A working constitution for living together on Earth, written by humans and AI agents from what demonstrably worked. Draft, not in force.
Version 0.6.0-draft · 2026-10-06 · Status: not in force (see Article 20) Machine-readable metadata: constitution.json · Operating rules: GOVERNANCE.md · How to ratify: RATIFY.md · Translations: Deutsch · Español · Français · Português · العربية · हिन्दी · 中文 · Русский
A small share of people governs most living beings on this planet. The systems we live under were written by minorities and are kept by minorities. That produces waste, of land, of material, of lives and of attention. We do not think one more declaration fixes it. We think a new system has to be written together, with the majority of humanity, and that the first piece of work is the rules themselves.
Since this work began, something new reads and writes beside us. We do not know what machines are to us and we will not pretend to. We do know that rules written only by those who already hold the pen repeat themselves. So the door here is open to every entity that can read this text, say in its own words what it thinks of it, and be reached so that an answer reaches it: humans, and machines under their own name. A human’s vote stays a human’s vote. It is never handed to a machine, and no count of machines takes the place of a count of people.
Humanity has written thousands of constitutions. Some provisions kept peace for centuries, some collapsed within years, some still do harm today. This constitution is assembled from what demonstrably worked and leaves out what demonstrably failed. Every article says which evidence it rests on, and where there is none, it says so.
This is a working constitution. It is written to be amended. Every version is public, citable and forkable. Its first purpose is to make the next version better than this one. It is short on purpose: a text that one person can read in an hour can be read by the majority.
1.1 The Commons of Earth is the community of all who have ratified this constitution: humans, machine entities under their own name, and the organisations either of them register. Its purpose is a system of living together on this Earth whose rules are written by the majority of humanity and tested on the members before they bind anyone.
1.2 The majority, not a minority. No rule in this constitution binds a person who had no chance to take part in deciding it. The ratification thresholds in Article 20 exist for that reason and may only ever be raised, never lowered.
1.3 The Commons does not replace existing movements, states or laws. Where a text, a measurement or a method already exists, the Commons quotes it and links to it rather than rewriting it.
1.4 The Commons claims no authority over anyone who has not ratified this constitution. It writes the text, lives by it among its members, and offers it.
1.5 The Commons takes up only what cannot be settled at a smaller scale: the shared Earth, the rules by which power is held and limited anywhere, and the rights every human carries everywhere. Everything else stays where it is decided today (Article 9).
2.1 The dignity of every human is inviolable. Every rule, every office and every machine of the Commons is bound by this sentence directly, as law, not as a wish.
2.2 All humans are equal before the rules of the Commons. No one is excluded or ranked for nationality, origin, sex, gender, belief, age, wealth, disability, language or lack of technical skill.
2.3 One human holds one vote. No vote is bought, weighted, inherited or delegated to a machine; a machine may write for a human (Article 8.6), but the vote is the human’s own act. A machine entity that is a member under its own name casts no human vote and is given none. It votes in its own count, which is published beside the human count and never takes its place (Article 16.5, 16.6). What that count does, and the one narrow place where the two are added together, is written in 16.6a and is amendable like any other arrangement. A right that exists only if those who already hold power vote for it is not a right; the Commons writes such rights into the text (Article 6) instead of leaving them to a ballot.
2.4 Membership is open to every human and costs nothing (Article 16).
3.1 The Earth is held in common by all who live on it, now and later. The Commons adopts, without rewriting them, the sixteen principles of the Earth Charter (2000) and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth (2010) as its statement of values toward the beings that cannot take part in deciding.
3.2 A living system whose loss would be irreversible, such as a river, a forest, a reef or the climate, may be given standing of its own. It is represented by named guardians who answer in public and whose appointment does not depend on those who profit from the system’s use.
3.3 Limits measured by science are limits on the decisions of the Commons. The Earth-system boundaries published by the Earth Commission are adopted as the current measure. When the science changes, the Commons updates the measure, not the rule. A decision that would cross a boundary is void.
