So-called “sovereign citizens” make up a collection of people with vaguely similar beliefs about government and the law. I say so-called not to deride people for calling themselves that, but rather because they often do not call themselves that. Instead, it has become a label that people in the mainstream use to describe individuals with such beliefs. People within the “SovCit movement” are likely to describe themselves as “free Men and Women,” “private individuals,” “private citizens,” “state citizens,” “American nationals,” “state nationals,” and so on. They sometimes do describe themselves as “sovereign”.
You know just enough to get yourself in trouble. Using “sovereign” and “citizen” together is proof of that. Proof that you don’t know what either term really is! If one is “sovereign” he is not a “citizen.” A citizen is a subject. Same thing. You are a citizen OF something just like you would be a subject OF something. One is in submission to false authority by being a citizen or a subject. If you are sovereign then you reject submission to anyone with the exception of his/her Maker. If you are a state national you are sovereign and subject to no one. PERIOD
The problem with trying to characterize anything in this movement is that there are very few consistent beliefs. To some, even the word “you” is objectionable and they use “thou” instead. What sovereign citizens do have in common is an obsession with language and a conspiratorial outlook on how language is used.
The driving vs. traveling argument
One of the most common arguments made by sovereign citizens when pulled over by police is that they are not driving, but rather traveling. They believe this distinction is important as to them “driving” means operating a vehicle for commercial purposes (like shipping or transportation), which can be regulated. “Traveling” on the other hand (including by automobile) is an unfettered right everyone has and which cannot be restricted by the government.
Now, it is obviously the case that in common parlance driving literally just means traveling by car, truck, etc. Sovereign citizens think this is a trick designed to make people admit to driving and thus place themselves under the government’s jurisdiction. People in mainstream society think that what they want to do is drive (when they actually want to travel) so they get a driver’s license, thereby supposedly entering a contract with the government that enables the government to enforce statutes and ordinances.
The people, by legally contracting through registration and licensing, become subject to the policing powers of the incorporated government operating in commerce, but in the Common Law jurisdiction – the national and supreme Law of the Land, such contracts are only valid when they are entered into knowingly, intentionally, and voluntarily.
…
A “traveler” in a non-commercial capacity, if stopped on the highway, is not required to provide a government issued Driver License or other such documentation. They may indeed have such documents, but if they volunteer them on the highway without any rebuttal they are activating the commercial contracts thereby evidenced, becoming subject to the commercial traffic codes, rules and regulations (and penalties).
Even this idea is somewhat inconsistent. It’s not clear exactly when or how the supposed contracts come into legal effect.
A key idea in the (American) sovereign citizen movement is that the US* has just two judicial jurisdictions: Common Law (“the law of the land”) and Admiralty Maritime Law (“the law of the sea”). To them, the way in which the legal system is fundamentally broken is that the government is forcing people under a maritime jurisdiction when they should be governed by Common Law. The government is doing this as a way to deceive people into giving up their rights willingly.
*Many sovereign citizens would dispute my conflation of the term US with the United States of America.
What’s odd is that sovereign citizens believe the government is committing fraud and “inland piracy” against people, and yet they also believe the government is putting up these complicated legal pretenses like using the word “driving”– pretenses which, according to sovereign citizens, the general populace is not supposed to know about. So what’s the point?
Why would the government attempt to establish legitimate authority under maritime jurisdiction when they are hiding this legitimization from the people and they are just running things the way they want to (possibly illegally) anyway? In other words, why would the government continue the charade rather than simply asserting that people don’t have certain rights? This applies to virtually everything the sovereign citizens say the government does. To give a more specific example, courtrooms often have American flags with gold fringe. Sovereign citizens say that the gold fringe indicates maritime jurisdiction. So why did the government put the flag with gold fringe there? There are a few possibilities.
- The flag with gold fringe is legally required and the court is dutifully following the law, despite simultaneously violating the Constitution and committing fraud, piracy, misconduct, etc.
- The gold fringe is a hint from dissident insiders directed at the people so that they will realize the “truth” that the court is under maritime law.
- The gold fringe is the government flaunting the fact that it’s putting people under maritime law as a way of adding insult to injury.
- The gold fringe is just a tradition that has been unconsciously continued by the government, not knowing it would indicate to people that the court is under maritime law.
