In this Republic’s Conscience edition of The Whitepaper, Nicolin Decker presents The Jurisdictional Signal Integrity Doctrine (JSI): Representation, Broadcast Power, and the Constitutional Architecture of Coherence—a constitutional diagnostic framework explaining how representative institutions can degrade without constitutional violation, as lawful speech and modern broadcast conditions overwhelm the bounded signal environments the Founding design presupposed.
We have spent decades debating motives—partisanship, polarization, bad faith. JSI asks a more structural question:
What happens when the signal environment surrounding Congress becomes larger than Congress was designed to metabolize?
🔹 Core Thesis
JSI introduces a novel descriptive concept: Representational Signal Misalignment (RSM).
RSM refers to a structural condition in which the communicative signal environment surrounding a representative institution exceeds or bypasses the jurisdictional and deliberative architecture through which that institution is constitutionally designed to operate—producing degraded translation, elevated performative incentives, and rational actor exit despite formal procedural compliance.
RSM is not an allegation of wrongdoing. It is a diagnosis of architectural mismatch.
🔹 Structural Findings
Representation as Translation, Not Projection JSI argues that Congress was designed around bounded constituencies, delayed evaluation, and jurisdictional accountability—conditions that enable representatives to translate plural meaning into law rather than perform for mass audiences.
Broadcast as an Architectural Shock (1979–1981) JSI identifies a broadcast inflection in which live national visibility altered legislative incentives. Floor speech shifted from internal deliberation toward external performance aimed at unbounded audiences.
Empirical Signals of Jurisdictional Drift JSI treats congressional behavior as systems data. Elevated attrition, persistent volatility in non-re-election decisions, and migration toward executive offices are read as revealed preferences about institutional legibility—not cyclical political anomalies.
Courts Sense Instability but Lack Vocabulary Existing doctrines measure authority, rights, and procedure—not signal integrity. JSI explains why courts increasingly reference legitimacy and fragility while remaining doctrinally constrained: the harms are real but often non-justiciable.
Lawful Speech as Destabilizing Architecture (Without a Speech-Restriction Argument) JSI distinguishes First Amendment protection from structural side effects. Speech remains protected, yet institutions may strain when signal scale and velocity exceed deliberative capacity. JSI supplies vocabulary without inviting censorship or doctrinal overreach.
🔻 What JSI Is Not
- Not a reform agenda
- Not an enforcement program
- Not a speech restriction argument
- Not an accusation against any party, institution, or actor
JSI is non-binding guidance—a framework for recognition, not compulsion.
🔻 Closing Principle
The solution is not louder governance. It is intelligible governance.
Not reform. Remembrance.
Not accusation. Orientation.
The Republic does not require repair. It requires remembrance.
📄 The Jurisdictional Signal Integrity Doctrine (JSI): Representation, Broadcast Power, and the Constitutional Architecture of Coherence [Click Here]
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