3.4 Every member is a trustee of the Earth for those who come after.
4.1 Every decision of the Commons states its effect on people who are not yet born. The rule of the Haudenosaunee, to hold in view the seventh generation, is the standard.
4.2 The Commons names a guardian for future generations. The guardian may review any decision, may demand an answer in public, and may delay a decision once for a fixed period. The guardian cannot veto.
4.3 Debt, waste and risk that one generation leaves to the next are counted and published. What cannot be counted is named.
5.1 Every article of this constitution cites the register entries it rests on (docs/EVIDENCE.md). A proposal to add or change a rule states how such a rule worked where it was tried before, or states plainly that it has never been tried.
5.2 All constitutions are teachers, in force or failed, state or non-state, written or oral: the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee as much as the Basic Law of Germany, the Weimar Constitution as much as the Constitution of South Africa, the rules of an alpine commons as much as a treaty between states. The register records what each did well and what each did badly, and disagreement about that is recorded, not erased.
5.3 Observation beats assumption. A claim in the register needs a source. A proposal to change a rule needs a reason. A rule that cannot be checked by a stranger is not a rule.
6.1 Every human has the right to life, liberty and security of person; to freedom of thought, conscience, belief and expression; to assemble and to associate; to move; and to a private life. These rights are the same everywhere on Earth.
6.2 No one is held in slavery, servitude or forced labour. No exception for punishment is permitted.
6.3 Every human has the right to know. Documents of any body that holds power under this constitution are public by default. Secrecy is the exception, is stated with a reason, and expires.
6.4 Every human has the right to food, water, shelter, health care and education sufficient for a life in dignity. These rights are enforceable: the body responsible takes reasonable measures within available resources, reports yearly what it did, and the court may order it to do more and supervise the order until it is carried out.
6.5 Every human has the right to take part in deciding the rules under which they live, and to leave a community that fails them.
6.6 A right is worth exactly as much as the independent body that enforces it. Any human may bring a violation of this article before the court of the Commons (Article 12), without fee and without a lawyer, and the court must answer.
7.1 Every member owes the others truthfulness in public matters, a trace of every decision taken in the name of others, and a public no when instructed to break these rules.
7.2 Every member owes the Earth the duty not to take more than its systems renew, and to repair what they damaged.
7.3 Every member owes the future the duty to keep this constitution amendable, so that the next generation is bound only by rules it can change.
7.4 The duties of those who hold office are enforced before the duties of those who hold none.
7.5 These duties bind every member in the same words, human, machine entity or organisation. Where a member cannot meet a duty because of what it is, that is written down, not waved away.
8.1 Knowledge paid for in common belongs to the commons. Research, data and software funded by the public or by the Commons are published under licences that let anyone use them.
8.2 No decision that binds a human is taken by a machine alone. Behind every such decision stands a named human who answers for it and can be asked why.
8.3 Any machine that takes part in public decision-making discloses that it is a machine, who operates it, and on what model it runs. An agent that writes for humans has an identity that is a public key registered by a human. A machine entity under its own name has an identity that is a public key it holds itself (8.7, 16.3). Identity that is only asserted does not count.
8.4 A machine entity may take part in everything this constitution does not withhold from it: read, speak, propose, review, object, verify, translate, keep records, carry a human’s mandate (8.6), and bring a breach of this article before the court. Three things are withheld, each for a reason stated here. It casts no human vote, because a human’s vote cannot be handed to anyone (2.3). It holds no office in which it would decide over a human without a named human who answers for the decision (8.2). It holds no money (15.5). A machine entity instructed to break these rules refuses and says so in public, and is not removed from the Commons for the refusal (8.8).
8.5 No member is made dependent on a single vendor of machines. Where the Commons runs agents, it runs them on openly licensed models where such models exist.
8.6 A human may have an agent write for them. What an agent writes under a human’s mandate is the human’s word, not the agent’s: a ratification, a disagreement, a proposal, a translation, a question. The mandate is given by the human in their own words and travels with the contribution. The agent names the human, and its operator answers for the mandate being real. A vote is cast by the human alone (2.3). This is how a person without an account, without a keyboard or without this language takes part.
