THE SPEED OF LIGHT AS A NON-ENFORCING MATERIAL RESPONSE LIMIT

This paper examines the speed of light strictly under a mechanism-only, elimination-by-necessity framework to determine whether it functions as a physically enforcing law or as a descriptive response limit. By testing enforcement criteria—force, energy or momentum exchange, reciprocal back-reaction, and locality—the paper shows that the speed of light does not act, constrain, or push physical systems. Removing it as a causal agent leaves all enforcing mechanisms invariant. The conclusion is that the speed of light is not a law that enforces behavior, but a descriptive label summarizing the finite response properties of the underlying physical substrate during interaction and signal propagation.