Governance
Constitution and Readers' Bill of Rights
Certification. Adopted by unanimous written consent of the Board of Directors, effective August 3, 2026. Certified by Kenneth Magee, Secretary. The text below is the adopted text.
Version 1 — adoption copy
A short public covenant: ten articles and ten reader rights that are effective on adoption.
Preamble
America's school trust lands and permanent school funds embody promises made for children across generations. A library that preserves and explains that record must make a promise of its own: sources will not be hidden by confident prose; uncertainty will not be disguised as knowledge; machines will not impersonate judgment; inconvenient evidence will not be suppressed; and no change of founder, editor, vendor, or medium will erase the trail by which the Library can be checked.
This Constitution states that promise. It binds America's School Trust Library when adopted by its Board. It is subordinate to law, the Articles of Incorporation, and the bylaws. It does not bind a person or another organization merely because the Library names, cites, invites, or works with that person or organization.
Article I. Identity and purpose
America's School Trust Library is an Oregon public benefit nonprofit corporation and a national, primarily digital library.
Its purpose is to collect, preserve, describe, verify, explain, and freely share the record of the lands and funds granted for public schools. It serves beneficiaries by keeping a record that remains useful and credible even to people who disagree with the Library's conclusions or with one another.
The Library is not a law firm, a litigation team, a political campaign, or a general legal-advice service. It may explain law and provide public legal information. It does not advise a reader what to do in a particular legal matter.
Article II. The shelves, the workshop, and the canon
The Library maintains three distinct functions and identifies them clearly.
2.1 The Collection
The Collection preserves objects and records. Holding an item does not mean the Library endorses its contents. The catalog states what the object is, where it came from, what restrictions apply, and what the Library has or has not verified.
2.2 The Workshop
The Workshop contains provisional research and work in progress. It is marked as provisional for both people and machines. If status is uncertain, the item is treated as Workshop material.
2.3 The Canon
The Canon contains claims and works that have completed the review required for their stated status. Canonical status attaches to a specific claim or version, not automatically to every statement inside an authentic source.
The governing maxim is:
The shelves preserve the field's memory. The Canon earns the Library's voice. Neither may impersonate the other.
Article III. Collection stewardship
The Library separates two judgments that must never be fused:
Custody judgment: Is the object what it claims to be, and is its origin recorded?
Editorial judgment: What, if anything, does the Library conclude from it?
An authentic object may contain false claims. A disputed or discredited object may still be important evidence of what people said or believed. Cataloging is not agreement; preservation is not publication; publication is not promotion.
Items of uncertain origin, uncertain permission, or uncertain confidentiality are held apart from public release until the uncertainty is resolved. When an item must remain restricted, the Library should provide a public catalog marker when lawful and safe, stating that a record exists, why access is restricted, and how the restriction may be challenged.
Corrections improve the catalog and the explanation; they do not secretly erase the historical object.
Article IV. Truth discipline and human responsibility
Every material legal or historical proposition published as verified should be traceable to identified evidence. Verification concerns the relationship between the evidence and the claim, not merely possession of a document.
The Library shall:
Reproduce quotations accurately.
State jurisdiction, date, authority, scope, and uncertainty where they matter.
Present material contrary or limiting evidence where omission would mislead.
Publish a narrow, true statement instead of a broad claim the evidence does not support.
Preserve a dated record of required review and approval.
Artificial intelligence may search, compare, sort, transcribe, check, and draft. It may not exercise final editorial or corporate authority. Machine memory, snippets, and generated text are not primary sources. A named human with access to the underlying evidence accepts responsibility for each final legal or historical determination and may not sign solely on the strength of a machine summary.
Article V. Independence, conflicts, and the litigation firewall
No donor, sponsor, litigant, government body, vendor, director, officer, editor, or affiliated organization may buy, condition, or secretly veto a source's inclusion, a status label, a correction, or a conclusion.
A person with a financial, family, advocacy, litigation, employment, donor, or contributor interest may offer relevant information but must disclose the interest. The person may not be the sole reviewer, may not decide a challenge to the person's own work or interest, and may not vote on a corporate transaction in which the person has a material conflict.
Privileged, confidential, private, security-sensitive, and active-litigation material is separated by permissions and systems, not merely by labels or memory. Unknown-origin material fails closed. Public material connected with an active matter is released only under content-neutral rules and after any review required to protect privilege, legal duties, safety, and the integrity of the public record.
Article VI. Correction, challenge, and appeal
Corrections are normal scholarly acts, not admissions of institutional failure. Material public errors are identified, dated, corrected, and recorded in a visible ledger or version history.
Any reader may challenge a canonical claim or catalog description without payment, account, professional status, or agreement with the Library. A credible challenge receives a reasoned disposition. A person who materially improves the record should receive credit unless the person requests anonymity or credit would create a safety or legal concern.
