How the Law Works | The Earth Party

Core, Mantle, and Crust

The Law is arranged like the Earth itself, in three layers, each one resting on the one beneath it.

Core

The basic mechanics

Benign sovereignty, legitimate and illegitimate force, rationality, and upholdment. The irreducible workings of how the Law operates.

Mantle

Derived from the core

Principles easily and logically deduced from the core, set out as clear lists: human rights, animal rights, what may not be done to the land.

Crust

Local rulemaking

Jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction detail, written by each village, township, and city. It must always be consistent with the core.

An analogy helps. In the United States, ordinary laws must conform to the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights spells out, in plain enumerated form, protections that are meant to be timeless. The core is something like the Constitution, the mantle something like the Bill of Rights, and the crust something like local statute. The analogy is imperfect in one important way: the Constitution was still written and passed by people. The core of the Law of the Earth is not passed by anyone. It is discovered.

That is why this site publishes only the core and the mantle. The crust belongs to each community to work out for itself, and any crust that contradicts the core is not law at all.

Two Ways to Read It

Different minds absorb things differently, so the Law is presented in two ways. For straight-down-to-business readers, the full text of the core and mantle lives on a single page: one long, continuous document you can read straight through or copy in one motion. For visual readers, the storybook presents the Law one concept at a time, one idea per book spread, with the official text on the left page and commentary on the right.

How theLaw Works

Core, Mantle, and Crust

Two Ways to Read It

How the
Law Works