I have watched some clips of people claiming to be this in American courtrooms. After googling it I still don’t quite get it. These people believe they are not U.S citizens? Or are they actually not U.S citizens? What’s the deal here?

40 comments

  1. People who have just enough knowledge of law to get themselves into trouble but not enough to actually understand it. They think they can use some law from the previous United States government before the US Constitution came around to try to get out of paying taxes or registering their car or any number of things.

    Turns out that no, you can’t use laws from governments that were around before your own to get around current laws. It’s about on par with me, an Arizonan, trying to use rulings from the Spanish New Mexican governor to justify my actions.

  2. They believe themselves to be US Citizens – but they don’t believe the US Government is the legitimate government of the US. And derived from that, they don’t believe the current legal system has any jurisdiction over them.

  4. Self-described “sovereign citizens” are radical deontological libertarians who have convinced themselves that the US government has no authority over them. We usually only hear about them when they are disabused of this notion by being thrown in jail.

  5. It’s a cult built around a scam law theory. They believe themselves to not be under the jurisdiction of US laws. The courts never side with them and they are widely considered to be nut cases. Many of them are racists, and even then on the loony fringe of racism generally.

    They are citizens and *subject* to US law whether they like it or not.

  6. >After googling it I still don’t quite get it.

    That’s because it’s batshit insane.

    In essence, these are people who read the Constitution and law in ludicrously tendentious ways that (in most cases) delegitimize most government power above the county level. They thus presume the right to ignore…basically whatever laws they want. For some reason, they think this will work.

    It does not.

  7. People who think they know the law/are above the law but don’t/aren’t.

    As for whether they believe they’re citizens, it depends on weather they even believe the US exists.

  8. They a bunch of stupid hoes.

    More seriously they try to use some screwy “laws” to more or less say the rules don’t apply to them. It never works out well and makes for good entertainment in my opinion.

  10. Morons, they’re just morons. They think US law is a bipartisan covenant between themselves and the government and that they can choose to ignore the law by claiming they are not US citizens or that they don’t accept the conditions of living under US jurisdiction, therefore it doesn’t apply to them.

    They also do stupid things in court by trying to exploit “loopholes” that don’t actually exist. The one I recall seeing before was that because courtrooms in the US use gold-fringe flags, they’re actually admiralty courts who can only try people for maritime law.

  11. There is no such thing as a “Sovereign Citizen” they are just morons who think they are above the consequence of law

  12. Idiots. They base their claims that they’re immune from the laws of various states because of a misinterpretation of an obscure clause in the Articles of Confederation. A document which holds no power in the united states because of a little thing called the constitution which nullified and replaced it. Nothing they claim is accurate and no one is immune from the law.

  13. It’s a made-up thing that doesn’t exist in any laws or legal documents anywhere.

    Basically, they’re saying they’re not citizens of any country or jurisdiction, and are therefore not bound by any laws.

  15. Basically it’s just crackpot nonsense. They read very specific passages of often outdated legal documents (as in new editions of those documents have been released) to interpret them in extremely specific ways that aren’t really intended (the most commonly seen version of this involves people driving cars without licenses.)

    And that’s the more “sane” side of it, there’s also a bunch of ideas that I can’t even begin to imagine where they got them like the idea that every US citizen has like a hundred thousand dollars waiting for them in a US bank, but they gotta withdraw it in a very specific way using their “true name” rather than their “legal name” or something. Also something about flags with gold borders. It gets insane.

    So really, SovCits fall into two categories (with a fair amount of crossover). People who just don’t want to be beholden to laws and conspiracy theorist nuts.

  16. Quite simply, they don’t believe the government has any legitimate authority over them, because they did not personally consent to be governed. They dismiss the notion of a “social contract” as bullshit, since they never had the opportunity to agree to it – it was forced upon them. It stems from the basic idea that the legitimacy of government is derived from the consent of the governed… something that Thomas Jefferson alluded to in our Declaration of Independence, and that modern libertarian philosophy embraces, predicated on the idea of self-ownership and non-aggression.

  17. Basically they believe that because they were born on this land and never signed a contract with the US government that the government doesn’t have a right to restrict their “natural rights” to travel and live off the land.

  18. It’s people who think that because they didn’t sign something agreeing to live in the US the rules don’t apply to them.

    In other words, idiots.

