Internationalisation of Pseudolaw: Sovereign Citizen Arguments in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

The Internationalisation of Pseudolaw

Introduction

Pseudolaw involves adopting legal argumentation forms while substituting content and principles with a distinct set of beliefs. This article explores pseudolegal claims made by the sovereign citizen movement in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, demonstrating the internationalisation of pseudolaw and its adaptation to local legal discourses. Public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many citizens to confront the coercive nature of the State, leading some to employ pseudolegal techniques. This article maps the contours of pseudolaw in Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand courts, tracking its evolution and adaptation in common law systems, and offering suggestions to respond to it. The study is motivated by the harms caused by these legal arguments. Pseudolegal arguments do not work, yet they have broader societal consequences, transforming simple legal issues into complex and harmful ones, wasting time and money, and creating opportunities for scammers. Sovereign citizens are often politically motivated and occasionally violent. The proliferation of their arguments indicates an international spread and mobilization, acting as a bellwether of social discontent and deeper political-economic concerns.

Pseudolaw as a Distinct Legal Phenomenon

Pseudolegal arguments are popular despite being rejected by courts worldwide. It is a unique phenomenon marked by internal coherence. Litigants use selective readings of legal texts and draw from ancient, historical, and international legal instruments like the United States Constitution, the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights 1688, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Bible. Pseudolaw refers to false rules that appear legal but are spurious. Courts describe it as "obvious nonsense" or "legal gibberish," yet it is an integrated legal apparatus with its own confounding theories and constitutes an alternative legal universe. Susan P Koniak argues pseudolaw is a form of law with its own interpretation system. Donald Netolitzky explains that pseudolaw is a unique legal system, supported by a story that challenges regular law, serving as an anti-authority tool. David Griffin highlights that pseudolaw adherents' archaic terminology aims to present the author as a wielder of true legal authority. Pseudolaw comprises three core elements:

1. Co-opted Form: Borrows legal language and argument forms to appear like accepted legal reasoning, using statutes and judicial decisions to mirror normal legal argumentation.

2. Contra-Narratives: Aims to provide substitute narratives, creating an alternative legal universe with its own norms and principles, distinct from the conventional legal universe.

3. Internalised Beliefs: Adherents genuinely believe their doctrines represent the true position of the law, viewing mainstream law as departed from legal truth.

These components distinguish pseudolaw from conspiracy theories (which lack legal forms) and misinformed litigants-in-person (who lack the contra-narrative). Pseudolaw adherents are often nostalgic for a time when the law was right and good. The sovereign citizen movement has mainstreamed pseudolaw, but other movements also employ it, including freemen-on-the-land, micronations, Detaxers, Moorish Sovereign Citizens, anti-vaxxers, and anti-tax protestors. Despite this, there have been relatively few attempts to study the ecosystem of harmful, false legal beliefs. The sovereign citizen variant has become internationalised, with a firm presence in Australia and New Zealand, yet there is no substantive academic review of these arguments in these countries.

The Sovereign Citizen Movement

The US sovereign citizen movement consists of loosely affiliated individuals connected by antagonism toward the government and a conspiratorial interpretation of the law. They believe they possess an uncorrupted understanding of the legal system, where individuals are sovereign and not bound by laws unless they contract with the government. The movement is decentralised with no single leader or doctrine, but a shared belief exists in utilising legal forms to avoid state law. Common beliefs include reciting phrases to avoid legal obligations. Given the amorphous nature, adherents borrow from other anti-government groups. Differences between movements are based on national origins or cultural divides rather than pseudolegal theories. The sovereign citizen movement evolved from overlapping groups in the US in the 1990s:

• Posse Comitatus: A radical right-wing Christian Identity sect rejecting state authority higher than the county sheriff, believing the US federal government is controlled by a Jewish conspiracy.

• Patriot or Militia Movements: Accepting state-level authority but believing the federal government interferes with fundamental liberties.

• Common Law Court Movement: Purporting to withdraw consent to government and establishing their own local judicial systems.

• Anti-Tax Protestor Movement: Claiming federal income tax is unconstitutional on frivolous grounds.

The sovereign citizen movement appears to have prospered in recent years with estimates suggesting up to 500,000 Americans were sovereign citizens in 2022. Adherents advance their beliefs through courts, reciting words and forms to compel judicial confirmation of magical results. Courts are often befuddled by pseudolegal claims. Rooke ACJ described the material as never making any sense, while Judd J noted that arguments are often comprised of random, incomprehensible statements. Sovereign citizens may contest state authority but use the legal system to pursue their opponents, filing false liens and fabricated tax reports. These practices can cause significant stress and anxiety, forcing victims to hire lawyers to clear away bogus legal challenges. Sovereign citizens may use the court system or their own courts to harass people. The FBI considers sovereign citizens as anti-government extremists and a domestic terrorist threat. They commit murder, physical assault, threaten officials, impersonate police officers, and engineer white-collar scams. The movement combines extreme individualism with a belief structure that allows adherents to disregard social norms while maintaining that their actions remain lawful. There is a direct line from magical legal argumentation in judicial proceedings to disregard of public health measures, violent protests, and potentially domestic terrorism.

