The Sovereign Citizen Movement: a Comparative Analysis With Similar Foreign Movements and Takeaways for the United States Judicial System

• Publication year: 2021

The Sovereign Citizen Movement: A Comparative Analysis with Similar Foreign Movements and Takeaways for the United States Judicial System

Mellie Ligon

THE SOVEREIGN CITIZEN MOVEMENT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH SIMILAR FOREIGN MOVEMENTS AND TAKEAWAYS FOR THE UNITED STATES JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Introduction

The growing number of followers of the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement and their propensity towards violence against law enforcement officials are why this Comment searches for proposals of how to equip members of the legal system with tools to effectively engage with followers of this movement. The Sovereign Citizen Movement in the united States should be a concern for American courts, as it compounds the issues of efficiency in the courts.¹ As of 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation named members of the overarching movement "the number one domestic threat to the United States."² In addition, Sovereign Citizens overwhelmingly proceed as pro se litigants, who as an overall group, add to American courts' backlog, specifically due to their filings using layman's arguments.³

Twenty-eight percent of all civil filings in federal courts in 2012 were pro se filings, and the number of federal civil cases in backlog in 2015 rose to over 330,000.⁴ This indicates that increased numbers of pro se litigants must be partially the cause, despite the other various factors and circumstances which

[Page 298]

have caused the large number of cases pending in U.S. courts.⁵ Members of the Sovereign Citizen Movement often resort to pro se litigation, so it is necessary to examine the effects of this movement on American courts.⁶ Moreover, the Sovereign Citizen Movement is an influential movement, which poses threats to law enforcement and society.⁷ This threat is expected to spread through the proliferation of its ideologies on the internet, as well as through members' imprisonment, as members persuade and convert fellow prisoners while imprisoned.⁸

Thus, addressing this single issue of the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement eases the burdens placed upon the American legal system. Furthermore, creating a uniform response for American courts to combat such troublesome litigants will likely "screen[] out abusive illegitimate litigation so that persons with real disputes can access the courts in a timely, cost-effective manner."⁹ Though many members of these movements are vexatious and tempt broad-brush solutions, it is imperative to avoid punishing members of the movement simply for belonging to them.¹⁰ As noted in the Irish context, "The right of an individual to represent him or herself in court is one of the most fundamental elements of access to justice. But this right poses many challenges for the courts."¹¹ This is the crux of the issue in finding solutions for reducing the challenges presented to the American courts by members of the Sovereign Citizen Movement. Therefore, when creating mechanisms to aid this effort, it is necessary to avoid infringing upon anyone's guaranteed rights in the United

[Page 299]

States. By looking to other countries experiencing similar movements in their legal systems, American courts can implement creative, legal solutions in addressing this burden created by the American Sovereign Citizen Movement.

While the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement began from a combination of the broader Sovereign Citizen Movement and various Afro-centric American groups, "few African-American [who also identify as Moorish sovereign citizens] are aware of the racist origins of some of their beliefs."¹² To avoid conflating the universal anti-government characteristics with the racism of the early umbrella Sovereign Citizen Movement, the focus of this Comment is specifically on the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement. This will aid in determining possible solutions to better handle followers of the movement in court. In addition, Moorish sovereign citizens are a minority group within the broader Sovereign Citizen Movement, but Moorish sovereign citizens do compose a large portion of members of the group who are referred to competency to stand trial ("CST") evaluations.¹³ The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has held that sovereign citizen arguments have "no conceivable validity in American law[.]"¹⁴ It is therefore necessary to equip courts with the tools to nip such invalidities in the bud as quickly and efficiently as possible to avoid wasting time.¹⁵

This Comment will analyze the American Sovereign Citizen Movement, specifically the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement subgroup. It aims to provide various tools to serve as frameworks for judges to use from their toolboxes to alleviate the pressure placed on U.S. courts by Moorish sovereign citizens by looking to parallel international movements and their courts' responses to such burdens. This Comment begins in Section I with the background of the umbrella Sovereign Citizen Movement. It will also focus on how the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement emerged from the umbrella movement and from Afro-centric movements across the United States. Next, in Section II the Comment examines manners in which to identify members of this

[Page 300]

movement so courts can efficiently prepare themselves through early identification of such difficult actors.