  20. Check out the Omnibus podcast episode on sovereign citizens. It basically explains the history and emergence of this concept

  21. Literally someone who is so entitled that they’ve come to think that the rules shouldn’t apply to them.

  22. They’re Karens but instead of customer service being their victims, it’s the law. Also tend to be male.

  23. They arent unique to america, we just seem to breed the most of them. Theres a legendary reddit post of a british man who made the mistake of letting his brother crash with him and then the brother claims that throwing an axe at the 4 corners of the property rendered it his and he could violently assault the owner for trying to take it back under the castle doctrine. Wish I knew how to find it, but I’m too lazy to try.

  24. They have different names in other countries. Have you ever heard of “Freemen on the Land?”

    They’re wackos who believe that because they did not personally consent to be governed by the rule of law, the law doesn’t apply to them and that there are magical legal loopholes they can use to get themselves out of trouble with Earthly authorities.

  27. Wait. I Am a Sovereign Citizen. And so are all of my brothers and sisters born of this land. And you all need to stand up for yourselves, and your freedom!

    The original Articles of Confederation give no federal right to taxation, they speak nothing of the need for a driver’s licenses, and they certainly give no “authority” to a police state. This is my land and my freedom. It is yours too. And I’ll bet that I had every one of you going on this BS. I actually have no idea except for what I just read.

    Also, I know of no instance where it’s gotten anyone out of trouble. But, it must have worked somewhere because there are a lot of YouTube videos of people trying.

  28. Sovereign citizens think that the laws, such as speed limits, drivers licenses, and taxes, don’t apply to them because they haven’t agreed to them. They also don’t think the government or judges and courts are legit either.

    Common beliefs they have include:

    * Driving your car is “traveling” or a noncommercial activity and that means no laws regulating it are legit, like requiring drivers licenses or license plates (they don’t want to pay the registration fee)
    * Gold fringes on a flag means it’s a maritime flag/courtroom and not legit (therefore judges are fake)…
    * Because the legit US government ended sometime in the late 1800s and was converted into a corporation (so the government isn’t legitimate, the government only has power over corporations and not people, so you don’t actually have to pay taxes)
    * You can opt out of any laws you want to, this is the “I don’t create joinder with you/Are you creating joinder with me?” or whatever it is they commonly say
    * Your name is a legal construct representing a corporate entity separate from you as a human being (your birth certificate is the minting of this legal entity) and we’ve all been tricked into acting like we’re responsible for whatever the government requires of these sham legal entities that have our names
    * This is the “Joe Smith the person, agent, settler” stuff
    * Sometimes they act like your name being written in capital letters by the government (such as on paperwork for legal proceedings, which they attract a lot of) is the sign/proof of this

  29. It’s basically a person who believes that law is magic and that if you utter the right secret incantation then the law doesn’t apply to you.

    It very quickly runs into judges who just say “lmao no” and has never once actually created the effect people swear it will, but somehow this doesn’t seem to dissuade people from continuing to try.

  31. They are confused, that’s for sure. Though as an American, there’s just a little bit of libertarian in me (or old school liberal even) that makes it hard for me to disparage them *too* much.

    I do still find it hilarious how angry their existence makes people who never actually meet them though, like there’s probably a total of 10 sovereign citizens in any county at any given time living in shacks in a woods lol.

    They’re usually all about getting in tedious, hours-long arguments with cops for getting pulled over with no tags or registration, pulling out massive packets of laws that may or may not exist (but that cops don’t give a shit about anyway), and then usually eventually end up getting arrested for resisting in some way.

    Beyond that though, their existence isn’t super threatening to me as I’ve never heard of one using their beliefs to commit major crimes or start criminal syndicates etc. Usually just weird country people who don’t like to follow government administration. That’s not really a new thing, uhh hippie era anyone?

  32. The two-cent definition is someone who claims the laws of the US don’t apply to them due to some flaw in the Constitution or some other nonsense.

  33. They believe there are “magic” words or actions that make them immune from the law.

  35. They’re anti-government nutters. None of what they claim makes any sense at all if you have any common sense and can reason your way out of a paper bag.

  37. My favorite explanation is that it’s a conspiracy started by the auto glass replacement industry.

  38. Some dumbass who believes if they renounce their US citizenship that they are above the law. My father was at work when one of them was pulled over a bit up the road and blasted a cop

  40. The words “sovereign citizen” strung together in that order is an oxymoron. You can’t be sovereign and a citizen simultaneously as they are a contradiction in terms.

    In a nutshell it’s a bunch of different legal theories that may or may not be true that a small group of people try to use in court and other aspects of society so as to assert their “individual sovereignty”.

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