The Stronghold source book, in addition to extensively detailing that super-prison, also explores at significant length how the Champions American legal system has adapted to the presence of superhumans, extra-terrestrials, supernatural creatures, etc. Below are the relevant passages from p. 30 of that book:
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The second and more important issue is the rights of so-called "non-humans": alien and extra-dimensional life-forms; artificially intelligent computers, androids, and robots; human mutants; the undead; clones and genetic constructs; and so forth. The Supreme Court dealt with this question in 1978 in six consolidated cases: One Unname-able Alien Life-Form From Tau Ceti 11 v. United States (alien being), Mechanoid-5 v. New York (artificially intelligent android), Ohio v. Julesz the Kind (vampire), Gordon "Powermonger" Lowder v. California (mutants), Phillip "Infrared" Cowling v. United States (mutates), United States v. The Lizard-Thing (extradimensional beings), and Number 32 v. Central Intelligence Agency (human clone with genetic enhancements), 428 U.S. 1471 (1976) (collectively, Tau Ceti 11). The Court stated:
The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection extend to all persons within the United States or its territories. But... the term "persons" means humans. Neither alien and extra-dimensional life forms, nor artificial intelligences, nor the undead are "persons," and hence they have no rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Mutants, mutates, clones, and genetic constructs from human stock are a different matter. Essentially, they are "subspecies" of humanity. In many cases, even the most thorough examination of them cannot differentiate them from humans. The are so close to being human that there is no legal justification for considering them not to be human. We hold that free-willed mutants, mutates, clones, and genetic constructs, from human stock, are 'persons" under the Fourteenth Amendment and are possessed of all rights thereunder.
Id. at 1480-1483 (citations omitted).
In response, Congress passed the Android, Artificial Intelligence, and Alien Life-Form Rights Act of 1979 (usually known as the "Triple-A Act"). The Triple-A Act grants civil rights to most "sentient" beings who can prove that they are independent and free-willed. The law defines "sentience" in various ways, usually relating to the capacity for creative and philosophical thought, not just problem-solving capability. Most states have also enacted laws or passed their own constitutional amendments granting "alternate sentiences" various civil rights. However, this law and all related laws, state and federal, make one exception: the undead do not have civil rights. The legal ramifications of that, particularly the question of who owns the formerly deceased's property, combined with the typically evil or destructive nature of such beings, has kept them outside the ambit of the laws.
During the discussion on the thread, The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated, it was brought to my attention that not only were many folks unfamiliar with that fantasy setting published by Hero Games, but the degree to which other books in the Fantasy Hero line were directly connected to it, providing supporting elaboration for various facets of its world. It occurred to me that Hero's signature sci-fi setting might also suffer from a similar misconception. Just as with the Turakian Age, most of Hero's science-fiction books use the Terran Empire as their default reference, in some cases even more than their fantasy books do for TA.
The centerpiece of the line is, or course, the Terran Empire source book. While the majority of the book details this future era when Humanity has forged a major interstellar empire from a human perspective, it also spends considerable time surveying the history, culture, and technology of other races of the galaxy, major and minor, including character templates. Not everyone has noticed that Steve Long co-wrote TE with sci-fi author and game designer, James Cambias, who brings his rich imagination and narrative style to the project.
Scourges Of The Galaxy, written by Jason Walters, provides extensive backgrounds and full games stats for a host of NPCs, solo or part of organizations, drawn directly from the galaxy of the TE era. In many cases they're elaborations of people or groups mentioned in Terran Empire. Another book, Worlds Of Empire, surveys nearly two dozen alien planets both within and outside the Empire. Quite a few of those are notably exotic compared to Earth. The environment and geography of each planet is laid out, including planetary Mercator projection maps. In a number of cases the planets have native inhabitants, whose history and culture are spelled out in even richer detail than in the core book. Spacers Toolkit provides descriptions, stats and, often, illustrations for even more weapons, equipment, and vehicles used during the Terran Empire era, both by humans and aliens.
Other Hero books, while not set in the TE era, build on precedents established for the Hero Universe's future. Alien Wars by Allen Thomas rolls the timeline back a few centuries, to the human race's protracted war for survival versus the horrific Xenovores. Besides providing a less "imperial" human society, the book adds even more alien races to the galaxy's population.
Shifting out of the Star Hero line, Champions Beyond elaborates the "space/cosmic" side of the company's present-day, superhero-dominated Earth, by infusing most of the aliens from their sci-fi books (adjusted for this earlier period in their history), and adding even more. Nearly eighty species are mentioned in that book, with details ranging from a couple of paragraphs up to multi-page chapters which include home world description comparable to what's in Worlds Of Empire, history, culture, technology, and representative individuals. CB also introduces such classic comic-book sci-fi features as super-advanced aliens, planet-eaters, and "cosmic entities."
For a "Legion of Superheroes" - type campaign, Galactic Champions moves the time line forward past the Terran Empire period, to when Mankind and other interstellar civilizations have formed a vast Galactic Federation. Various "superheroes" and "supervillains" are provided, again based on the history and races established throughout Hero's space books.
The Hero Games website used to host several free supplements to its Star Hero line, which can still be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Several forms for help creating and recording info about alien species, planets, and star sectors are linked to here. You can also download a simple application to randomly generate sectors of your own galaxy, based on the tables from the Star Hero genre book, from here. Finally, on this webpage you'll find links to free color "astropolitical" maps of the Milky Way galaxy at the time of the Terran Empire, in several sizes/resolutions.
You might also go to this archived page of Free Stuff from an earlier incarnation of this website, and scroll down to the download links to Ambrethel Maps: https://web.archive.org/web/20090101013210/http://www.herogames.com/freeStuff.htm
Rigel got a reaction from Patron Wizard in Is there a file icon for HERO (a .ico file)
Rigel reacted to Lord Liaden in Legal status of non-humans
