Rights erosion, courtroom alchemy, and the machinery of control
SYSTEMIC is an investigative series within The Obsidian Key, focused on how civil liberties in the United Kingdom are incrementally eroded through legislation, policy layering, discretionary enforcement, and procedural normalisation.
The emphasis is mechanism-first rather than rhetorical. Each investigation traces how crisis language becomes law, how law becomes routine practice, and how routine practice reshapes what individuals are permitted to say, do, assemble around, or refuse.
The series examines statutes, policing culture, court process, surveillance regimes, and administrative pressure points, with attention to how intent is often obscured by technical compliance and fragmented accountability.
SYSTEMIC is deliberately UK-specific. Questions of global power, imperial strategy, and external coercion are explored elsewhere under Empire Codes. This series documents what occurs when control architectures are domesticated and directed inward.