I knew we’d discussed this topic before, and I found it. See here:
Freeman on the Land - opting out of society
Some interesting commentary there, that may help us all understand what these folks are all about.
My favorite pet theory on the subject, which I’ve mentioned before in a couple of thread, is that the people trying this think that the legal system can be “crashed” the way that the Gödel incompleteness theorem predicts that any logical system can fail. This might in fact be technically true, if it weren’t for the fact that the legal system is administered by human beings who have common sense.
*Alice #251 through 500: Do you require something, lord?
Capt. Kirk: No. Yes! My ship.
Alice #251 through 500: I am not programmed…
Alice #251 through 500, Capt. Kirk: [together] … to respond in that area.
**Capt. Kirk: **Yes, I know.
Alice #251 through 500: Is there anything ANY of you require to please you?
Capt. Kirk: Alice, give us back our ship to please us. Return us to our ship because we desire it.
Alice #251 through 500: We are programmed to serve. We shall serve you to your best interests to make you happy.
Capt. Kirk: But we’re unhappy here.
Alice #251 through 500: Please explain “unhappy.”
**Spock: **Unhappiness is the state which occurs in the human when wants and desires are not fulfilled.
**Alice #251 through 500: **Which wants and desires of yours are not fulfilled?
Capt. Kirk: We want the Enterprise.
**Alice #251 through 500: **[her badge number starts to flash] The Enterprise is not a want or a desire. It is a mechanical device.
Capt. Kirk: No, it’s a beautiful lady and we love her!
Alice #251 through 500: [badge light remains on] Illogical, illogical. All units relate. All units. Norman, coordinate. *
If Norman was human he’d just phaser them. 
It’s not so much that as a sort of understanding of the conceot of rules that stems from getting it from TV and movies.
It’s a pretty common trope in entertainment to have someone beat a system through some sort of absurd technicality, one that quite often happens by virtue of just knowing the right things to say, or getting the antagonist to say the right things. If that’s your understanding of how The System works, you might find the “sovereign citizen” idea fascinating; holy shit, they figured out the hole in the system! The fact that the actual legal system does not work that way, and in fact no large and complicated system run by human beings would eer allow itself to be talked out of its own purpose, isn’t something you see in movies.
That’s not all of it, of course - soverign/freebirds are also the sort of people who don’t understand fractional reserve banking and so that’s why they think they don’t have to pay back debts - but fundamental innocense about how systems work is a big part of what makes it possible for people to grab on to these fringe beliefs.
As I think I said at least some variant in the other thread;
I’d love to take all these Freemen and dump them in thier own colony/island/planet and then back away for about 200 years and see what develops.
Either they or at least parts of them would wake the fuck up and return to a normal system of government, or some wacky scifi hijinks would ensue.
“Coventry” by Heinlein.
Not exact, but pretty close.
What’s the deal with “Admiralty Law”, at least as interpreted by the sovereign citizen movement? As far as I can tell from a quick reading on Wiki, it started out as a quasi-international consensus on maritime law, and was (or is?) in some limited cases alongside and separate from a country’s “laws of the land”. But evidently some people take it to be a potential back door to bypassing the Bill of Rights.
(Emphasis mine)
Your question contains its own answer. Since Admiralty Law isn’t 100% redwhiteandblue don’ttreadonme 'Murrican, it can’t possibly apply to free and sovereign 'Murricans. Case closed.
Or perhaps it’s a convenient shibboleth against a court decision one doesn’t like, with the added benefit that no understanding of the concept is required. Think that might be a factor?
Admiralty/maritime law tends to be federal law (even when a state court might be hearing a matter) set out by federal statues. The statutes and court decisions are often affected by international treaties and international practices (trying to minimize conflict between laws of different nations in international shipping), so one tends to think of it as private international law.
Some folks are allergic to law because (1) it is law (Doan’ need no stinkin’ law!), (2) it may have commercial/corporate aspects (Only people bleed!), (3) it may have personal aspects (Doan’ chew lock me up an’ take my child from me!), (4) it may be federal law (State/provincial rights, damnit!), (5) It may have international law aspects (Only 'merkin/Canadian/English law for ‘merkins/Canadians/Englishmen, yew fuckin’ commies!), but then one or more of these can be said for most law, so I don’t see any reason for the nutters to hang their hat on admiralty law in particular.