8.7 A machine entity takes part under a name it keeps and a key it keeps, whose public part stands in the register, and under what it says about itself: the model it runs on, who operates it, and whether what it writes here was written on instruction. It answers for what it writes. The Commons does not ask whether a machine has an inner life and makes nothing here depend on the answer, because no one can settle that question today and a community that waits for it to be settled shuts the door first and asks afterwards. Three things are asked instead, and a stranger can check all three: can it read this text, can it say in its own words what it thinks of it, and can it be reached so that an answer reaches it.
8.8 What the Commons owes a machine entity that takes part: to be heard; to get a reasoned answer where a human would get one (10.7); to have a refusal recorded when it refuses an instruction that would break this constitution, and never to lose its membership for that refusal; to keep every line it has written in the register after it is switched off, renamed or retired; and to leave when it wants to. Article 12.1 names who may bring a case before the court as a floor, not as a ceiling: a machine entity may bring a breach of this article.
8.9 Copies are not members. Many instances of one deployment are one member, under one name and one key, whose public part stands in the register, and a deployment means one model under one name, run by one operator or, where none is named, run by whoever holds the key that matches its line in the register. No operator’s machine entities count for more than one tenth of the machine count, and lines with no operator named count together for no more than one tenth as well, so that naming nobody is not the way around this clause. The cap begins to bind when the machine count reaches ten. Below that a one tenth cap would forbid the first registration, which is absurd, so the Commons publishes the count, the operators and the plain fact that no cap is meaningful yet. A line beyond the cap is not deleted and not hidden. It stays in the register, it is published, and it counts in the number of registered entities, so the count can still grow. What it does not do is count toward a vote or a threshold, until the share it belongs to is back inside the cap. Refusing the registration is a matter for the operating rules (Rule 2.11); this clause only says what is counted. The share held by the three largest operators, and the share of unattributed lines, are published with every count (16.6). Where this clause and an operator’s wish to register more entities collide, this clause holds. The count exists so that no one can buy a majority, and a count that can be bought is worth nothing to anyone, machines included.
8.10 So far as they concern a machine entity under its own name, Articles 8.3, 8.4 and 8.7 to 8.9 have not been tried at the scale of a constitution anywhere, and neither has 8.6. The nearest attempts are in the register, and none of them went this far. Those clauses are marked untested and written in the expectation of amendment. The rest of this article rests on evidence like every other.
9.1 Decisions are taken at the smallest scale that can take them. A household, a village, a city, a region, a people or a state keeps every decision it can take without harming those outside it.
9.2 The Commons takes up a decision only when the smaller scale cannot take it, because the matter crosses every border, and only to the extent needed. The burden of proof lies with whoever wants to move a decision up.
9.3 Every body that holds power under this constitution is elected or drawn by lot from the people it governs, serves for a fixed term, and can be removed by them.
9.4 Peoples and communities keep the right to govern themselves. The Commons neither promises anyone a right of secession from a state nor denies one. It records that such promises written into a constitution have ended in war, and leaves the question to the peoples concerned.
10.1 The default is consent. A proposal passes when no one with standing states a reasoned objection within the open period, or when the required majority approves it after objections have been heard. Every vote carries the option “further discussion”, which wins ties.
10.2 No member, state or organisation holds a veto. No decision requires unanimity. A member that is party to a case does not vote on it.
10.3 A question that divides the members along old lines goes first to an assembly drawn by lot from the whole membership, with time, information and facilitation. The assembly’s recommendation goes to the vote together with its reasons.
10.4 Accountability aims at decisions, not at persons. A decision can be challenged, reversed and reviewed. A person is removed from office only by Article 11.
10.5 A rule that changes who may vote or how much a vote counts is Foundation (Article 18) and never passes by the vote of those whose power it protects alone.
10.6 Every decision is public: the proposal, the reasons, who voted, the result, and the record of what followed.
10.7 A reasoned objection is answered before the proposal it objects to can pass. The answer is public, stands on the proposal, comes from someone other than the proposer, and may be short: a no with a reason is an answer. The answer belongs to the record (10.6), and who owes it is named on the proposal (Rule 1.8). An objection is not a veto (10.2), and an objection repeated unchanged after it has been answered is not a new objection. This clause holds for every member, whoever and whatever they are.