None of these seem particularly plausible to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if a sovereign citizen claimed any of these was happening. I wonder about numbers 1 and 2, though, because of how sovereign citizens cite case law. They apparently think there are/were (at least somewhat) honest judges out there, such that there are good and correct opinions that sovereign citizens can cite. It’s not clear how these judges fit into the overall system, but I could see it causing internal conflict in one of two ways. First, it could be the case that honest judges are the ones in charge, and dishonest judges try to follow the law just enough not to get caught (e.g., putting the gold-fringed flag in the courtroom). Alternatively, it could be the case that the dishonest judges are more in charge and the honest judges try to subtly give out clues as to what’s really going on (e.g., by putting the gold-fringed flag in the courtroom). Neither of these ideas makes any sense. Just to reiterate, this all applies to all the wacky things sovereign citizens say the government is doing, including using terms like “drive,” “motor vehicle,” “person,” and so on. Just like the government could easily decide to put a different American flag in the courtroom, they could in practicality use terms like “travel,” “automobile,” “human being,” and so on with impunity.
Regarding cases cited by sovereign citizens, this is usually just a mess. Consider the “Driving is Commerce” page that I have referenced a few times, which cites many different cases.
- The first two cases, Kent vs.[sic] Dulles and Schactman v. Dulles, concern the rights of citizens to obtain a passport. They have nothing to do with highways or automobiles.
- The third and fifth cases, Chicago Motor Coach v. Chicago and Chicago Coach Co. v. City of Chicago, are the same case (the second name is the correct one). Moreover, both pieces of quoted text appear to be fabricated. See the quotes below:
- Fake quote 1: “The use of the highway for the purpose of travel and transportation is not a mere privilege, but a common fundamental right of which the public and individuals cannot rightfully be deprived.”
- Fake quote 2: “No State government entity has the power to allow or deny passage on the highways, byways, nor waterways…Travel is not a privilege requiring, licensing, vehicle registration, or forced insurances.” I think the term “forced insurances” is a dead giveaway that this quote is made up. Nothing in this case has anything to do with insurance, but it’s a sticking point for sovereign citizens.
- A real quote from the case: “Even the legislature has no power to deny to a citizen the right to travel upon the highway and transport his property in the ordinary course of his business or pleasure, though this right may be regulated in accordance with the public interest and convenience. Where one undertakes, however, to make a greater use of the public highways for his own private gain, as by the operation of a stage coach, an omnibus, a truck or a motor bus, the State may not only regulate the use of the vehicles on the highway but may prohibit it. A municipality can do so only under a power expressly granted by the State.” (Emphasis added. Source.) Notice that this does distinguish between private and commercial use of highways, but affirms the the power of the government to regulate private travel. The point of this case is that the state has even more power over commercial travel (to prohibit it entirely), although the city does not have this power unless given it.
- The fourth case, Thompson v. Smith, is a funny one. The quote cited almost appears in the text of the case, but it was paraphrased slightly. More importantly (and ironically), the case actually says the exact opposite of what the sovereign citizens are claiming.
- Cited quote: “The right of the citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, either by carriage or by automobile, is not a mere privilege which a city may prohibit or permit at will, but a common law right which he has under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
- Actual quote: “The right of a citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon in the ordinary course of life and business is a common right which he has under his right to enjoy life and liberty, to acquire and possess property, and to pursue happiness and safety. It includes the right in so doing to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day. This right is not a mere privilege which a city may permit or prohibit at will.” (Source.)
- The case continues: “The right of a citizen to travel and transport property and to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day may, under the police power, be regulated by the city in the interest of public safety and welfare; but the city may not arbitrarily or unreasonably prohibit or restrict it, nor may it permit one to exercise it and refuse to permit another of like qualifications, under like conditions and circumstances, to exercise it. … The regulation of the exercise of the right to drive a private automobile on the streets of the city may be accomplished in part by the city by granting, refusing, and revoking under rules of general application permits to drive an automobile on its streets; but such permits may not be arbitrarily refused or revoked, or permitted to be held by some and refused to others of like qualifications, under like circumstances and conditions.” (Emphasis added.) So this case is saying that even though a citizen has a right to travel, the manner in which someone travels can be restricted by the government (as long as these restrictions are fair and applied consistently). In particular, it affirms the power of the government to issue driver’s licenses.
