Paperwork, Pseudo-Law, and Personal Sovereignty: Understanding the Sovereign Citizen

By Jeremy Burris ‘27

Imagine you are driving down the road when the lights of a police car suddenly appear behind you. After pulling to the side of the road, the officer informs you that you were speeding and issues a citation that will cost hundreds of dollars. It would be nice if a single phrase could make the ticket go away, perhaps some legal magic trick that left the officer speechless. Unfortunately, there is no such phrase. However, a growing number of Americans believe otherwise. They think that by saying the right words or using unorthodox legal theories drawn on English common law, they can make themselves immune from any crime under the U.S. legal system. This includes traffic tickets, tax crimes and even criminal prosecution. This belief is most commonly known online as the “sovereign citizen movement.” While it is not viewed favorably by the courts, it does help explain why ordinary disputes can sometimes turn into costly legal battles and, in rare cases, violent confrontations.

The theatrics of the “sovereign citizen argument” reached national attention in the 2022 trial of State v. Darrell Brooks. Many Americans saw how this unorthodox legal reasoning could unfold in a courtroom for the first time. Brooks was charged with killing six people after driving through the Waukesha, Wisconsin Christmas parade. In court, he chose to represent himself, rejected his court-appointed attorneys, went on long, disorganized monologues rejecting the court’s jurisdiction, at times claiming it was a maritime court and at other times a military court. He frequently interrupted proceedings, objecting whenever he was referred to by his legal name and questioning the legitimacy of courtroom symbols, such as the gold-fringed American flag displayed behind the judge’s bench. Brooks delivered lengthy speeches, asserting that the State lacked authority to try him and often clashed with the presiding judge, who eventually ordered his removal from the courtroom. He was forced to attend much of his trial remotely or under strict supervision.

In the end, Brooks was convicted on 76 counts, including six counts of first-degree intentional homicide. The trial was widely televised and heavily discussed on social media, leaving many viewers confused about what Brooks was trying to argue; whether he was presenting a coherent defense or attempting to turn the trial into a spectacle. In reality, Brooks was invoking a recognizable set of beliefs, a loosely connected but persistent legal theory that, while unorthodox, has evolved and spread widely among those who view government authority as illegitimate.

To understand the sovereign citizen argument, it is important to note that it is not a unified or formally recognized legal doctrine. There are general ideas and themes that are commonly accepted within the movement, but different individuals often create their own versions, adding or removing details based on personal beliefs. However, some core components appear consistently across nearly every variation of the argument.

First, sovereign citizens do not believe that there is no United States; rather, they believe that the original United States, founded in 1776, was legitimate, but that it became illegitimate at some point in the 1800s. There are many interpretations of when and how this happened, but two explanations appear most frequently. One is a reading of the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, which they claim transformed the United States into a corporation and replaced the constitutional republic with “United States, Inc.” Another variation argues that the Civil War and the Reconstruction era marked the beginning of a shift in which the federal government replaced constitutional law with commercial law, undermining the legitimacy of the original republic. 

The second major component of sovereign citizen ideology is the “Strawman” or “Dual-Persona” theory.  According to this idea, since the post-1800s government is illegitimate, all official documentation, such as birth certificates, Social Security numbers, tax identification numbers, or even legal names, applies not to a living person, but to a separate legal entity created by the government. Some adherents believe they can separate their “living” identity from this legal “Strawman” by filing certain documents or refusing to “consent” in court, thereby removing the court’s jurisdiction over them. Because they view the United States and its courts as illegitimate, sovereign citizens frequently use phrases such as “I am a sovereign living man, not the entity in all caps,” referring to the supposed corporate version of their name.

Finally, many sovereign citizens believe there are hidden legal or financial loopholes that can be used to reclaim natural rights, cancel debts, or eliminate taxes and criminal charges through specific filings or declarations. While individual beliefs differ, nearly all include some combination of these core ideas. This adaptability has made the ideology resilient, allowing it to evolve over several decades. What began as a set of fringe, often racially motivated beliefs has developed into a decentralized collection of ideas that attract followers from a wide range of backgrounds.

The sovereign citizen movement as it exists today did not appear suddenly; it gradually developed from a blend of anti-government sentiment, tax protests, and religious extremist ideas that began taking shape in the 1960s and 1970s. Its early development is generally attributed to William Potter Gale, a former Army officer and preacher who founded the Posse Comitatus movement. Gale taught his followers that the federal government had lost its legitimacy and that county sheriffs represented the highest lawful authority in the United States. His teachings combined pseudo-legal theories with conspiracy beliefs rooted in white-supremacist and antisemitic ideology, portraying income taxes and the Federal Reserve as tools of globalist control. Some of these ideas would form the foundation of the modern sovereign-citizen worldview: that federal authority is illegitimate and individual sovereignty supersedes national law.

By the 1980s, Gale’s ideas had spread beyond his original circle into a broader anti-tax and “Christian Patriot” movement. Prominent figures reinterpreted the ideology in economic terms, fusing it with growing populist anger during the 1980s farm crisis. During this period, the Strawman theory gained prominence, along with the claim that the government maintained secret financial accounts for every citizen that could be accessed through the proper paperwork. Self-proclaimed “common law courts” emerged, issuing fake judgments and filing retaliatory liens against judges, police officers, and public officials, creating significant administrative burdens for local governments.

Over time, the movement became more decentralized and ideologically diverse. While it originated within overwhelmingly white, rural, far-right circles, its ideas have since diffused across racial, social, and political lines. Research and reporting note an increasing number of adherents from minority and urban communities who encounter these beliefs not through extremist networks, but through debt-elimination seminars, anti-tax workshops, or online “sovereign” templates. In this way, the sovereign citizen movement has evolved less as an organized hierarchy and more as a loose collection of adaptable myths about law and government that adherents selectively incorporate into their personal understanding of citizenship, rights, and civic authority.

Courts at every level have consistently and unequivocally rejected sovereign citizen arguments as frivolous and without legal merit. It is not surprising that traffic court judges, for instance, are reluctant to debate the legitimacy of the entire United States legal system during a routine speeding case. However, there are also fundamental legal reasons why sovereign citizen claims fail. In United States v. Benabe (2011) the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals stated that “regardless of an individual’s claimed status, that person is not beyond the jurisdiction of the courts.”

Sovereign citizen arguments generally collapse in court because they rely on a misunderstanding of jurisdiction. In American law, jurisdiction is determined by geographic territory and the nature of the alleged conduct, not by personal consent or an individual declaration of independence. The claim that the United States operates as a private corporation or under military law likewise lacks any basis in constitutional text, statute, or judicial precedent. Courts have repeatedly sanctioned litigants who attempt to advance these theories, viewing them as an abuse of the judicial process and a waste of judicial resources. Ultimately, the courts’ rejection of sovereign citizen reasoning underscores a central principle of American law: sovereignty derives from the collective consent of the governed, not from an individual’s attempt to separate themselves from that social contract.

Jeremy Burris is a junior majoring in economics and psychology.

Sources

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