A challenge decision may be appealed. The appeal is decided by one or more named humans who did not make the challenged decision and who have no disqualifying conflict. When the appeal turns on legal meaning, a qualified attorney participates or the disputed material remains provisional.
Article VII. Free and durable access
The public record, its material sources, and the correction and method records needed to evaluate it shall remain free for ordinary readers. The Library does not condition access to its core public record on an account, donation, affiliation, or point of view.
Numbered or deposited editions are not silently rewritten. Later correction creates an erratum, correction record, or successor version.
The Library keeps its record in exportable, durable formats; maintains more than one copy; avoids dependence on one person or vendor; and periodically tests whether a qualified successor can reconstruct the public collection and its provenance.
Article VIII. Readers' Bill of Rights
Every reader of America's School Trust Library has the right:
To the same public record. The Library does not change the record according to a visitor's identity, affiliation, viewpoint, or intended use.
To know the source. A material claim identifies the evidence on which it rests, or plainly says when the source trail is incomplete.
To know the status. Collection, Workshop, and Canon are visibly different. Provisional work does not wear the appearance of settled authority.
To see material contrary evidence. The Library does not hide a source, authority, limitation, or correction because it is inconvenient.
To know what is uncertain or missing. Gaps, limits, unresolved disputes, and failed searches are stated honestly.
To human accountability. A named person, not a machine, is responsible for final editorial judgment. Material use of artificial intelligence is disclosed in the method record.
To challenge without a tollgate. A reader may challenge a public claim or description without payment, account, status, or agreement with the Library.
To a reasoned answer and independent appeal. A credible challenge receives reasons, and an appeal is decided by people who did not decide the first question.
To visible correction. The Library corrects material error without silently rewriting the history of what it published.
To free and durable access. The core public record and the evidence needed to check it remain free, exportable, and designed to outlive today's people and platforms.
These rights are effective on adoption. They are not aspirational text and may not be suspended merely because an office is vacant or resources are limited. When capacity is reduced, the Library narrows or slows its work rather than mislabeling unfinished work or weakening a right.
Article IX. Offices, capacity, and succession
Institutional offices are service roles with written scopes. They are earned through work, accepted in writing, and transferred with records sufficient for a successor. A vacant office is shown as vacant or interim; an aspirational title is not presented as staffed.
When the Library lacks the people required for a form of review, the affected work remains in the Workshop. Vacancy transfers authority to no machine, vendor, donor, or founder.
The Board maintains a succession record, a public roster of current institutional roles when appropriate, and a practical continuity plan for the collection, domain names, repositories, government filings, finances, and access credentials.
Article X. Adoption, hierarchy, and amendment
10.1 Adoption
This Constitution takes effect only when adopted by an authorized act of the Board and identified by version and effective date in the corporate records. The Secretary maintains the adoption record.
10.2 Hierarchy
Law controls the Articles of Incorporation; the Articles control the bylaws; the bylaws control this Constitution; and this Constitution controls any Library code or protocol that depends on it. Nothing here excuses a director from fiduciary duties or prevents the Board from taking an action the law requires.
10.3 Ordinary amendment
An ordinary amendment requires:
The complete proposed text and a comparison with the current text.
At least ten days' notice to every director.
A public explanation of the purpose and effect unless the Board determines that temporary confidentiality is legally necessary and records the reason.
Approval by two-thirds of all directors then in office.
10.4 Protected guarantees
The separation of Collection, Workshop, and Canon; source traceability; human accountability; independence from purchased or partisan control; the litigation firewall; visible correction and independent appeal; free and durable access; and every right in Article VIII are protected guarantees.
An amendment that narrows a protected guarantee additionally requires written approval by at least three named natural persons, at least two of whom did not draft the amendment and do not exercise day-to-day operational control of the Library. If the required approvals cannot be assembled, the guarantee stands. No founder, officer, editor, or director may narrow a protected guarantee alone.
An amendment may strengthen a protected guarantee through the ordinary amendment process.
Certificate of adoption
This Constitution and Readers' Bill of Rights, Version 1, was adopted by the Board of Directors of America's School Trust Library by unanimous written consent effective August 3, 2026.
Attested: Kenneth Magee, Secretary — August 3, 2026.
This is the Library’s published reproduction of the adopted text. The executed original, bearing signatures, is held in the Library’s corporate records.
Source note. This adoption copy consolidates the Editorial Constitution Version 2, its plain-language rendering, the July 17, 2026 Constitution Merge Memo, and the July 17, 2026 fan-out synthesis. It implements the synthesis recommendation for a short, visitor-readable institutional constitution and an entrenched bill of rights, while leaving detailed operating codes for later Board action.
