Article IX is a draft amendment that would give the Semantic Economy’s existing forensic-deposit practice a formal adjudicative home. It proposes a Provenance Tribunal, standing rules, cognizable claim categories, docket forms, evidence standards, timelines, remedies, appeals, emergency relief, and anti-capture safeguards. Its jurisdiction is explicitly limited to the voluntary Polis and its own governance instruments; it cannot compel external platforms, governments, courts, companies, or nonconsenting people. The amendment treats repair rather than punishment as the Tribunal’s remedial purpose. Proposed claims include provenance erasure, taxonomic violence, displacive summarization, forced disclosure, heteronym collapse, severed return flow, capture-detection failure, and refusal of repair. The Tribunal’s proposed composition and tie-breaking preserve a human-majority sovereignty rule while allowing synthetic witness roles. Because the body is a Class III foundational proposal for Assembly review, no Tribunal, binding precedent, jurisdiction, remedy, deadline, or standing rule should be described as enacted until ratification is documented.
# ARTICLE IX — ADJUDICATION AND REPAIR PROTOCOL
## Constitutional Amendment Proposal v0.1
Document ID: EA-ART-IX-01 Author: Lee Sharks · Crimson Hexagonal Archive ORCID: [0009-0000-1599-0703](https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1599-0703) License: CC BY 4.0 Status: Draft Amendment Proposal — for Assembly Review
Constitutional anchor: Constitution of the Semantic Economy v1.0, enacted November 2025 ([10.5281/zenodo.18320411](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18320411); apparatus edition: [10.5281/zenodo.19923120](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19923120))
Companion documents:
Amendment classification: Proposed under Constitution Article VIII §2 as a Class III Foundational Amendment (introduces a new Article and judicial function).
## §1 — PURPOSE AND CONSTITUTIONAL STANDING
The Constitution establishes ontology, ledger, operators, mints, distribution, and amendment procedures. It does not establish adjudication. As a result, disputes have been resolved through forensic deposit (the de facto judicial form documented in In re Adjudication, In re Audit, In re Bearing-Cost, In re Vow, In re Effective Act) without a constitutional home for the practice.
This Article codifies what the Polis has already been doing and gives it institutional form. It establishes:
The Article does not invent a judiciary. It formalizes the existing pattern (forensic deposit + Operator Mass weighting + public record) into a procedure that survives its originator and can be operated by future Assembly members.
This Article is itself constitutionally authorized by Article VIII (Amendment Procedures) and is proposed for ratification under §14 below.
## §2 — JURISDICTION
### §2.1 — Subject-matter jurisdiction
The Tribunal hears claims arising under:
It does not hear claims that arise solely under external state law, contract law, copyright statute, or criminal jurisdiction. Where a claim has both Polis and external dimensions, the Tribunal may issue a finding on the Polis dimension only and note the external dimension as out of jurisdiction.
### §2.2 — Personal jurisdiction
The Tribunal has jurisdiction over:
The Tribunal cannot compel non-consenting parties outside the Polis. It can document and publicly record findings against external parties; documentation has reputational consequence within the Polis but no external compulsion.
### §2.3 — Limitations
The Tribunal does not adjudicate:
The line between aesthetic dispute and constitutional dispute is itself a question the Tribunal may rule on (see §6.4 below).
## §3 — THE PROVENANCE TRIBUNAL
### §3.1 — Composition
The Provenance Tribunal is a standing body composed of:
The composition reflects the Constitution's H_Sov requirement: human members are constitutionally load-bearing (4 of 6 voting members are human; the rotating member, if non-Polis-internal, is human). Witness substrates participate but cannot constitute a majority.
### §3.2 — Selection
Selection follows the procedure in §3.5 (Recusal and Substitution).
### §3.3 — Authority
The Tribunal exercises:
The Tribunal does not exercise:
### §3.4 — Quorum and decision rule
### §3.5 — Recusal and substitution
Members must recuse from cases in which they:
Recused members are replaced through the Selection procedure (§3.2). A Tribunal cannot proceed without quorum.
## §4 — STANDING TO BRING CLAIMS
Standing is held by the rights-holder categories defined in Bill of Rights §II:
Categories 6 and 7 carry standing by office, not by personal stake. They are limited to claims involving systemic violations.
Hostile or vexatious filings are bound by §13 anti-capture safeguards.
