The Seven Superuniverses

15:12.1When we speak of ex­ec­u­tive and de­lib­er­a­tive branches of the Uversa gov­ern­ment, you may, from the anal­ogy of cer­tain forms of Uran­tian civil gov­ern­ment, rea­son that we must have a third or ju­di­cial branch, and we do; but it does not have a sep­a­rate per­son­nel. Our courts are con­sti­tuted as fol­lows: There pre­sides, in ac­cor­dance with the na­ture and grav­ity of the case, an An­cient of Days, a Per­fec­tor of Wis­dom, or a Di­vine Coun­selor. The ev­i­dence for or against an in­di­vid­ual, a planet, sys­tem, con­stel­la­tion, or uni­verse is pre­sented and in­ter­preted by the Cen­sors. The de­fense of the chil­dren of time and the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets is of­fered by the Mighty Mes­sen­gers, the of­fi­cial ob­servers of the super­uni­verse gov­ern­ment to the lo­cal uni­verses and sys­tems. The at­ti­tude of the higher gov­ern­ment is por­trayed by Those High in Au­thor­ity. And or­di­nar­ily the ver­dict is for­mu­lated by a vary­ing-sized com­mis­sion con­sist­ing equally of Those with­out Name and Num­ber and a group of un­der­stand­ing per­son­al­i­ties cho­sen from the de­lib­er­a­tive as­sem­bly.

15:12.2The courts of the An­cients of Days are the high re­view tri­bu­nals for the spir­i­tual ad­ju­di­ca­tion of all com­po­nent uni­verses. The Sov­er­eign Sons of the lo­cal uni­verses are su­preme in their own do­mains; they are sub­ject to the super­gov­ern­ment only in so far as they vol­un­tar­ily sub­mit mat­ters for coun­sel or ad­ju­di­ca­tion by the An­cients of Days ex­cept in mat­ters in­volv­ing the ex­tinc­tion of will crea­tures. Man­dates of judg­ment orig­i­nate in the lo­cal uni­verses, but sen­tences in­volv­ing the ex­tinc­tion of will crea­tures are al­ways for­mu­lated on, and ex­e­cuted from, the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verse. The Sons of the lo­cal uni­verses can de­cree the sur­vival of mor­tal man, but only the An­cients of Days may sit in ex­ec­u­tive judg­ment on the is­sues of eter­nal life and death.

15:12.3In all mat­ters not re­quir­ing trial, the sub­mis­sion of ev­i­dence, the An­cients of Days or their as­so­ciates ren­der de­ci­sions, and these rul­ings are al­ways unan­i­mous. We are here deal­ing with the coun­cils of per­fec­tion. There are no dis­agree­ments nor mi­nor­ity opin­ions in the de­crees of these su­preme and su­perla­tive tri­bu­nals.

15:12.4With cer­tain few ex­cep­tions the super­gov­ern­ments ex­er­cise ju­ris­dic­tion over all things and all be­ings in their re­spec­tive do­mains. There is no ap­peal from the rul­ings and de­ci­sions of the super­uni­verse au­thor­i­ties since they rep­re­sent the con­curred opin­ions of the An­cients of Days and that Mas­ter Spirit who, from Par­a­dise, pre­sides over the des­tiny of the super­uni­verse con­cerned.