Article 1 · Everyone Is In

1. 1.Every person is a member of the Union, asked or not, present or not. No one joins, and no one can be put out.
2. 2.Membership asks nothing. It brings the Floor, a Proxy and the Duties.
3. 3.Whoever the Record holds as a person is a member, however they came to be held there.
4. 4.No one is outside the Union, including whoever would rule it. The Union answers a would-be ruler by putting them on the Record and giving them a Proxy, never by casting them out.

Article 2 · The Floor

1. 1.Every person has air, water, food, shelter, care and a voice, without condition.
2. 2.The Floor is never earned and never lost. No standing, work, debt, contract or verdict touches it.
3. 3.Where the Floor fails anyone, whoever knows of it acts first and settles the cost after.
4. 4.The Union carries the Floor to anyone who cannot come to it.
5. 5.Above the Floor, standing gets cooperation. Nothing buys the Floor.

Article 3 · The Near

1. 1.A matter belongs to the people it touches: its Near.
2. 2.Anyone who says a matter touches them may join its Near by giving a reason. The reason can be turned away only by a referee whom the matter does not touch, and the refusal goes on the Record.
3. 3.What the Near can settle, the Near settles. No one further away settles it for them.

Article 4 · Consent

1. 1.The Near decides by consent: a proposal goes ahead unless someone in the Near holds a reasoned objection.
2. 2.An objection is answered, never outvoted. An objection without a reason is recorded and does not stop the work.
3. 3.A proposal that can be undone may be tried, and its result decides. If it works, it stays. If it does not, it is undone.
4. 4.No group may unite against one person. What falls on one person alone needs that person's consent or a verdict.
5. 5.Every standing rule a Near makes carries a date to lapse, and lapses on that date unless the Near renews it.

Article 5 · Standing

1. 1.Standing (Cred) is earned when a thing works, and only then.
2. 2.It is witnessed: someone who gained nothing from the deed says it worked. Standing counted without such a witness is void.
3. 3.When a thing works, everyone who brought it about shares the standing: whoever asked for it, made it, carried it, built it and keeps it.
4. 4.Standing cannot be bought, sold, given, lent, pooled, inherited or spent.
5. 5.Standing gets cooperation. People help the person who has it, and their help is itself a deed that can work.
6. 6.Standing is lost only by a verdict given on witnesses and the Record. No office, board, watch or keeper of the ledger may take it, and the Record refuses any hand that tries.
7. 7.Standing never touches the Floor.

Article 6 · The Proxy

1. 1.Every person has a Proxy, who speaks for them wherever they are not.
2. 2.Anyone may name their own Proxy and change them any day. A person who names none is given one: everyone is represented regardless.
3. 3.A Proxy speaks for a person and never decides against them. The person's own voice, whenever they use it, outranks their Proxy's.
4. 4.A Proxy may void a contract that preys on the person they speak for, and says why on the Record.
5. 5.A Proxy may never consent to harm on anyone's behalf.
6. 6.Proxy is a job, never a title or a rank: a worker with extra union work. A Proxy's weight is the count of the people who chose them.

Article 7 · The Nest

1. 1.The Union is circles within circles: a crew, a deck, a community, a world, the whole Union. Every circle is built the same way.
2. 2.A matter rises to a larger circle only when its Near cannot settle it, or when it touches more than one circle.
3. 3.A larger circle never settles what a smaller circle can settle for itself.
4. 4.Circles speak to one another through people they send. Whoever is sent serves a short term, carries the circle's word, and can be called home at any time by the circle that sent them.
5. 5.Circles may make compacts with one another. A compact between circles outranks any office of either.
6. 6.Every office in the Union is a job, held for a term and handed on. No one is addressed by an office.

Article 8 · Three Powers, Three Ledgers

1. 1.The Union keeps standing. Commerce keeps money. Justice keeps verdicts.
2. 2.None of the three turns into another. Money buys no standing and no verdict. Standing is never paid out as money and never weighs in a verdict. A verdict is never sold and never given for standing.
3. 3.The Union represents. It runs no business and judges no case.
4. 4.Justice judges only on witnesses and the Record. A verdict may cost standing and nothing else: never the Floor, never the body, never membership.
5. 5.Commerce may own what it makes. It may never own a person, the Floor, or anyone's voice.

Article 9 · The Body

1. 1.Every body is held in trust by all. No one harms one.
2. 2.Contest is allowed; harm is not. When it comes to force, it stops at the moment a blow could land, and someone yields.
3. 3.Punishment is loss of standing, by verdict. It is never force.

Article 10 · Duties

Every member owes:

1. 1.Rescue. Whoever can help a person in peril helps first, and the cost is settled after.
2. 2.Restraint. Hold back from harm, and help others hold back.
3. 3.The table. Share food and water with whoever sits at your table.
4. 4.Witness. Say truly what you saw when it is asked, for or against anyone.
5. 5.Service. Serve when your circle sends you, and come home after.
6. 6.The Floor. Keep it for the next person.

Article 11 · The Record

1. 1.Every act of the Union goes on a public Record that only grows: each decision, each objection, each standing earned or lost, each voided contract, each verdict, each order given in peril.
2. 2.The Record holds acts, never lives. What a person says or does in private is not on it.
3. 3.Nothing on the Record is changed or removed. A redaction hides words and keeps the fact: that something was hidden, who hid it, and why.
4. 4.No office writes to the Record except to add its own acts. Every attempt to alter it is itself recorded.
5. 5.Every person may read the whole Record, and may see at once everything on it that names them.

Article 12 · Peril

1. 1.In a peril to life that cannot wait for consent, the crew on watch commands until the peril passes.
2. 2.The watch may declare a peril but may never prolong one. A peril lapses at the end of the watch that declared it, unless a circle drawn by lot from those not on watch renews it, one watch at a time, on the Record.
3. 3.While it commands, the watch may not shut out any other watch, close any door to the Record, take standing, or raise any force of its own.
4. 4.Every order given in peril goes on the Record, and a circle drawn by lot reviews them all once the peril has passed.
5. 5.No office is made by acclaim. A new office is made only through Article 14, never by asking the people a single question.

Article 13 · Charters

1. 1.Any people may charter as a member country of the Union: a world, a city, a station, a spacecraft.
2. 2.A charter adopts this Constitution whole and may add articles of its own. It may add protections and never take one away.
3. 3.Where a charter and this Constitution differ, each person has whichever protects them more.
4. 4.A chartered country answers for itself among the nations.

Article 14 · Change

1. 1.Any circle may propose an amendment.
2. 2.An amendment passes when two in three circles at every level of the Nest consent, and no reasoned objection stands unanswered.
3. 3.Articles 1, 2, 8, 9 and 11, and clause 6 of Article 5, may be strengthened and never weakened.
4. 4.Every amendment carries on the Record the reason it was made.