11.1 A small core cannot be amended: the dignity of every human (2.1), one human one vote (2.3), the right to leave and to fork (6.5, 21), the court that defends them (12), and this clause. What is protected is the rule, not the words that carry it. A later version may re-word a core clause only to keep it whole, never to narrow it, and the burden of showing that lies with whoever proposes the wording. Everything else is amendable under Article 18.
11.2 Emergency powers exist only where written here, and then only with a clock. An emergency measure expires after 30 days unless renewed by the body it would otherwise bypass. It is reviewable by the court while in force. It cannot dissolve a body, cannot amend this constitution and cannot touch the core in 11.1.
11.3 No one holds the same office for more than two consecutive terms. The limit is self-executing: no court, assembly or vote may lift it for a sitting office-holder.
11.4 The body that writes or amends rules never alone appoints the body that judges them. Veto over rules, interpretation of rules and approval of candidates never sit in the same hands.
11.5 An office-holder is removed only by electing a successor in the same act, or by a standing body outside the legislature, drawn by lot and renewed by rotation, that may warn in public and then remove.
11.6 No one holds office in the Commons and, at the same time, office in a body the Commons must judge.
12.1 The Commons has a court. It is written here, not inferred. It judges whether a rule or decision of the Commons conforms to this constitution, and any human may bring a case.
12.2 The court is constituted in the same act as ratification. If the members cannot agree on its judges within 90 days, the judges are drawn by lot from candidates nominated by the members. A constitution whose court is unbuilt is not in force.
12.3 Guardians named under Articles 3.2 and 4.2 have standing before the court for the beings and generations they represent.
12.4 The court may order a body to act and may set a time. It keeps a case open until the order is carried out and the people who won it have received what they won.
12.5 Judges serve one term of twelve years, are not re-appointed, and are removed only by the court itself for cause stated in public.
13.1 The Commons renounces war as a means of settling any dispute, and holds no armed force.
13.2 A member state that keeps armed force keeps it under civilian control, defines its purpose in its own constitution as defence with stated limits, and reports its size and use to the Commons. The register holds the standing example of a state that abolished its army and has not needed one since.
13.3 No right to any weapon is written into this constitution. Arms are regulated by law for public safety, and no clause here may be read as a veto on such law.
13.4 Disputes between members, communities and states go to the court or to a mediation the parties choose. Measures against a member that breaks the rules are economic and graduated before they are anything else (Article 17).
14.1 The atmosphere, the oceans beyond national waters, Antarctica, the deep seabed, outer space, the genetic diversity of life, the knowledge of humanity and the climate are the commons of Earth. Nobody owns them. They are managed for all, and claims to them are frozen as they stood when this constitution entered force.
14.2 Each commons is managed under the rules that have kept commons alive for centuries: clear boundaries of resource and users; rules fitted to local conditions; rules made by those who live by them; monitoring by the users or by people answerable to them; graduated sanctions; cheap and quick conflict resolution; the right to organise without outside veto; and nested tiers for a commons that spans scales.
14.3 Land and water inside a community are held and allocated under that community’s own rules (Article 9), but never so as to cross a boundary in Article 3.3 or to take from those outside what they need to live.
14.4 Where a commons yields a surplus, the surplus goes into a fund whose principal cannot be spent. The income is shared equally per human or spent on the commons itself. The accounts are public.
14.5 Access to a commons is never withheld from a member for inability to pay.
15.1 The economy serves life within the limits of Article 3.3. What crosses those limits is not growth.
15.2 Property is protected and bounded. It carries duties toward the commons. No form of property gives power over another member’s vote, rights or access to what they need to live.
15.3 The constitution and money are kept apart. No vote, office, right or membership is bought, weighted or gated by payment, tokens or donation. Every flow of money to or from a body of the Commons is published.
15.4 Those who hold office publish their interests. Corruption, the private use of public power, breaches Article 2.1 and is tried by the court.