- In the next case, Robertson vs.[sic] Department of Public Works, the quote is actually there, however it comes from the dissenting opinion (which is not part of case law) and, like the others, still affirms the government’s power to regulate travel. This case is regarding when commercial driver’s licenses can be denied and how commercial travel can be regulated. This being decided in 1934 has to do with the government working out early policy regarding cars and trucks. It was not well established at that time how licensing and regulations should work. The government was grappling with questions like whether full and empty trucks should be treated differently.
Without belaboring the point further, those are the most important cases cited on this particular page. In other places where I’ve seen sovereign citizens cite court cases, it’s been similar; generally their quote is either not there or taken out of context.
What about sovereign citizens’ assertion that “driving has always been a profession“? Well, “Driving is Commerce” cites two dictionary entries for “driver”.
Driver. A person employed in the engagement or activity of operating or conducting a motor vehicle or passenger vehicle transporting persons or property for hire or compensation on the public highways.
Hamilton’s Dictionary of Commercial Terms, 3rd Edition (1968), p. 43.
At first, this may look like it supports the sovereign citizens’ argument, but there are a couple problems. First, this is from a dictionary of commercial terms, so it’s going to give the definition as it applies to the context of commerce and not, for example, the definition of “driver” in golf. When a person at a bus company mentions a driver, they mean an employee whose job it is to operate a bus. The second and more significant problem with this entry is that I can’t find Hamilton’s Dictionary of Commercial Terms anywhere except when this definition is mentioned on sovereign citizen sites. As far as I know this is a made up definition.
Next:
Driver. One employed in conducting or operating a coach, carriage, wagon, or other vehicle.
Bouvier’s Law Dictionary, 4th Edition.
This entry is the more interesting of the two. It’s from the 19th century before cars were invented, and I initially thought that a more modern definition might not line up with sovereign citizens’ beliefs so well. To my surprise, I found the following:
One employed in conducting a coach, carriage, wagon, or other vehicle, with horses, mules, or other animals, or a bicycle, tricycle, or motor car, though not a street railroad car.
And check out what thelawdictionary.org has to say about “employed”:
This signifies both the act of doing a thing and the being under contractor orders to do it.
Man, I thought, this is the stuff sovereign citizens should be presenting! This absolutely makes it sound like their theory about driving is correct, and thelawdictionary.org seems like a totally mainstream site. It’s the second result when I Google “law dictionary”. This moment gave me some insight into how people can get sucked into the sovereign citizen rabbit hole. There are things out there that genuinely make them seem correct.
So what’s the catch? Well, it turns out thelawdictionary.org actually pulls from Black’s Law Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1910), a perennial favorite among sovereign citizens. In fact, astute readers will observe that this very definition was quoted in the image from “Driving is Commerce” above! So actually I had not found a modern definition, and for that I would have to go to Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th ed. (2004), which has the following entry (p. 533).
Driver. 1. A person who steers and propels a vehicle.
2. A person who herds animals; a drover.
This certainly shows that driving is no longer only considered a profession. Even so, it may still be that sovereign citizens are correct that historically driving was a profession. This actually gets at one of the core beliefs of sovereign citizens: that words have very specific meanings and when usage changes over time the new meanings are “wrong”. It’s like they think English crystallized sometime around the 19th century and everything since then has been misuse and abuse of the language. If “driving” implied employment back then, then it must always really mean that, regardless of how people use the word.
On one hand, sovereign citizens are partly correct about driving historically being a profession. When driving involved managing animals, far fewer people drove themselves places. Driving a carriage, Hansom cab, etc. was a fairly specialized skill. Even after automobiles were invented, early on, they were too expensive for ordinary people to own and too complicated for wealthy owners to operate. By the 1920s people driving their own cars was more common, and I think it is likely that the term “driver” fell away from its association with a profession during this time.
On the other hand, the concept of “driving” has always been more general and could always refer to things other than vehicles or animals. It essentially means to push something so that it moves, or, more figuratively, to compel something into a certain state.
drive (v.)
Old English drifan “to compel or urge to move, impel in some direction or manner; to hunt (deer), pursue; to rush against” (class I strong verb; past tense draf, past participle drifen), from Proto-Germanic *dreibanan (source also of Old Frisian driva “I lead, impel, drive (away),” Old Saxon driban, Dutch drijven, Old High German triban, German treiben, Old Norse drifa, Gothic dreiban “to drive”), perhaps from PIE root *dhreibh- “to drive, push,” but it may be a Germanic isolated word.
