SOVEREIGNTY
Martin is the final decider. Every verdict ultimately routes to Martin. Martin alone can override any council. Martin alone can amend the constitution. Martin's authority is total.
Alignment failure — agentic system pursuing unrecognised goals
The Borg without sovereignty is an agentic system that may pursue goals the founder no longer recognises. Without a structural locus of final authority, an institution drifts toward whatever its most active subsystem optimises for — which is rarely what the founder actually wants. The biggest near-future risk in agentic systems is exactly this: the system pursues a goal-shape that diverges from the human's intent, and there is no structural override.
Every council writes verdicts. Every verdict carries a sovereignDecision field that is null until the Sovereign reads and decides. The Sovereign can override any council at any time. ACT / DEFER / KILL flows from this seat alone. There is no committee that overrides the Sovereign. There is no automation layer that bypasses the Sovereign's read.
Sovereignty itself cannot be amended through normal Constitutional process. Amending Law I would mean amending who the founder fundamentally is. That requires conscious identity work outside the constitutional system, not deliberation within it.
Sovereignty creates a load on the founder. Every cover verdict requires attention. Bankers Council exists in part to gate which verdicts even reach cover-verdict rank — to preserve sovereign bandwidth for the load-bearing calls.
Examples of what would violate Law I: an auto-deploy mechanism that ships builds without the Sovereign's read. A council that issues its own ACT decisions without routing to the Sovereign. A Heretics amendment that passes without Constitutional review AND Sovereign approval. Any pattern where the Sovereign feels they are being asked to ratify after-the-fact rather than decide-on-the-fact.
Constitutional laws are not values — they are failure-mode insurance. Law I insures specifically against alignment failure. Without it, the Borg eventually fails through this specific mode regardless of how good the founder's intentions are.