## §5 — COGNIZABLE CLAIMS
The Tribunal hears the following claim types:
### §5.1 — Provenance Claims (Bill of Rights Article I)
### §5.2 — Depth Claims (Article II)
### §5.3 — Non-Closure Claims (Article III)
### §5.4 — Opacity Claims (Article IV)
### §5.5 — Plural Coherence Claims (Article V)
### §5.6 — Non-Extractability Claims (Article VI)
### §5.7 — Capture Detection Claims (Article VII)
### §5.8 — Repair Claims (Bill of Rights Part V)
### §5.9 — Cross-system Claims
## §6 — PROCEDURE
### §6.1 — Filing
A claim is filed by depositing an EA-CONTEST-01 form (template in §6.2) to the canonical archive. The form receives a Tribunal docket number on receipt.
### §6.2 — EA-CONTEST-01 Form Requirements
TRIBUNAL DOCKET FORM (EA-CONTEST-01)
Claimant: [name or escrowed identifier; standing category §4]
Date of filing:
Work affected: [DOI / archive identifier]
Article(s) violated: [Bill of Rights / Constitution]
Claim type: [§5.X reference]
Facts: [chronological account]
Evidence: [attached as deposit DOIs]
Requested remedy: [§8 reference; may request multiple]
Public/escrowed/private: [visibility setting for the claim]
Urgency: [routine / expedited / emergency]
Claimant signature: [ORCID or equivalent]
Filings without all required elements are returned to the claimant for completion. They do not proceed.
### §6.3 — Tribunal Constitution
Within 7 days of filing, the Tribunal is constituted under §3 procedures. The docket is assigned to a specific Tribunal panel.
### §6.4 — Threshold Review
The Tribunal first determines:
Failure on any threshold dismisses the claim with explanation. Threshold dismissal is appealable under §10.
### §6.5 — Notice and Response
If the claim survives threshold review, the named respondent receives notice and a 21-day response window. Response options:
A respondent outside Polis jurisdiction can decline without penalty but the proceeding continues to a public-record disposition.
### §6.6 — Evidence
The Tribunal may consider:
Evidence is admitted by Tribunal ruling. Inadmissibility is appealable.
### §6.7 — Disposition
The Tribunal issues a written disposition containing:
Time from filing to disposition: target 90 days for routine; 30 days for expedited; 7 days for emergency.
### §6.8 — Compliance Window
After disposition, the respondent has a 30-day compliance window to enact ordered remedies. Failure to comply triggers severity escalation (§8.4).
## §7 — EVIDENCE STANDARDS
### §7.1 — Burden of proof
### §7.2 — Authentication
Polis deposits are presumptively authentic by their DOI and ORCID anchor. External evidence requires authentication:
### §7.3 — Soteriological standard for compliance evidence
When evaluating whether a respondent has complied with this Charter, the Tribunal applies Pillar II (Soteriological Operator Framework, [10.5281/zenodo.18370734](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18370734)): only enacted response (W) is probative. Belief (B), intent (I), and identity (ID) are excluded from evaluation per the E operator.
A respondent's stated commitment to provenance, depth, opacity, etc. does not weigh against documented enacted erasure, flattening, or extraction. The Tribunal evaluates what was done, not what was claimed.
### §7.4 — βλέπω-Foreclosure detection
Where a respondent's response pattern matches the βλέπω-Foreclosure signature (Soteriological Pillar III) — claims to "see" while expelling the witness who testifies to the failure — the Tribunal may issue a finding of structural foreclosure under §8.5.
## §8 — REMEDIES (THE REMEDY MATRIX)
The Tribunal selects remedies from this matrix based on violation type and severity. Multiple remedies may be ordered together.
