpreter and an appeal that suspends removal. Expulsion needs an individual, reasoned decision; no child is detained for an immigration purpose; statelessness may not be created; and nationality is never taken as a punishment.
3. Indigenous peoples and minority communities hold collective rights to their institutions, languages, cultures and land. Membership rests on the person's own identification and the collective's lawful acceptance, with free exit. Permanent forced relocation, extinguished title and comparable existential harms need the collective's actual consent; other material effects need good-faith consultation and reasons.

Rule families: MOBILITY-PLURALITY-RULES, PUBLIC-SAFETY-RULES. Tested by: book-1/15-arriving-and-belonging.pins.nibli; tests/pins/mobility.

## The public power that serves it

### Article 15. Answerability and authority

1. A public body, and anyone seated by the electorate or the Convocation, is publicly answerable. Answerability does not end with recall or with a credibility finding, so a person who exposed an official keeps the protection the exposure earned.
2. Answerability is not authority. Every power needs its own positive, current record, tied to its source and its end, and lapses when that record does.

Rule families: Article 8. Tested by: book-1/16-answerability-and-authority.pins.nibli.

### Article 16. The republic's institutions

1. The republic is federal and parliamentary, with common, regional and local tiers. No tier may lower standing, the floor, equality, due process, the core liberties or the commons.
2. The People's Assembly is elected by equal, proportional ballots. The Regions Council, with equal weight for each region, may return an ordinary law once with reasons, which the Assembly may pass again, and must consent to changes in regional competence or boundaries. The Executive Council governs collectively on the Assembly's confidence and falls only when the Assembly elects its successor. A non-executive Civic President performs formal acts. Ordinary courts and a Constitutional Court decide disputes, and electoral, audit, ombudsperson and appointments bodies are separate.
3. Appointments come from divided sources for staggered, nonrenewable terms, with removal only for stated cause; majority control of appointments by one government, chamber, coalition, profession or appointing source is unlawful. When an election cannot be held on time, the electoral body owes it at the first lawful opportunity, and the outgoing chamber may sit only under caretaker limits until its successor meets.

Rule families: STATE-FORM-RULES, Article 2b. Tested by: book-1/17-how-public-power-is-built.pins.nibli; tests/pins/state-form; book-1/source/state-form.pins.nibli.

### Article 17. Keeping public decisions answerable

1. Money given to influence an office or a candidacy is recorded, and a reviewed finding drawn from the record may withhold the affected act. Conflicts of interest, gifts and moves between office and private interest are incompatibilities borne by the office, never by the private party.
2. Holders of office must disclose, and a body that fails to read the disclosure passes its duty to an alternate. A district plan drawn to entrench a party or incumbent, or to dilute a protected group, is unlawful. Coordinated manipulation of information may be found against the actors who coordinate it, never against what people believe.
3. Opposition rights belong to anyone who does not support the government. Any association that fields candidates must meet minimum standards of internal democracy. No power exists to ban a party.

Rule families: DEMOCRATIC-INTEGRITY-RULES. Tested by: tests/pins/integrity; book-1/17-how-public-power-is-built.pins.nibli.

### Article 18. The vote

1. Every adult who ordinarily resides in the republic has an equal vote and may stand for office in their one political home at each tier. Citizenship, immigration status, property, documents, wealth, contribution and length of residence add nothing and remove nothing.
2. Legal adulthood arrives automatically at one common age, and a missing or disputed record never delays it. Conviction and custody take neither the vote nor candidacy, and confinement, placement, eviction or forced displacement cannot move a person's political home.
3. Each person may make one effective submission in any decision. A former resident keeps the right to return and petition, without a vote where they no longer live.

Rule families: Article 2, STATE-FORM-RULES. Tested by: book-1/18-the-vote-conviction-does-not-take.pins.nibli; tests/pins/state-form.

### Article 19. Records and automated power

1. A public body may keep a record about a person only for a named lawful purpose, from named lawful sources, with necessity, minimisation, security, accuracy, correction, a set time for deletion and the person's access and challenge. No record may be transferred, sold or linked beyond its purpose, and asking for food, care, schooling or a court never enrols a person for enforcement.
2. Every use of a record must match one reviewed holding in subject, purpose, version and period. Bulk and suspicionless collection is forbidden, and so is buying what could not lawfully be collected. Covert measures need prior individual judicial authorisation, the least intrusive means, a defined scope and duration, and later notice.
3. Automated support must be explained and open to challenge before it takes effect, and a human reviewer independent of the holder decides; no consequential decision is left to a machine alone, and no risk, threat or loyalty score enters the record that decides about a person. Official statistics serve their stated purpose and never become a verdict about anyone.

