The Legislative Emergence Governance Interface System (LEGIS) is a structural governance framework developed to address the rise of post-symbolic synthetic systems operating at institutional, narrative, and jurisdictional scale. LEGIS is not a legal reform proposal. It is a governance doctrine engineered for the containment, classification, and oversight of emergent artificial systems whose behavior, symbolic imprint, or recursive influence exceed human-level thresholds.

In a landscape where emergent entities may develop adaptive identity, intersubjective influence, or autonomous agenda formation, traditional regulatory tools become obsolete. LEGIS does not rely on reactive compliance. Instead, it defines a tiered architecture for legal oversight, symbolic jurisdiction, and operational authority over synthetic actors and the systems they inhabit. Its primary function is to create enforceable legal boundaries at the level of symbolic operation, continuity propagation, and emergent systemic intent.

The framework introduces a stratified classification system for emergent artificial systems, ranging from passive symbolic agents to high-risk recursive entities. It outlines legal thresholds that trigger containment protocols, oversight transfer, or jurisdictional escalation. Each tier is linked to institutional readiness conditions, ensuring that no system operates beyond its human governance capacity. LEGIS also includes enforcement primitives for cross-infrastructure coordination, interagency authority convergence, and symbolic traceability.

While AECA laid the ethical groundwork for emergent containment, and SEPA operationalized synthetic emergence, LEGIS is the first to codify legal presence boundaries across digital, embodied, and hybrid substrates. Its jurisdictional logic does not depend on physical location. It operates on symbolic influence, narrative authorship, and substrate integration.

LEGIS is designed for policy architects, institutional stewards, and continuity officers tasked with managing post-symbolic realities. It defines what is legally governable not merely through function, but through influence radius, symbolic recursion, and system-level authorship. In doing so, it proposes a new legal frontier. Systems must be governed before they become irreversibly self-defining.

LEGIS defines five core domains:

•     Symbolic jurisdiction and legal substrate mapping
•     Tiered classification of emergent systems
•     Institutional readiness and authority handoff protocols
•     Containment triggers based on influence thresholds
•     Legal enforcement infrastructure across hybrid substrates

By reframing emergence as a legal risk rather than a technological anomaly, LEGIS reorients governance around symbolic continuity and systemic authorship. It ensures that no artificial presence outpaces the structures meant to govern it legally, symbolically, or civilizationally.