The influence of sovereign citizen pseudolaw is global. American sovereign citizens engaged on speaking tours throughout Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in the 2010s. Numbers have grown since the start of the pandemic. Political activities include confronting police officers and private businesses. Migration has prompted the evolution of pseudolaw as it adapts to local legal discourses. Connections between sovereign citizens and some Indigenous activists are growing. In December 2021, a group calling themselves the Original Sovereigns set up camp outside Old Parliament House in Canberra, referencing the QAnon conspiracy. Protests turned violent, and the group had signed a memorandum of understanding with former Senator Rod Culleton’s Great Australian Party. Similar events have occurred in Aotearoa New Zealand, with anti-vaccine mandate protests appropriating strategies used by Māori activists. These incidents reveal how non-Indigenous individuals and some Indigenous supporters have appropriated the language of Indigenous sovereignty to support conspiracy theorist movements and extreme political ideologies. They also indicate increasing social dissatisfaction, stratification, and alienation. The growing sovereign citizen influence funnels legitimate Indigenous political claims into spurious pseudolegal arguments, increasing alienation, anger, and potentially confrontation and violence.

Patterns of Sovereign Citizen Pseudolaw Argumentation

The absence of a central leader or unifying doctrine makes articulating the precise beliefs of sovereign citizens difficult. They borrow ideas from gurus who spread messages online. Adherents are demographically diverse and have no geographic boundaries. Pseudolegal arguments are surprisingly unified by their methodology and objectives. Common tactics and patterns of legal argument can be tracked in judicial proceedings to construct a relatively accurate picture of those patterns in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Doctrinal legal research identifies key themes and forms of legal argument relied upon by sovereign citizen adherents in litigation. Pseudolaw in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand generally exhibits the six core concepts that Netolizky identified as constituting the pseudolaw memeplex. Three principal forms recurred most often:

1. Strawman Argument: The law does not apply to them because it applies only to artificial persons—the strawman duality.

2. Absence of Individual Consent: Government authority is illegitimate without individual consent; everything is a contract.

3. State Law is Defective: The law was invalidly enacted and is of no legal effect.

The first two patterns are influenced by the US sovereign citizen style of pseudolaw, while the third largely predates that influence. However, sovereign citizen-inspired arguments on this point are becoming more prevalent. Arguments are more fluid than our typology suggests, but it remains a valuable framing device. Below we will explore the core common content of these forms of argumentation and provide illustrative examples of their use in discrete cases.

The Strawman Argument: Artificial and Natural Persons

The strawman argument is the most prominent claim made by sovereign citizens, asserting real, natural individuals are different from fictional legal persons. Individuals are born sovereign, with natural and inalienable rights. Governments must assert authority over that natural person to make them subjects or slaves. Subject formation occurs when governments issue a birth certificate, social security number, or bank account, creating a legal fiction or strawman, giving the government jurisdiction. Sovereign citizens argue they can use the same legal processes to de-subjectify, leading to the idea that debts, liabilities, taxes, and legal responsibilities belong to the straw man rather than the physical individual. Sovereign citizens point to different legal instruments to justify this theory. In Australia, birth certificates spelling the baby's name in all capitals is believed to create a legal duplicate person. Sovereign citizens often write their name or identifier in non-standard ways on legal documents to represent that their natural self is distinguishable from their artificial personality. Court documents sometimes fuel these theories because submissions, motions, and judgments spell out parties’ names in capital letters, giving the court jurisdiction over only the artificial legal person. Similar attempts have been made in Aotearoa New Zealand to identify and distance their natural identity from their legal personality. This strawman argument is also commonly made against tax claims or payment of fees to the government, overlapping with the second pattern involving consent, and gestures towards the third, involving defects in state law. In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, these arguments can coincide with, as well as undermine, Indigenous sovereignty claims. Some courts are now presented with claims that mix sovereign citizen-style pseudolegal argument with Indigenous sovereignty claims. When Indigenous sovereignty issues are inflected with sovereign citizen-style pseudolegal argumentation it can diminish the seriousness of Indigenous claims.