Used in Old English of nails, ships, plows, vehicles, cattle; in Middle English of bargains. Meaning “compel or incite to action or condition of any kind” (drive mad) is by late 12c. Sense of “work with energy, labor actively” is c. 1200; that of “aim a blow” is by early 14c.. Transitive meaning “convey (someone) in a carriage,” later an automobile, is from 1660s. The original sense of “pushing from behind” was altered in Modern English by application to automobiles. Related: Driving.
Thus “driver” in the sense of golf is totally in line with the word’s historical meaning, whereas “driver” as a person who drives a car is a recent, more metaphorical use. But like I said, because sovereign citizens think English crystallized in the 1800s, it is the usage at that particular time that they go by.
It’s also worth noting that “driver” was never a ubiquitous term for that profession in English. Other words include teamster, coachman, cabbie, chauffeur, etc.
In conclusion, laws passed in the last century that refer to a “driver” or “driving” are talking about operating an automobile or other vehicle in the ordinary sense and this has nothing to do with using highways for commerce or maritime law. Precedents cited by sovereign citizens themselves establish that, while people have an inherent freedom to travel, the mode in which they do so may be regulated by the government, up to and including issuing and revoking driver’s licenses. The idea that “driver” is always a profession is not supported linguistically, but rather is an artifact of the culture of transportation around the turn of the 20th century. This just happens to be the time when sovereign citizens’ favorite editions of certain law dictionaries were published.
It gets worse
So, all of the preceding was just to show an example of how sovereign citizens are weird about language. I selected that example because it is very common and very typical. However, there is something they are even weirder about, and this is where “legalese” comes in. To most of us, legalese is an informal term for the confusing and highly technical language often used in legal documents. To my knowledge, the main reasons why legalese exists are twofold: first, it’s written in a way meant to reduce ambiguity, and second, as part of a specialized field, legal documents contain a lot of jargon. This jargon may include ordinary words used in highly specific and perhaps unusual ways. The reason why legalese persists may also have to do with simple cultural tradition.
To sovereign citizens, legalese is an intentional smokescreen. Now, that by itself would be an alright conspiracy theory. I wouldn’t buy it, but I don’t really know anything that directly contradicts the idea that lawyers, lawmakers, judges, etc. are colluding to obfuscate legal processes. But no, there’s more to it. Sovereign citizens think that legalese involves so-called “flip words”:
I think the flipped word is the French version or the romance language version, where the adjective follows the noun. Such as ‘blue paper’ being ‘papier bleu’. The courts are speaking a French version of English, where the words are English, but the adjective still follows the noun.
The body of law often referred to as ‘Law Merchant‘ should really be translated to be Merchant Law. We should refer to it as Merchant Law. It is law used by the merchants, when they set up shop in the coastal towns. Their law, the merchant law, applied in those areas.
The problem is that through what may be inland piracy, the merchant law has been applied to most dealings inland. The merchants have taken over.
But now we know they’re using a quasi French-English, that some people may also call legalese.
Another key point is that no matter how the words are presented, the meaning of a word or phrase in a legal setting is vastly different that the everyday meaning. The word ‘resident’ means an office holder in legalese, whereas in the incorrect common dialect, people think it means someone who lives in a state or country.
–educatedinlaw.org (emphasis in the original)
Note the dig at coastal cities and the phrase “incorrect common dialect”.
I’ve buried the lead a bit here, but the punchline is that they think words ending in -ship imply the whole maritime law thing. Citizenship? Ship citizen. Leadership? Ship leader. Sportsmanship? Ship sportsman. Wait, I’m not sure I’ve seen that last one…
Yes, as it turns out, there are around 1,000 words in English with the suffix -ship, and most of them don’t make any sense when flipped around. The suffix itself is related to the word “shape,” as in “the form of (something)” while the noun “ship” has a different origin and has basically always referred to water going vessels. Moreover, English has plenty of other words and suffixes like -hood. Does fatherhood mean hood father? A dad with a hat?
The most classic flip word by far has to be “understand” meaning “stand under”. The idea is that when asked “Do you understand the charges?” you are really being asked “Do you stand under the charges?” Ah, it’s a trick! Again, why would the court try to trick people like this when they clearly don’t have to? They have the real-life power to sentence people regardless of whether they say they stand under the charges and whether it’s truly legal for them to do so or not. In any event, this can lead to sovereign citizens carefully responding that they “comprehend” or, more bizarrely, saying that they “overstand”.
