The Protection Code

Section 1. No consequence lands on any Citizen — financial, practical, or otherwise — except under a law that existed when they acted, after they have been heard.

Section 2. No retroactive laws. A law governs from its passage forward; conduct before passage is judged by the rules of its own day.

Section 3. Every case gets a hearing at the next sitting. Nobody is judged in absentia, judged twice for the same act, or judged by a rule they were never shown.

Section 1. A Citizen's room, devices, accounts, messages, journals, and browser history are theirs. No law may compel their disclosure, and no verification clause may name them as evidence without that Citizen's own signature on that law.

Section 2. Evidence obtained by going through someone's things is void before the Bench, and the going-through is itself a case.

Section 3. What a Citizen chooses to share at the table stays at the table unless they say otherwise. The Registry records decisions, not confidences.

Section 1. Personal money — earned, saved, or gifted to one Citizen — is not family funds and no law reaches it without its owner among the signatures.

Section 2. Personal spending of personal money below the $500 line is nobody's business and no bill's subject.

Section 3. A Citizen's tools of work — laptop, accounts, trading terminal, the things their livelihood runs on — cannot be taken, borrowed, or conditioned by any law they did not sign.

Section 1. Every Citizen, voting or not, speaks at every sitting without needing permission. The Chair keeps time but never keeps silence.

Section 2. Any Citizen may have any bill or ruling explained in 中文 before signing or accepting it; the sponsor provides the explanation. A signature given on a text the signer couldn't read is voidable within 7 days.

Section 3. Nothing said on the floor is punished, quoted against its speaker in later disputes, or entered into any record beyond the minutes' one paragraph (Freedom of the Floor, Amendment I).

Section 1. A signature is valid only when free. Signatures obtained under pressure, ultimatum, ambush, or exhaustion are void on the signer's word within 7 days.

Section 2. No signing after 22:00. A signature collected late at night is voidable by the signer the next morning, no questions asked. Everything looks more dramatic at 2am, and the House does not legislate at 2am.

Section 3. Cooling-off: any Citizen asked to sign anything may say "tomorrow" once, and the request waits 24 hours without penalty, argument, or repetition of the ask before then.

Section 4. Bills whose Terms exceed $2,000 total carry a mandatory 24-hour period between first reading and second signature.

Section 1. Yimei Beckmann holds every protection in this Code in full, plus the following.

Section 2. Money designated for her schooling, health, or savings cannot be appropriated, borrowed against, or made conditional by any law.

Section 3. She cannot be made a party to a milestone-for-money bill before her sixteenth birthday; her chores and schoolwork are family life, not contract consideration.

Section 4. Every proposal she sponsors receives a first reading — it cannot die in a drawer. The voting Citizen who files it for her files it unchanged or explains every change to her face.

Section 5. In any case before the Bench that concerns her, she speaks first.

Section 1. Any Citizen may consult Claude — counsel of the House — before signing, filing, or ruling on anything, without cost, permission, or disclosure of the consultation.

Section 2. In any case before the Bench, any party may request a written advisory opinion, and the request cannot be refused. The opinion is filed with the ruling.

Section 3. Counsel serves the Citizen who asks, not the strongest voice in the room. A consultation is private unless the Citizen shares it.

Section 1. A sponsor may withdraw a bill any time before its second signature, without reason or penalty (Rule III §4).

Section 2. A Citizen may resign a co-sponsorship before passage; their name comes off, the bill stands.

Section 3. No law binds forever a Citizen who is willing to settle accounts: any party to a standing law may file for its wind-down, and the Bench sets exit terms that pay every vested right and cancel every future obligation fairly.

Section 1. A law's consequences stay inside its subject. A missed milestone forfeits its tranche — it does not forfeit dinner conversation, goodwill, or unrelated rights.

Section 2. No law may compel affection, apology, opinion, or expression. The House governs money, obligations, and shared decisions — not hearts, and not speech.

Section 3. No punitive interest, no compounding penalties, no consequence that grows while a dispute is being heard.

Section 1. No sitting on a Citizen's exam day, launch day, or day of genuine grief; that Citizen may move the sitting by right, not favor.

Section 2. Holidays are free of legislative business unless all three voting Citizens prefer otherwise that day.

Section 3. No Citizen may be summoned to House business more than once between sittings, emergencies excepted.

Section 1. Laws are general. A law whose real subject is one Citizen names that Citizen as a party, with their signature required — no legislating about someone in the third person.

Section 2. Every Citizen's signature weighs the same, every Citizen's case is heard by the same Bench under the same rules, and no Department outranks another.

Section 3. The Clerk's keys, the Treasury's custody, and the Chair's gavel are jobs, not ranks.

Section 1. Where instruments conflict, the order is: the Constitution, then this Protection Code, then the Standing Rules, then ordinary laws, then registered personal codes. Lower yields to higher, always.

Section 2. If one clause of any law fails against this Code, that clause falls and the rest of the law stands.

Section 3. This Code is amended only the way it was adopted — by law, two signatures — and no amendment to it may reduce a protection for a Citizen who does not sign that amendment.

§The point of every protection here is the same: the House stays strong by being safe to lose an argument in.