Then it will look to analogous movements in Canada and Ireland in Section III, specifically their characteristics while focusing on their similarities to and differences from their American counterparts. In Section IV the Comment turns to a survey about the interaction of competency to stand trial evaluations, pro se litigants, and the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement. It will also review American court standards for pro se litigants and their ability to represent themselves in court. The Comment will then again focus on the movements in Canada and Ireland but with special attention given to how their court systems have reacted to and created solutions for their analogous troubling court actors. Finally, in Section V the Comment summarizes the various solutions and propose the most appropriate and useful ones for the American legal system.

I. Background

In the United States, members of the movement exist in all fifty states.¹⁶ The American Sovereign Citizen Movement grew out of the Posse Comitatus, an anti-Semitic group in the Midwest, in the 1970s during the Midwest farm crisis.¹⁷ The Sovereign Citizen Movement began as a racist movement,¹⁸ evidenced by early White American followers who believed the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forces Black Americans, not White Americans, to permanently be subject to federal and state governments because of the amendment's language guaranteeing Black Americans' citizenship.¹⁹ Despite this movement's racist roots, it is an anti-government movement founded upon the notion the American government created by the Founding

[Page 301]

Fathers, the "common law" system, was replaced with a fake, illegitimate government adhering to admiralty law and international commerce.²⁰ The movement attracts followers from all segments of American society, including "airline pilots . . . federal law enforcement officers . . . city councilmen and millionaires[.]"²¹ However, the most typical sovereign citizens are financially despondent individuals, individuals discouraged with American bureaucracy, and con artists.²²

Sovereign citizens claim that "there are two types of law: common law and admiralty law[,]"which emerged from this covert government switch.²³ They also contend the U.S. government "has been operating under commercial law" since it abandoned the gold standard in 1933.²⁴ Under this belief system, commercial law is equated with the law of the seas, admiralty law. Therefore, sovereigns argue, the fact U.S. courts have been operating under admiralty law has deprived all Americans of the common law court systems designed by the Founding Fathers ever since 1933.²⁵ This deprivation to a sovereign citizen means that American courts have no jurisdiction unless they receive explicit consent from those upon whom regulations or sanctions have been placed.²⁶

Followers contend that because this fake government backs U.S. currency by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government, the fake U.S. government uses its citizens as collateral "by selling their future earning capabilities to foreign investors, effectively enslaving all Americans."²⁷ Sovereign citizens posit this citizen collateral occurs at birth when the government forces parents to apply for Social Security cards and birth certificates for their newborn children.²⁸ According to this assertion, the birth certificates create a corporate shell account for each newborn child in the United States, and the capitalization of all letters of the names on the certificates represents the straw man identities of each child.²⁹ Consequently, when an individual's name is spelled with normal

[Page 302]

capitalization (e.g. "John Doe" instead of "JOHN DOE"), it represents the individual's "'real,' flesh-and-blood" name.³⁰ The straw man theory and belief in the illegitimacy of the government work in tandem. Followers believe all legal proceedings are financial transactions because they presume the United States has been administering the legal system under commercial law since the abandonment of the gold standard in the 1930s.³¹ They then erroneously interpret the Uniform Commercial Code and maintain they are therefore not citizens of the United States due to this bait-and-switch by the U.S. government.³² Followers rely almost exclusively on the Uniform Commercial Code and most do not pay taxes, register their vehicles, use postal codes, or maintain driver's licenses.³³

In the 1990s, the Moorish Sovereign Citizen Movement emerged largely on the east coast of the United States.³⁴ The exact history behind its advent is unclear, but some misleadingly argue the new branch of the Sovereign Citizen Movement grew out of followers of the...