Your overstanding is… not correct.
The fundamental problem with this kind of word game is that there are tens of thousands of words available (depending on your vocabulary) and from that vast collection we can come up with all kinds of patterns and coincidences. (See also my post Why do unlikely things happen?) Interestingly, “understand” is apparently related to “stand” and “under,” but not in the way sovereign citizens suppose.
The flip word thing is partly based in reality. As pointed out in the quote, English and French have different word order and in particular adjectives and nouns are usually reversed. The American legal system derives from the English legal system, which notably did use French for hundreds of years in the Middle Ages (as well as Latin, which is like French and unlike English). This resulted in Law French, one of the many reasons legal documents are hard to understand to this day.
But again, this grain of truth is accompanied by a boatload of falsehoods (hood falses). There is again this idea of words having true, immutable meanings, but additionally this golden nugget of an idea:
The alternate meaning of the word ‘understand’ to actually mean ‘stand under’ has been written about extensively. I did recognize the true meaning, at least when one is talking to police or a judge. But now, after thinking about the word ‘workplace’, I firmly know the word understand means ‘stand under’.
Flipping the parts of a word should not and does not change the meaning. Flipping the parts of a word can tell us the true meanings of words.
–educatedinlaw.org (emphasis added)
It’s not clear exactly how or when we’re supposed to flip parts of words. Most words, if you flip the first half and second half, become nonsense. Compound (pound com) words or words with prefixes or suffixes may form something intelligible but usually still meaningless.
I think looking for hidden patterns in words and numbers can be a dangerous road to go down for the conspiratorially minded, since you are guaranteed to find something if you look hard enough and long enough. They may be contrived, but they can also be convincing.
The power of words
Rather than quote the whole thing, I encourage you to read this page in its entirety.
I will leave you with this “maxim” from Living In The Private:
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. False in one thing, false in everything.
Commentary and postscript
Multiple times in this post I have questioned why the supposedly illegitimate government would jump through hoops to deceive people in the way sovereign citizens are claiming. I think I’ve figured it out, but rather than going back and amending my questioning of it I’ll explain here. I’ve known about sovereign citizens for a while, for example from münecat’s video on the topic. Recently, though, I’ve been watching videos of court proceedings involving sovereign citizens. You see, during the pandemic many courts had to switch to holding hearings over Zoom. Since then, some courts have continued these “virtual hearings” for the sake of convenience and efficiency. The audiovisual recording is public record, so anyone who wants to can get their hands on it. Of course, the vast majority of these recordings are incredibly boring, so there are folks out there that go through the videos and identify interesting parts to put on YouTube, like when sovereign citizens try to argue with the judge. There are several channels that do this.
The point is that I’ve spent hours now watching sovereign citizens getting shut down or even found in contempt of court when they try to disrupt the legal process with their arguments. It was only after this that I began reading sovereign citizen websites, and my perspective was influenced by watching those videos. It seems so obvious to me, especially after the videos, that sovereign citizens simply can’t succeed with what they’re trying to do because it is complete nonsense. But of course that’s not how sovereign citizens see it. They think they can win. This is really important for explaining what they think the government is doing.
If the government was merely fraudulent and forcing their rules on people through violence, the sovereign citizens wouldn’t have any confidence in being able to do what they please. Instead, they seem to think that the government is mostly(?) abiding by the letter of the law. With respect to things like the gold-fringed maritime flag, it corresponds to this possibility I suggested earlier:
The flag with gold fringe is legally required and the court is dutifully following the law, despite simultaneously violating the Constitution and committing fraud, piracy, misconduct, etc.
The key here is that, when sovereign citizens go to court and get shut down, they think their rights are being violated, but that’s not what they expect to happen. They expect the court to abide by their interpretation of the law. In other words, it is not quite as inconsistent as the quote above makes it seem.
But how, you might ask, is this … created without violating the constitution or the laws protecting property? The answer is that you must CONSENT to it! And, that to entice you to consent, they must bribe or entice you to give up rights in exchange for privileges.
It is still somewhat inconsistent. Sovereign citizens seem to be a bit shaky on what exactly the government is doing legally and what is illegal corruption etc. Certainly they don’t think all of this is taking place legally, see e.g. this list of “unlawful” acts of government or this even more comprehensive list.
Honestly, the more I look into this the more confusing it becomes.
thoughts on mind 