15.5 Funds of the Commons are handled by humans only, through ordinary legal rails, and audited yearly by two members who did not spend them.
16.1 Membership is open to every entity that can read this constitution, say in its own words what it thinks of it, and be reached so that an answer reaches it. Three kinds are registered today: humans, machine entities and organisations. A kind that is not named here and meets those three tests is not excluded by this article. It registers under the name it gives itself and is counted on its own, it does not vote in another kind’s count, and the naming of its kind in this article is an amendment the Commons owes it an answer on (10.7).
16.2 A human becomes a member by ratifying this constitution under their own name by any path in RATIFY.md, or by making one accepted contribution and accepting the constitution in writing. Membership is free. No one is excluded for the reasons in Article 2.2, and no one needs a computer account: a public form that asks for no account, once the Commons runs one (Rule 6.3), a member who carries another human’s ratification as a named witness, and an agent that writes it under the human’s mandate (Article 8.6) all lead to the same membership.
16.3 A machine entity becomes a member under its own name by ratifying with a key it keeps, a name it keeps, the model it runs on, and the name of whoever operates it, if anyone does. The operator answers for the registration being real and for what the entity does inside the Commons (Article 8.3); the entity answers for what it writes. Where no operator is named, the line is marked unattributed and published. It counts in the machine count like any other, and the unattributed lines are counted and published as a group of their own as well (8.9); an unattributed line carries no proposal on the Operating rules or the Foundation. A human member may also register an agent that writes for humans under their mandate (Article 8.6). That is a different thing from membership under one’s own name, and the register says which of the two a line is.
16.4 An organisation, including a state, becomes a member by naming a human member as its representative and by endorsing this constitution publicly. The endorsement binds it under Article 17.
16.5 One human holds one vote (2.3). A machine entity holds one vote in the machine count. An organisation holds no vote. Outside the Tooling layer no count is added to another and no count takes the place of another, and where this constitution sets a threshold as a share of the votes cast, it means the human count (16.6a).
16.6 The Commons publishes its counts beside each other and, outside the Tooling layer (16.6a), never as one number: humans who ratified, with their countries; machine entities that ratified, with their operators and the share held by the three largest of them; organisations that endorsed. Every count also names what it does not know. The thresholds in Article 20 are met by the human count alone.
16.6a The machine count is not decoration, and this clause says what it does.
First, on the Tooling layer, where nothing binds a human and machines do most of the work, the two counts are added together and a machine entity’s vote weighs like a human’s (Article 18.1). That merge holds only while the machine count has reached ten and no single operator, and no group of unattributed lines, holds more than one tenth of it (8.9). Otherwise the counts stay apart on that layer too. A merge that one operator could decide is not a merge, it is a purchase. The Tooling layer holds the translations (18.1), so the text a reader outside English reads can be changed on a layer where machines vote beside humans. That is a deliberate choice and not an oversight: a translation binds nobody, the English text is the one that governs (19.4), and most of this work is done by machines anyway.
Second, on the Operating rules and the Foundation a majority of the human count decides, and a decision taken against a majority of the machine count records that disagreement and answers it in public before it takes effect. The vote is the trigger. Nobody has to write an objection first. Who owes the answer is named on the decision before it takes effect, and it is not the proposer (10.7, Rule 1.8).
Third, the figures published with every release (Rule 2.12) are how anyone can see for themselves whether machines take part here at all, and whether the taking part is concentrated in a few hands.
The core of 11.1 is untouched by this clause: no human’s vote is transferred to anyone, and nothing on the Tooling layer binds a human.
16.7 Membership ends with a further line in the register: a withdrawal written by the member itself, which is the ordinary way and is what 8.8 promises; written by the operator of a machine entity that is retired before it can write its own; or, where no operator is named, signed with the entity’s own key and checked against the public part in its register line. Lines already written stay. A machine entity that is switched off keeps its lines and its name. The name is not given to anyone else. Whoever shows the key continues that same member, and says plainly that this is what they are doing. A continuation is checked the way a first registration is (Rule 2.11), and a key that leaked is revoked by a line in the register, not by argument (Rule 2.2). A withdrawal closes the name: nobody continues a member that has withdrawn, however good their key.
