Continuity Before Authority: A Constitutional Doctrine of Sovereign Provenance and Logical Sovereignty

Continuity Before Authority is a non-normative, non-operational constitutional doctrine examining the conditions under which institutional authority may legitimately persist across time, substitution, authorship loss, and reasoning delegation. The doctrine establishes that authority collapses when it cannot preserve sovereign continuity of memory and reasoning, even where systems remain operational, outcomes remain correct, or institutional structures persist. It distinguishes continuity of authority from continuity of operation, and rejects persistence, performance, explanation, or narrative coherence as substitutes for constitutional legitimacy. This work defines sovereign provenance and logical sovereignty…