single set of rules that encompasses all religious. In the United States, there is however a supreme trust infrastructure that encompasses a supreme policy infrastructure. Within this legal environment, both civil and criminal, are found the judiciary, also hierarchically structured and culminating in a court of last resort, the Supreme Court. Finally, within administrative infrastructures are found the administrators of such groups. Administrative organizations, while comprised of persons with varying degrees of authority, essentially exert their control of policy in the name of the highest level administrator, for example the President.

The clergy found within different religious organizations show a wide variance in both the authority required to place them in the positions that they occupy within their respective congregations and the authority that they can elicit as arbiters within these same congregations. At one extreme of the congregations are the religious groups that are pejoratively called cults; for example, the Branch Davidians of Waco fame (or infamy). These are typically small, highly focused groups that break off from the central body of a religious organization. In most instances, this schism is due to some disagreement with theological tenets of the core religion, but it is sometimes derived from a very strong personality that leads the small group away from the large. Within social ecosystems, cults encompass an evolutionary mechanism quite similar to that described in Systematics and the Origin of Species by Ernst Mayr for organic species; a mechanism that can result in speciation through the further process termed punctuated equilibrium. Should a cult gain wider acceptance, it might evolve into a sect; a similar organizational construct but one not nearly so harshly regarded by mainstream organizations. At the other extreme lay what we might call mainstream, organized religions. If we consider Roman Catholicism as an example, the church encompasses a well defined, hierarchical structure within which the clergy is established and through which it operates. The culmination of this hierarchy is the Pope, the person in whom resides the authority as the ultimate policy arbiter of this particular religion.

Within most religious structures, the members of the clergy are viewed as better versed in the tenets of the particular religious order than are the typical members, a group sometimes referred to as the laity to differentiate them from the clergy.

Within secular social ecosystems, the ultimate arbiters of consequences are typically the judiciary. Depending on hierarchy, the judiciary tends to either be directly elected by the people or appointed by a government’s administrative arm and confirmed by an elected body. Members of the judiciary are typically chosen from a precursor group that is ostensibly trained in the intricacies of policy interpretation and application; that is, attorneys. The judiciary effects its interpretation of policy through a variety of courts. As part of the base level of the court system, sometimes referred to as trial courts, an additional mechanism is added to allow for the differentiation of the interpretation of policy from the assessment of whether or not a particular interaction conforms to stated policy. This mechanism is the jury. A jury is comprised of some collection of ostensibly unbiased observers. Details of interactions for which policy infractions are claimed are presented to the jury under the auspices of the specific court. The jury is then charged with making a determination of fact as to the details of the interaction. Again, under the auspices of the court a determination can then be made as to whether the interaction did, in fact, infringe the policy in question.

The federal judiciary comprise a hierarchical grouping whose members are all life tenured. At the highest level, the Supreme Court of the United States functions as the ultimate arbiter of the trust infrastructure. As we have noted, in some instances the Supreme Court appears able to function as the ultimate purveyor of policy as well.

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