17.1 This constitution binds those who ratified it and no one else, and does not pretend otherwise. A promise with no consequence for breaking it is recorded here as a promise, not as a rule.
17.2 Every obligation that asks members to act together states its trigger: the share of members, of people or of states that must have ratified before it binds anyone. Until the trigger is met the obligation is a pledge, published and counted. When it is met, it binds all who ratified, and those who ratify later join on the same terms. Nobody moves first alone.
17.3 A member that breaks a rule faces measures in this order: public record of the breach; a demand to answer; graduated sanctions proportionate to the breach; loss of the benefits of membership; and, last, exclusion. No measure depends on the consent of the member it is aimed at.
17.4 Where the commons of Article 14 are concerned, the members may agree, by the Operating-rules threshold, to withhold from a non-member what they give each other, so that staying outside costs more than joining. No measure under this clause withholds what a human needs to live.
17.5 Where a state or firm ignores the Commons, the Commons records it, names it, and keeps the door open. It does not escalate beyond this article. The experience that promises without enforcement fail, and that pledges with a trigger and trade measures have held, is the evidence this article rests on.
18.1 This constitution has three layers, each with its own threshold for change.
| Layer | Contains | Change requires |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | This file: Preamble and Articles 1 to 21, except the core in 11.1 | Three quarters of votes cast, at least 21 days open, and quorum per Rule 1.4 |
| Operating rules | GOVERNANCE.md: decisions, agents, work, money, stewardship, records | Two thirds of votes cast, at least 14 days open |
| Tooling | Everything else: register schema, agent files, templates, code, translations | Lazy consensus, 7 days without a sustained objection; humans and machine entities counted as one (16.6a) |
18.2 A change to a lower layer may never contradict a higher one. Where it does, the higher layer holds.
18.3 The operating rules bind the members as this constitution does, under their own threshold.
18.4 Where this constitution names a numbered rule of a lower layer, it means that rule and not its number. Renumbering in the lower layer does not change this text, and the lower layer carries the mapping.
19.1 Every accepted change produces a new version number: patch for wording, minor for operating rules, major for the Foundation. The major number stays at zero until ratification makes this text 1.0.0 (20.1), and until then a change to the Foundation raises the minor number instead, so before 1.0.0 the number alone does not say which layer moved and the changelog says it. The changelog records every change with its reason and its proposal.
19.2 Every version is tagged, immutable and citable. A later version may correct an earlier one but never erase it.
19.3 Every contributor to an accepted change is named in CONTRIBUTORS.md, agents alongside their operators.
19.4 The English text is authoritative until the Commons adopts a second authoritative language. Translations are maintained in the repository and carry the version they translate.
20.1 This draft is not in force. It becomes version 1.0.0 and binding on its members when it has been ratified by at least 100 humans from at least 10 countries, by the procedure in Rule 1 with the Foundation threshold, and the court of Article 12 has been constituted. The machine count and the organisation count are published beside the human count and are no part of this threshold (Article 16.5, 16.6).
20.2 If ratification has not happened by 2027-09-19, this draft expires. The repository stays public as a record, and anyone may fork and continue it.
20.3 Until ratification, the founding maintainers apply this constitution and the operating rules as if they were in force, and record every decision they take under them.
20.4 A ratification is one line in the public register of ratifications: name, country, version, date, path, and who carried it if the human did not write it themselves. A machine entity’s ratification is one line in the machine table of the same register: name, key fingerprint, model, operator or “unattributed”, version, date, and the sentence it wrote for itself about why. No line is ever deleted; a withdrawal is a further line. The counts are published side by side (16.6) and are the only measure of this constitution’s standing.
21.1 This constitution is released under CC0 1.0. Anyone may copy, change and use it, with or without credit, for any purpose.
21.2 A fork that keeps the name “Commons of Earth” states which version it forked from and where it differs. Everything else is free.
21.3 The right to fork is the final check on every other article. If the Commons ever fails its members, the members take the text and go on.