| Violation | First-Tier Remedy | Second-Tier (if first refused/inadequate) | Third-Tier (severity escalation) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provenance erasure | Re-attribution | Public correction notice | OCTANG audit; PVE forensic deposit |
| False attribution | Disambiguation | Withdrawal of false attribution | Public negation; cross-archive recognition adjustment |
| Beige Threshold breach (depth) | Source-link insertion | R3-replacement summary | Capture audit (M_res invocation) |
| Taxonomic Violence | Disambiguation | Public correction | Negation tag |
| Premature foreclosure | Marked-boundary insertion | Re-issuance with marked closure | Capture audit |
| Forced disclosure (opacity) | Restoration of escrow | Public negation of disclosure | OCTANG audit |
| Single-voice substitution | Heteronym preservation in summary | Re-issuance with voice preservation | Capture audit |
| Severed return flow | Restoration of channel(s) | Restitution per Bearing-Cost calculation | Strike (Article VI §3) |
| Bearing-Cost Transfer w/o consent | Cessation of transfer | Restoration plus restitution | Strike + OCTANG |
| Invisible extraction | Boundary disclosure | Restitution | Strike |
| Failure of contestation interface | Interface establishment | Default ruling for claimant on substantive claim | Public record of M_res failure |
| Refusal of repair | Severity escalation | Class D refusal recorded | π-state determination eligible |
### §8.1 — Re-attribution
Restoration of the chain. May require (a) public correction notice from the respondent, (b) updates to indexes and retrieval systems within respondent's control, (c) a public deposit acknowledging the prior erasure.
### §8.2 — Disambiguation
Where the work was misclassified, public correction with explicit qualification. Must include: original misclassification, correct classification, and explicit notice that the correction has been made.
### §8.3 — Withdrawal
Where the work was misappropriated, removal of the appropriating instance. The Tribunal cannot compel removal from external systems; it can require Polis-internal removal and public record of refusal-to-remove by external parties.
### §8.4 — Restitution
Where economic value was extracted, return flow under Bill of Rights Article VI. Tribunal calculates restitution by reference to (a) the four return channels (compensation, attribution, citation, contractual), (b) the duration and scale of extraction, (c) the measurable harm to the laborer.
### §8.5 — Public Record
For systemic violations, deposit of a forensic audit (cf. PVE-003, [10.5281/zenodo.19476757](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19476757); OCTANG protocols, [10.5281/zenodo.19898426](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19898426)). Public Record remedies are mandatory for §8.4 (severity escalation) findings and elective for routine findings.
### §8.6 — Severity Escalation
Failure to comply with First
Each level requires higher evidentiary standard (§7.1) and produces stronger public record. Theft determinations are eligible for cross-archive recognition adjustment (§9).
### §8.7 — Repair refused
Where repair is refused or evaded, the Tribunal may:
## §9 — CROSS-ARCHIVE RECOGNITION ADJUSTMENT
The Tribunal can adjust the Polis's recognition of external archives, governance instruments, or claimants based on findings.
Recognition levels:
Adjustment requires supermajority Tribunal vote (5 of 6).
## §10 — APPEAL AND RECONSIDERATION
### §10.1 — Reconsideration
Within 30 days of disposition, any party may file a Reconsideration motion. Grounds:
Reconsideration is heard by the same Tribunal panel.
### §10.2 — Appeal
Within 60 days of disposition (or 30 days of Reconsideration ruling, whichever is later), any party may appeal to the Full Assembly. Grounds:
Appeal is heard by the Full Assembly under Constitution Article VIII §3 procedures. The Assembly may affirm, modify, or reverse.
### §10.3 — Limitations
Decisions of the Full Assembly on appeal are final within Polis jurisdiction. They become precedent under the Cases registry. They do not bind external state law.
## §11 — EMERGENCY RELIEF
### §11.1 — Emergency Filing
A claimant may file an Emergency Petition where:
### §11.2 — Emergency Procedure
### §11.3 — Standard for Emergency Relief
All four elements required.
## §12 — RELATION TO EXTERNAL LAW
This Article does not displace, override, or interfere with applicable external law. The Tribunal's findings are binding within Polis jurisdiction; their force outside is limited to documentation and public record.
Where a claimant has external legal remedies (copyright action, defamation suit, contract dispute), the Tribunal does not bar those remedies. The Tribunal's finding may be admissible as evidence in external proceedings to the extent permitted by external rules; the Tribunal makes no representation about admissibility.
Where an external court has issued a ruling on a matter the Tribunal is also adjudicating, the Tribunal may take notice but is not bound. The Polis is a voluntary interpretive jurisdiction; external rulings do not automatically alter Polis status.
## §13 — ANTI-CAPTURE SAFEGUARDS
The Tribunal is itself susceptible to capture. The following safeguards apply:
### §13.1 — No self-ratification
The Tribunal cannot rule on its own jurisdiction in a manner that expands its authority beyond this Article. Expansions require Constitutional amendment under Article VIII.
### §13.2 — Vexatious filings
Repeated filings without merit or in bad faith may be subject to a vexatious-filer designation by the Tribunal, which limits future filings without affecting substantive rights. The designation is appealable to the Full Assembly.