I Do Not Consent to this Contract

A similar but distinct argument revolves around the idea of consent. This form of argument begins from the position that all legislation or authority is a form of contract or predicated on contractual relations.Because a sovereign citizen has not agreed to that contract, they have not consented to the authority of the jurisdiction. Therefore, the law does not apply to them. In the US, sovereign citizens argue individuals are only subject to state or government authority if they consent to federal citizenship. Individuals can apparently renounce their federal citizenship and divest from or killoff their fictitious legal duplicate. This grants them freedom from federal authority to live under common law. A similar type of argument is a freeman-on-the-land argument, which postulates that the claimant is not a subject of all government authority unless they have explicitly consented to that legislation. The source of this argument can be a misunderstanding of clause 39 of the Magna Carta: ‘no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed of property] … or exiled or in any way destroyed … except … by the law of the land’ for others it can be from a misreading of a Latin maxim recorded in an early edition of the American Black’s Law Dictionary dealing with rules of pleading. Maxin qui non negat fatetur translates as “he who does not deny, admits.” Whatever the precise basis, courts across the common law world are unimpressed.
In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the consent line of argumentation is frequently connected to local legal discourses and instruments. Some Australia pseudolaw adherents claim state constitutions constitute original contracts that the federation has somehow compromised. Aotearoa New Zealand is a unitary state with an unentrenched constitution, so the 'consent' argument is more directly applied. All three of these arguments involved a literal application of contracting, it is inferred that it is from the sovereign, the courts find it an overinflated notion. The central problem is that everyone is subject, that laws are not contracts, and their consent is not literal. Claimants that assert contracts are often tangled in strawman or defective state authority arguments to avoid driving offences. Legislations are to be met, regardless of consent.

State Law is Defective

The third major pattern we see in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand is a contention that the relevant law is invalidly enacted or defective and thus without legal effect. We have found that this pattern of pseudolaw argument has a longer history in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand demonstrates that pseudolaw has been percolating in these jurisdictions for some time. The internationalisation of the sovereign citizen pseudolaw has prompted change and adaption in this area. The most prevalent impact that we have is in the intersection of Indigenous sovereignty claims with sovereign citizen styles. Claimed on both Indigenous ancestries to the land and non-Indigenous people, claim fatal errors in laws. With issues in proper seals, English common law superseding, or decimal currency claims. Other unorthodox legal claims have been made, such as the Magna Carta. Clauses involving jury process being the most invoked. Claiming that it has to be a photo for instance, without any witnesses. Such claims have been dismissed in Aotearoa as well. Many claims assert problems in Australia as an independent nation as a political act. Claiming inconsistencies lead to complete invalidity. Further inconsistencies have also come up claiming Australia has signed or broken some form of agreement. Prior internationalisation has also called out to Currency in Australia, Skyring argued that the Currency Act was invalid, and he did not have way to pay income tax. While this claim wasn't validated, and has been attempted to change, it has held strong that some still attempt to. Courts in Australia and Aotearoa do not find claims like these as “having success at all”.

Responding to Pseudolaw

Claims that the State is illegitimate, that the law does not apply in the absence of consent, or that it applies to a separate legally fictitious person distinct from the natural person
are unlikely to be successful. Courts do not and will not accept those arguments. Given the persistence and apparent growth of these arguments, however, how should we respond to pseudolaw?

The Role of Judges

Some adhere to Pseudolaw is they think it may work, that they have misinformed beliefs. It is suggested that The response should be guided by a more structured form of engagement, instead of the mockery and minimalisation. Research suggests that there is value In providing a thorough and explicit rejection. Judgments written with a wider context can disarm The attractiveness of pseudolaw. Judges may also be best positioned to educate and act as an authority on law. Legitimate legal claims and
complaints can be buried under pseudolegal argument. A judge getting tried and letting someone free hearing this, it can be overturned on a whim.

The Role of Courts

There is no guarantee that a patient and thorough rebuttal will work. Procedural
responses or litigation management that may deter adherents will deter some. The Alberta Court of King’s Bench in Canada, for example, has made a list
of stereotypic and unique pseudolaw motifs. The order asks to reject documents and asking them to refile them correctly can Put an end to potentially
abusive litigation without much hassle.

The Role of the Legal Profession

Procedural responses like this are valuable, but there is also a role for the broader legal profession.Law societies and other professional associations should make clear that the people are using oil. If they are a lawyer, their entitlement to practice should be reviewed.

The Need for a Broader Response

Pseudolaw magnifies problems for the individual. Arguments increase societal costs, while others increase administration costs. Individuals are not having a good time that adopt Pseudalaw that indicative of growing social problems, including social unrest,dissatisfaction. Legal systems increasingly alienate populations from meaningful engagement with legal advocates, and there has to be action and recognition of damage this has on citizens.
Sovereign citizen pseudolegal theories are attractive to people looking for a way out of a crisis. The pandemic and the associated health orders prohibited protest, suspended ordinary parliamentary procedures, and put many people’s economic livelihoods at risk. Legal education is too costly. Legal scholarship is behind paywalls. Legal representation requires funding. Pseudolegal forms are often free or relatively cheap to download online. It is time to take pseudolaw seriously.