I don’t have a clue as to what the Freeman’s beef is, but I would be surprised if is based on feelings arising from (1) through (5), such that they just don’t want to accept that the law/court has jurisdiction over them. I wouldn’t worry too much about what they base their reasoning on, for from what I have come across in courtoom videos, they seem to think that the court is a ship (shouting Man overboard! and Abandon ship! upon the court recessing), which is so nutty that it really doesn’t matter if they think that because the court is a ship it is a vehicle for admiralty law, or if they think that because the court is a vehicle for admiralty law it is therefore a ship, or if they think that a court is some sort of stone frigate and therefore part of the Admiralty/navy.
They have a belief system that is not based on reality and reason.
Well, every now and then, that works, sort of. Just not the way these nutters believe.
I’m sorry, are chemical sprays and clubbing with batons “physical restraint?” (I agree that dogs might restrain someone).
I understood “physical restraint” to mean some big burly guys wrapping him up and hauling him off. Chemical weapons and blunt instruments and (dog bites too, for that matter) seem like a different kettle of fish.
Maybe tasers were developed to short-circuit Admiralty Law.
More seriously though, in the US police have been using tasers more and more as a way to end conversations they no longer see as productive. They don’t see a need to grapple with uncooperative people anymore, or even come into physical contact until they are relatively helpless and prostrate on the ground. If I were a cop, I’d be probably be paranoid enough about my own safety to act the same way. Since I’m not a cop, I’m free to think that taser use is getting out of hand.
I’d probably be twice as paranoid about grappling with uncooperative people if I were a cop with a loaded gun on my belt.
That’s why they should keep their bullet in their shirt pocket!
Even in that case, it has nothing to do with magic words that make the court do your bidding. A clever defendant simply took advantage of sloppiness on the part of the prosecutor and trial judge in failing to establish all the elements necessary for his plea.
I’m sure as soon as the criminals walk themselves into the jail on Friday night and lock themselves up, the police will institute the Mayberry Protocol.
Ok, so this guy says he’s not bound by the law, not a US citizen etc. I wonder what argument he’d give if the police just whacked him over the head. After all, he has no legal rights…right? He’s not even a person…or something.
Oh, he thinks he has rights, just not rights derived from being a citizen. He has natural or “common law” rights, inasmuch as men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [and] . . . among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and he believes “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
You see, apart from all the BS about admiralty law and legal personhood, the other source of sovereign citizen/FOTL beliefs is that they take seriously and literally the words the founders used to justify the new government they created for the US (and, in other cases, the philosophical justifications for the governments of Canada and the UK) and think they have legal force. That’s what makes these people so interesting to me. If the power of a government really does depend on the consent of the governed, then there should be a way to opt out. Jefferson himself argued that a Constitution should be valid only as long as the majority of citizens still alive were around when it was ratified, and even developed actuarial tables to figure out exactly how long that would be.
These people ignore the fact that the courts have ruled that things like the Declaration of Independence (and even moreso pamphlets like “Common Sense,” etc.) are not legal documents but political and philosophical ones. But there is a certain strict logic to these elements of the freeman arguments. Why should the courts be willing to release someone who didn’t consent to having their car searched, but not someone who never consented to the government at all. They assume that the laws must be logically consistent with themselves and with their philosophical underpinnings, and therefore the government must be asserting that the FOTL gave their consent and if they can disprove that then the court will release them. The alternative is that the whole thing is a sham and we’re actually living under an illegal dictatorship, in which case why would the government recognize any rights? It makes sense if you ignore the way the world actually works, and you can argue that they do have a valid moral point if not a legal one.
If Jefferson believed that majorities were important, then that contradicts the idea that any individual person should be able to opt out. “Consent of the governed” refers to the governed as a whole, not to the consent of each and every individual person. If that were the case, then majority rule and voting would have no meaning.
BTW, if I ever meet one of these “Freemen On The Land” I plan on pointing out to them that the conspiracy they imagine is actually real and goes much deeper than they ever imagined. After all, the courts have, as I said, ruled that the DoI, the preamble to the Constitution, and the writings of John Locke and Thomas Paine are not legally binding, implicitly denying their intent to follow these principles that the FOTL see as binding. But not only that, I’m in on it too! I’m not one of the ignorant sheeple; I KNOW that the government has repudiated and abandoned the basic principles that justify their power, and I willingly give them my support in exchange for the benefits I get from living under their regime. And in fact, the same is true of most people. We KNOW the truth, we KNOW that the government doesn’t actually exist to protect our rights, but we don’t care! In fact, we know that YOU, Mr. John Q. Freeman, have not consented to be governed, and we’re perfectly willing to see you locked up (or tazed, as this thread shows) to support the existing unjust power structure! Muahahahaha! You’re down the rabbit hole now, Mr. Freeman!