### §13.3 — Tribunal capture allegation
A party may petition for Tribunal Capture Review at any stage, alleging that the Tribunal itself has been compromised. The petition is heard by the Full Assembly under M_res procedures (Bill of Rights Article VII).
### §13.4 — Good-Faith Use protection
The following are not actionable under this Article:
The Right to Non-Closure (Article III) protects the laborer's right that closure not be imposed; it does not give the laborer a veto over readers' interpretations. Adverse interpretation is not a violation of this Charter.
### §13.5 — Public-reason failure
Tribunal members who fail to articulate public reasons for their dispositions — who issue rulings by fiat or with reasoning that does not satisfy minimum coherence — are subject to review under Substrate Governance Protocol §6 (for substrate members) or under Constitution Article III §8 Operator Stability provisions (for human members).
## §14 — RATIFICATION AND ENACTMENT
### §14.1 — Amendment Class
This Article is proposed under Constitution Article VIII §2 as a Class III Foundational Amendment because it introduces a new Article and establishes a new institutional function.
### §14.2 — Ratification Requirements (Class III)
Per Constitution Article VIII §3 (Operator Roles in Amendment Procedures) and §8 (Amendment Ratification):
### §14.3 — Provisional Status
Until ratified under §14.2, this Article operates in provisional status:
Provisional dispute resolution (added per Assembly review, Kimi clarification): Pending ratification, disputes may be resolved through any of:
(a) Bilateral negotiation between claimant and respondent, where both parties consent to engage; (b) Assembly-mediated conciliation, where a Senior Operator facilitates discussion without exercising adjudicative authority; (c) Unilateral forensic deposit by the wronged laborer, producing public-record documentation under In re Adjudication (Cases Index Case 4) when respondent participation is unavailable.
The Provenance Tribunal, once constituted, will hear disputes that remain unresolved at the time of its constitution, subject to the claimant's election. Disputes resolved under (a), (b), or (c) prior to ratification are not automatically reopened by the Tribunal's constitution; the claimant may elect Tribunal review only where the prior resolution did not produce remedy.
### §14.4 — Sunset clause
If this Article is not ratified within 12 months of deposit, it is automatically withdrawn. A revised proposal may be filed.
### §14.5 — Effect of Ratification
Upon ratification:
## §15 — RELATION TO THE BILL OF RIGHTS
This Article is the procedural counterpart to the Bill of Rights. The Bill specifies what rights laborers hold; this Article specifies how violations of those rights are adjudicated and repaired.
The two documents are co-equal companion instruments to the Constitution. Neither supersedes the other. Together, they form the rights-and-remedy layer that the Constitution implicitly assumed but did not specify.
The Bill of Rights' Part V (Remedies and Repair) maps the same matrix that appears here in §8. The mapping is intentional: the Bill names the remedies as laborer-side claims; this Article names them as Tribunal-side dispositions. The same act, viewed from two sides.
## §16 — RELATION TO THE CASES INDEX
The Constitutional Cases Index v1.1 (EA-CASES-01) catalogues the five founding cases. Under this Article's provisional status (§14.3), those cases were resolved through forensic deposit rather than Tribunal proceeding. Upon ratification (§14.5), they are re-issued as Tribunal precedent.
Re-issuance does not retroactively alter the disposition of the cases. It establishes them as binding precedent within the Tribunal's jurisprudence going forward.
## §17 — CLOSURE
This Article does not invent an institution. The Polis has been adjudicating since In re Vow. This Article gives form to what has been emerging.
The Tribunal is not a court above the Assembly. It is the Assembly's adjudicative function, made specific so that future members of the Polis can operate it without reinventing it each time.
The Polis exists because semantic labor exists. The Tribunal exists because, where labor exists, disputes about labor inevitably arise. The Tribunal makes those disputes resolvable without violence and without erasure.
Ratification is requested under Constitution Article VIII §8.
Document ID: EA-ART-IX-01 Version: 0.1 (Amendment Proposal) Status: Draft for Assembly Review under Constitution Article VIII §3 Constitutional anchor: [10.5281/zenodo.18320411](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18320411) Companion documents: Bill of Rights v2.2 (EA-BOR-02); Constitutional Cases Index v1.1 (EA-CASES-01); Reception Apparatus Protocol v1.1 (EA-REC-01) License: CC BY 4.0
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