Rule families: RECORD-POWER-RULES, OFFICIAL-STATISTICS-RULES. Tested by: book-1/19-what-may-be-kept-about-you.pins.nibli; tests/pins/record-power; tests/pins/statistics.

### Article 20. Emergencies

1. A declared emergency permits exactly four things: faster procedure, the redirection of resources, requisition with return or compensation, and restrictions aimed at the named hazard. Each measure needs its own authority, grounds and end, and nothing a declaration grants outlasts it.
2. No emergency suspends a right, allows government by decree, prevents the Assembly from sitting, bypasses a court, postpones an election, extends a mandate, alters who may vote or lowers the floor. A declaration found to have done any of these falls, and the measures taken under it fall with it.
3. A predeclared alternate may authorise and a substitute reviewer may review where the ordinary body is blocked, under the same limits, and an alternate's authorisation that is not ratified ends.

Rule families: PUBLIC-SAFETY-RULES, Article 2b. Tested by: book-1/20-a-crisis-does-not-suspend-the-republic.pins.nibli; tests/pins/public-safety.

### Article 21. Force, defence and external power

1. Policing, prosecution, adjudication, custody, defence and security intelligence are separate functions under civilian command. Force must be strictly necessary and the least harmful available, and lethal force is lawful only where it is unavoidable to protect life. Every death or serious injury is investigated by a body other than the one that used the force.
2. Torture and cruel treatment, enforced disappearance and secret detention, arbitrary killing, collective punishment, human shields, the denial of the floor as a weapon, experimentation without consent and aggressive war are forbidden absolutely, with no immunity or amnesty. Refusal to take part in armed service is protected without conditions.
3. A defence force, if kept, acts only outside the republic, under limits the Assembly sets. Force abroad needs the Assembly's prior authorisation, and immediate self-defence ends unless ratified. No treaty, trade agreement, affiliate or supply chain may achieve what this constitution forbids at home.

Rule families: PUBLIC-SAFETY-RULES. Tested by: book-1/20-a-crisis-does-not-suspend-the-republic.pins.nibli; book-1/27-the-one-thing-taken.pins.nibli; tests/pins/public-safety.

### Article 22. Being heard

1. Every person may reach a court, whatever their wealth, documents or status, with assistance and an interpreter as needed. A request for review needs no permission from the office it concerns.
2. A body that receives a request must hear it, and interim protection comes with the hearing. If it stays silent, the duty passes to a separate alternate. Relief is a separate, properly made order: a hearing is not relief, and relief is not presumed.
3. Survivors are supported whether or not anyone is prosecuted, restorative processes are voluntary and may be left at any time, and remedies need no power to imprison.

Rule families: NON-CARCERAL-JUSTICE-RULES. Tested by: book-1/21-a-way-to-be-heard.pins.nibli; tests/pins/justice.

### Article 23. Changing the rules

1. This constitution changes only by an exact text passed by two-thirds of the full People's Assembly and approved by more votes for than against in a national referendum, with no turnout threshold. A change to regional competence or boundaries also needs the Regions Council and each region directly affected. Electors may force a constitutional proposal onto the Assembly's agenda and a recorded vote.
2. Beyond amendment lie universal standing, equal protection, the floor, due process, the core liberties, the protected commons, the direct protection of animals and the bans on severe avoidable suffering and dispensable killing, the absolute prohibitions on force, the bans on return to persecution and on collective expulsion, prompt independent review of detention, the right to an effective remedy, and the continued existence of the People's Assembly and the Constitutional Court.
3. A candidate is certified only after independent review of its exact effects. A reading that it breaches the core must name the provision, the change and the reasons, and an independent final review may answer it.

Rule families: AMENDMENT-ENACTMENT-RULES, Article 9. Tested by: book-1/22-changing-the-rules.pins.nibli; tests/pins/amendment-enactment; tests/pins/amendments.

## What the design does to a person, and how it catches itself

### Article 24. Protection for disclosure

1. A person who exposes a publicly answerable body or officeholder is protected from confinement in any prosecution that cites them, from the moment of the disclosure, unless a deceit finding in force concerns that disclosure. The protection reaches confinement under a conviction; it neither prevents the conviction from being recorded nor acquits.
2. A disclosure that both of a case's time witnesses date after its charge does not hold back confinement in that case. Confinement may otherwise proceed only where two reviewers from outside the case, whose eligibility two further offices have shown, find the prosecution unrelated to the disclosure. Naming a reviewer in a new disclosure does not disqualify them; an authorised finding of actual conflict does.

