Judgement at this desk is a court of one: the card, sitting in judgement alone, with no advocates. A frame is not defended by the effort it cost, the mood of its sitting or the credits already spent on it. It is read against five lines, and it passes or it does not.
The hearing is short and always in the same order. Identity first, line by line. Then craft: hands, edges, light, clutter. Then purpose: what job was this frame hired to do, and does it do it? A frame that fails identity is dismissed without reaching the later questions, however beautifully it might have answered them.
Sentences are equally plain. Keepers are finished in order — repair, swap, upscale. Near-misses earn exactly one editor pass. Everything else is a cull, and culls are not appealed, because the court’s record — the card — does not change between hearings.
A court of one sounds severe. In practice it is the kindest arrangement a series can have: the same law, read the same way, at every sitting, forever.