A living, multilingual body of principles, norms, clauses, and precedents — spanning every recorded civilization from primal bands to emerging digital societies, designed for scholars today and digital adjudication tomorrow.
The Charter of Sapient Civilizations (CSC) is built on a foundational observation: despite vast differences in culture, era, technology level, and governance structure, human civilizations have repeatedly converged on a set of core normative commitments — protecting life, constraining arbitrary power, ensuring fairness in exchange, and preserving conditions for future flourishing.
CSC makes these convergences explicit, documented, and machine-readable. It is not a new legal system imposed from outside, but a scholarly synthesis of what civilizations themselves have discovered and recorded.
Looking forward, the Charter anticipates a world of radically heterogeneous sapient entities — biological humans, AI agents, bioengineered intelligences, and potentially others. It provides a shared framework for governance, adjudication, and cooperation across this diversity.
CSC serves comparative legal scholars, historians, ethicists, and AI researchers with a structured, cross-referenced database of civilizational norms, evidence levels, and attested cases.
The Charter is designed to integrate with digital court procedures (see
procedures/digital_court.md), providing a normative basis for
AI-assisted dispute resolution across cultural boundaries.
The Charter organizes knowledge in three conceptual layers, each building on the last.
10 universal, cross-civilizational baselines — dignity, justice, accountability, liberty, sustainability, cooperation, transparency, inclusion, privacy, and care. These hold across all cultures and technological levels (S0–S6).
15 thematic domains of norms that recur across civilizations — from life and body to tech and AI. Each domain contains Clause Cards: structured YAML objects with evidence levels, attestations across ≥ 3 civilizations, and positive/negative cases.
Culture- and era-specific rules for 8 major traditions. These clauses operate within their historical frame and must not violate Layer 1 meta-principles. They represent the granular, lived application of broader norms.
Two YAML-in-Markdown frameworks: civilization_levels.md classifies civilizations
on a S0–S6 scale from primal to interstellar. agent_levels.md classifies sapient
entities from A0 (sub-sentient automaton) to A6 (super-sapient).
digital_court.md and evidence_rules.md define procedural frameworks
for AI-assisted adjudication — how to cite CSC clauses, what evidence standards apply,
and how digital courts should handle cross-cultural norm conflicts.
Non-canonical, lower-evidence content: life_wisdom/, mysticism/,
and unwritten_rules/. Evidence levels are explicitly lower here — oral
tradition and anecdote are acceptable. Not binding in adjudication.
Three JSON Schema (draft 2020-12) files validate clause card content: clause.schema.json
for Layer 2, contextual_clause.schema.json for Layer 3, and
meta_principle.schema.json for Layer 1.
| Level | Description | Technology |
|---|---|---|
S0 | Primal / Band | Stone tools |
S1 | Tribal / Chiefdom | Agriculture |
S2 | Early State | Writing, bronze |
S3 | Feudal / Theocratic | Iron, printing |
S4 | Early Modern | Industry |
S5 | Modern Rights State | Digital |
S6 | Sapient / Interstellar | Post-AGI |
| Level | Description | Rights Status |
|---|---|---|
A0 | Sub-sentient automaton | Tool only |
A1 | Reactive animal | Welfare protections |
A2 | Proto-sapient | Limited rights |
A3 | Sapient (human-equivalent) | Full rights |
A4 | Enhanced sapient | Full + enhanced |
A5 | Post-human AGI | Negotiated |
A6 | Super-sapient | Treaty-based |
| Version | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| v0.1.0 | October 2025 | Initial bilingual (EN/ZH) draft. NEW_CHARTER.md, 10 meta-principles, initial domain and context files. |
| v0.0.9 | September 2025 | Chinese-only charter (CHARTER.md) with governance framework (GOVERNANCE.md). |
| Initial | August 2025 | Repository initialized. Project vision, initial principles draft, contributing framework. |
Versioning follows vX.Y — major structural changes increment X; routine edits increment Y. A 72-hour freeze period precedes major merges.
All new clauses, schemas, and governance documents are authored in English. NEW_CHARTER.md and evaluations/ files are bilingual EN/ZH.
Original charter, GOVERNANCE.md, and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md are in Chinese. The meta-principles-en.md file provides a full English translation.
NEW_CHARTER.md pairs every paragraph EN/ZH. Future versions will expand bilingual coverage to all clause cards. Community translations are welcome.
