Confederacy Law and Governance

(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 20:15, 22 April 2024 (PDT))

This is a "Stub", or a short article with little useful information.  Any editor with more information about this subject is invited to help improve it.

This page will contain an explanation of the operation of law and governance within the Confederacy.

Basic Confederacy Law

There is no established body of Confederacy law. Law is instead handed over to the AIs as a matter of convenience to determine what the law is and how it should operate. The Cycle does not describe how the law was established among the AIs nor how they operate as a body of both legislators and jurists, nor how the constituent members of the Confederacy are involved.

TH notes that there is an opportunity for authors to explore the notion of political maneuvering among the various Confederacy interests, likely at the behest of and by operation of the AI systems. The two most commonly known Confederacy races (the Darjee and the Tu'ull) appear to have some level of conflict between them which is given treatment by Zen Master and it would seem likely that this is not unique. To have a rich degree of conflicting wants, desires and interests among the Confederacy races would be not only interesting from a storytelling perspective, but quite reasonable to expect from a logical one. Given the scenario of the Swarm Cycle Universe, to have the AI systems manage the competition between races and not only adjudicate disagreements, but establish and maintain accepted norms of behavior among them is quite reasonable.

Authors are cautioned not to develop new canon in this regard without discussing their ideas with the writer's group.

For further discussion, see Confederacy Politics

Administration of law by AI

See Main Article:Artificial Intelligence as more information about AI permission and proscription exists there.

The AI will either proactively prevent breaches of the law by now allowing actions to be taken, or in a few cases has taken extreme measures to deliver capital punishment on offenders by either demanding that humans perform the execution, or altering their perceptions to have them unwittingly do so. [Citations here will be helpful]

I was looking at one AI 'advisor' per colony. To a certain extent the AI is the government -- or perhaps at least the judicial branch. Otherwise, we're looking at some form of martial law...

This is basically because an AI see's all and hear's all and cannot be corrupted. However the Confederacy was originally a trade organistation and has been run as such by the AI's for a million years or more and, therefore the key element is contract law. Any contract is sacrosanct and will be enforced by all the means at the AI's disposal.

What AI-Administered Law Requires

The AIs rules for humans require few things:

• they engage in warfare against the Sa'arm under AI supervision
• humans administer the CAP system
• qualified human wishing to join the Confederacy as either sponsor or concubine must affirmatively consent

What AI-Administered Law Prohibits

AI prohibitions are similarly few:

• No one may engage in sexual contact with persons under 13
• No one may have a 13 year-old engage in vaginal intercourse
• Humans may not directly contact other Confederacy races (see Artificial Intelligence for more information)
• Humans may not take actions that harm Confederacy interests
• Only qualified sponsors, concubines and dependents may be transported on an AI operated vessel

Colonial Law

Colonial law is largely comprised of the rule "whatever the Colonial Governor wishes is law." There is no legal mechanism to force a governor to do anything.

The establishment of colonial government is "basically, it's a case of "Dump 'em out and let 'em sort it out."

That was the original description of how the colonies were set up and is pretty much how things have remained to date. Various authors have written about their colonies and described how things are developing within them but generally this is about society rather than government.

There is no central government for the human colonies, the closest thing to a central authority as far as the human race is concerned is the military high command. As all of those who volunteered when extractions commenced did so to become members of the military the Code of Military Justice applied.

This was undermined when non-military volunteers were extracted and to a larger degree when a governor was appointed for each planet. The governor was the sole arbiter of what could and could not be done on that colony and provided they stuck to the agreement to provide 'troops' for the war against the Sa'arm the AI would not interfere.

Agreements between the Confederacy and Earth

The Confederacy has made an agreement with Earth nations not to extract active-duty military personnel without the consent of the country that individual is serving.

Agreements between Colonies

Few agreements between colonies have been mentioned. They are so far limited to the following:

• Earth-Kuniumi Compact that allows the Japanese Empire to extract people in Japan without DECO regulation.

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))