Constitutional Order
The foundational structure that determines what laws are legitimate — not what laws say, but the conditions under which lawmaking itself is valid.
Statutory compliance, First and Fourth Amendment litigation outcomes, platform content moderation policy text, and executive agency rulemaking records — all of which measure what digital law says, not the conditions under which digital lawmaking is legitimate.
The degree to which the foundational architecture of digital systems — authentication infrastructure, identity primitives, algorithm accountability mechanisms, and data sovereignty frameworks — is governed by democratically accountable institutions rather than private technical bodies whose decisions carry constitutional weight without constitutional process.
Require that any technical standard with the functional effect of determining who may speak, assemble, or petition in digital public life undergo notice-and-comment rulemaking equivalent to that required for binding administrative rules.
Civil society organizations, state attorneys general, academic institutions, open-source standards bodies, and citizens whose speech and due process rights are currently shaped by private constitutional orders they had no role in ratifying.
Platform incumbents whose network-layer technical decisions currently function as constitutional law without constitutional accountability; standards consortia whose closed processes would face public participation requirements; and venture-backed identity infrastructure companies whose proprietary protocols would become subject to public interest review.
Extend Administrative Procedure Act notice-and-comment requirements to any private technical standard that, by operation of market dominance, functions as a binding rule of general applicability governing digital speech, identity, or access.
The FTC's Commercial Surveillance and Data Security rulemaking is an active proceeding where public comment shapes the foundational rules governing digital identity infrastructure. File at regulations.gov using docket FTC-2022-0053.
Fourteen states have active legislation modeled on the American Data Privacy and Protection Act framework. Contact your state commerce or judiciary committee to request hearings on algorithmic accountability provisions that govern the substrate layer.
IEEE SA balloting membership (open to individuals for under $200/year) allows direct votes on technical standards — including IEEE P7012 (machine-readable personal privacy terms) — that function as de facto constitutional rules for digital systems.
The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet holds recurring oversight hearings on platform power. Written testimony submissions are accepted from the public and enter the formal record.