# Against the Unwritten Charter The so called 'Unwritten Charter' is a ridicuous concept which some Federation jurists and lawyers believe in. Chief Justice Pawluk-Dickinson first articulated the concept in her opinion on The Nyman Sovereignty V. Bajus in 52703. She further elaborated on it in her influential article The Unwritten Charter of the United Federation of Earth. The unwritten charter is not the plane shattering concept which some make it out to be. Rather, is a benign legal concept overemphasized by new and upcoming lawyers. Devin Dyson made this point clearly in his popular data-feed article from 68349 (*Examining an Examination of Potential Legal Challenges of An Act Specifying Available Manners of Maintaining the Food Supply During Work Shut Downs*). All the unwritten charter concept means is that the Federation has a Common Law system, with institutions that have developed over time. The Federations' institutions can change, be removed, or new ones created. This is because unlike the soverignties which make up the Federation, who's political structures, unalienable and unpartable rights, and many other important aspects are all defined within their charters. The much more important change which Chief Just Pawluk-Dickinson misidentified as the Unwritten Charter is simply the transference of sovereignty from elite to popular political controllers, and the impact this has had on the Federations common law tradition. Further, this newfound populism needed a history to justify itself, and so looked back to the First Federation to justify its democratic populism. The things it pulled forward had to be shaped into the Common Law which of the Second Federation, creating the Third Federations common law foundation, while its governmental and political institutions were reformed or created - in effect constitutionalized - by President Dyson's legal victories and legislative reforms. The Fourth Federation, when Scholars See the unwritten charter concept becoming popular and auto-animated, was because the democratic populism of the Federation has unhinged the nation and its political institutions from their legal foundations. The unwritten charter gave license to do whatever change or transformation one wanted, label it a reform, and justify it by saying the Federation has no permeant form therefore anyone who wishes to attempts to maintain any permeant form to Federation institutions is a foolish conservative on the wrong side of history fighting an impossible and pointless battle. They say one ought to give in and reform, rebuild their institution from scratch as the unwritten charter allows. This of course ignores that the only true point they have in common with the chief justices' work is that her argument says that Federation law can evolve on its own because it is a common law system, and that the institutions of the Federation are created through natural historical development and not through the rational briliance of a single or small group of individuals who discerned perfectly and for all eternity what institutions ought to govern the Federation. The Federation is not presently lacking in a constitution any more than the Third Federation was lacking a constitution. By the same token, the Federation today has no more of a truly empowered and formal constitution than the Second or Third Federations had. We have the current governing legislation and the dictated by the present form of our constitution institutioned by D.A.M. Goodwin. But our common law remains, and our old institutions are embodied in that consitituion, and thier old ways of doing things are still around. Indeed, the new constitution is no more premenant than the previous hundred documents to bear the name, and will fair no better than the next hundred documents to bear the name. The unwritten charter is an abused and overused concept. But its core argument, that the Federation is a nation which never stops changing, has not stopped being true, and will always be true so long as the Federation exists. \- By: Mark Joyal-Lawall, Aristotle School of Political Science, University of New Athens located on new Attica, in the Graecae System a part of the Barony of Hellenus, part of the County of Homidius, in the Mueller-Lewer Sovereignty of United Federation of Maldeth, Maldeth Galaxy, a part of the United Federation of Earth and Her Colonies Among the Stars. \- - In: Tylson Roy-Laurencelle *New Thoughts on Transformations in Federation Political Philosophy: Views from the Fifth Federation*, published in 83397