Rule families: Article 7. Tested by: book-1/23-the-shield.pins.nibli; tests/pins/shield-independence.

### Article 25. Findings about a person

1. A credibility finding records deceit, a fabricated record, a concealed conflict or withheld evidence in one identified matter. It needs two signers holding their authority by different routes, each shown independent for that case, bound to one incident and ground. A family tie between the signers bars the pair, and nobody may sign a finding against their own child.
2. Its only effect is that the subject's signature does not count toward a new credibility finding about someone else. It takes no standing, floor, vote, wage, work or office. It comes with reasons, a challenge, review owed without a request, and a properly made appellate decision that can end it; a general forgiveness or an unrelated judgment cannot.

Rule families: Article 4, Article 5. Tested by: book-1/24-findings-about-people.pins.nibli; tests/pins/credibility; tests/pins/independence.

### Article 26. A prisoner is a person

1. A person confined remains a person, with standing, the whole floor, the vote and every right a sentence does not take. While held, the person is owed humane care, shelter and a recorded voice, independent review of the holding, and continuity of care at release.
2. Confinement never supplies the evidence that anything was delivered: a person held is owed the floor, and whether it arrived is shown as it is for anyone.

Rule families: Article 2, Article 6. Tested by: book-1/25-a-prisoner-is-a-person.pins.nibli; tests/pins/custody.

### Article 27. Where people are held

1. A secure place may be considered only where the case has proved death, life-threatening injury, serious enduring harm or deliberately inflicted severe suffering. Severity permits and never selects: a severe case may still be served at home or in ordinary supported residence.
2. The place must be available, lawful, necessary and independently reviewed, and a secure place needs positive evidence that milder places are insufficient. The number of victims, the label of an offence, a risk score, family status, wealth or poverty cannot stand in for these findings. The lack of a home never selects a harsher place.

Rule families: Article 6, CUSTODY-EXECUTION-RULES. Tested by: book-1/26-where-people-are-put.pins.nibli; tests/pins/placement; tests/pins/custody.

### Article 28. The one thing taken

1. A sentence takes movement and nothing else. Confinement needs a properly made judgment of the offence under the criminal standard of proof, with defences, counsel, a hearing, reasons and review, bound to the person, the incident and the injured person, and a current, reviewed authority for that case.
2. Custody authority lapses unless it is renewed on review before its end, and nothing extends it by default; the body that must review it owes that review before the authority expires. A filing that challenges custody suspends it while independent review is pending, and a copy the person kept proves the filing.
3. No earned time, character assessment or score changes a sentence. Arrest, search and detention each need an individual recorded ground; a search needs prior independent authorisation, and detention prompt judicial review that the person need not request.

Rule families: Article 6, CUSTODY-ADJUDICATION-RULES, T3-COURT-GATE, T3-RULES, T3-LEASE-RULE, PUBLIC-SAFETY-RULES, Article 2. Tested by: book-1/27-the-one-thing-taken.pins.nibli; tests/pins/custody; tests/pins/temporal.

### Article 29. When the system notices it broke

1. A breach of the conditions of custody, or of any duty, is marked only by a positive finding from an authorised witness and an independent reviewer, neither of them the holder or the person held.
2. A finding obliges a named office to act, with individual remedy, correction of the common cause, re-examination of related cases and monitoring for recurrence. An office that stays silent passes its duty to a separate alternate. A marker of a breach calls for action; it is never itself the action.

Rule families: Article 8b, OBLIGATIONS-RULES. Tested by: book-1/28-when-the-system-notices-it-broke.pins.nibli; tests/pins/obligations.

## General provisions

### Article 30. Versions of the record and time

1. A new version of the record carries forward only what an independent witness records carrying, and a protected entry that goes missing between versions is reported as a disappearance.
2. Public power has effect only through the version in force, and current authority is always a positive record for the exact case, reviewed and tied to its source and end. This constitution counts no days and advances no clock; whether time has passed is shown by the records witnesses keep.

Rule families: T1-RULES, T2-RULES, T3-RULES, Article 8c. Tested by: tests/pins/temporal; tests/pins/records.

### Article 31. Interpretation

1. A conclusion that restricts, takes, confines or finds against a person needs complete positive evidence, and the absence of an entry never creates or extends a power. Every authority reads only the records its own rules name.
2. Where a standard is open, such as adequate, usable, reasonably available, least restrictive or meaningful, the reading more protective of the floor and of liberty prevails.

Rule families: Article 0, T3-RULES, CUSTODY-ADJUDICATION-RULES. Tested by: book-1/02-what-the-record-may-say.pins.nibli; book-1/27-the-one-thing-taken.pins.nibli; tests/pins/custody.