Noether-Style Reasoning for Ethics: Representation-Invariant Harm Accounting and the Gauge Analogy of Normative Coherence

We demonstrate that the mathematical structure underlying gauge theory in physics and coherence verification in ethics is formally analogous, and that this analogy has profound consequences. Applying Noether-style reasoning to the re-description symmetry required by ethical consistency, we derive an accounting constraint: . Just as physical observables cannot depend on gauge choices, ethical harm cannot appear or disappear merely through re-description. Genuine repair is possible---but it must register consistently across all representations. This is not metaphor but formal analogy: the same structural pattern, applied to different domains---though, we stress, a structural analogy and not an identity, since the ethics side fixes no metric, Lagrangian, or dynamics. We develop the correspondence between electrodynamics and ethics, identifying harm density _ with charge density, harm current J_ with electric current, and ---as an illustrative analogy rather than a derivation from an ethical action---the accounting equation _ / t + J_ = , where represents genuine harm generation or repair. Incoherence is detected when changes under re-description. We are explicit throughout about which claims are load-bearing (the coherence/invariance constraint, which is testable) and which are suggestive analogy (the field equations); the empirical support we report is preliminary and carries a stated encoder confound. We explore the implications for consequentialism, retributive justice, restorative justice, and the foundations of moral philosophy. We argue that this structural correspondence suggests a deeper mathematical framework---possibly rooted in information geometry or homotopy type theory---underlying both physical and normative reasoning. Throughout, we maintain epistemic humility: we claim not that this structure reveals metaphysical necessity, but that it provides a powerful, empirically grounded tool for understanding the formal constraints on coherent ethical reasoning. The implications for AI alignment are immediate: systems whose harm accounting is representation-dependent are incoherent in a mathematically precise sense. Author preprint deposited for archival and citation. Draft — pending author review.