By Joseph Tan
I INTRODUCTION
The sovereign citizens movement is an attack on the fair application of the law and is also a dangerous ideology that harms the administration of justice as well as First Nations communities and their battle for native title claims. Sovereign citizens’ ideology originated from America around the 1960s or 1970s and stemmed from a variety of social unrest issues at the time. Sovereign citizens are individuals who believe that government laws do not apply to them and in order to justify their exemption they utilise ‘pseudolaw’ arguments. ‘Pseudolaw’ refers to the usage of legal arguments that sound convincing but are based on a misinterpretation of cases and a flawed understanding of law. ‘Pseudolaw’ employs many types of fictitious legal arguments, like the belief that the government lacks authority over ‘natural persons’ or rejecting the authority of courts due to them having ‘sovereignty’; or believing that the Magna Carta invalidates the Australian constitution and thus allows them to evade responsibility from certain laws. Sovereign citizens are not a centralised movement and instead consist of many similar groups that share similar beliefs. Whilst a once dormant ideology in Australia, the growing resentment created by government restrictions in the wake of the covid lockdowns has been one of the leading factors in the rapid growth of this ideology. And historically in Australia their arguments have resulted in a variety of events; like the attempt by a Western Australian farmer by the name of Leonard Casley to secede his farm from the Commonwealth in the 1970s; or the construction of false courts like the ‘Sovereign Peoples Assembly of Western Australia’. In which these courts believed that traditional courts had misunderstood the law and continued to falsely attempt to pass several judgements and penalties against prominent Australians, despite having no such authority to do so.
II SOVEREIGN CITIZENS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EQUITY
Sovereign citizens are a social justice issue as they pose a glaring threat towards the legal system. The utilisation of pseudolaw arguments decreases the efficiency of the courts as they drag out court proceedings by bringing ridiculous issues and arguments to court officials to no avail. In the case of Nelson v Greenman & Anor, the trial judge Justice Goboo described sovereign citizen arguments as ‘legal gibberish’ and ‘delusional arguments’ that are a ‘waste of limited court resources’. Furthermore, even when the courts do impose punishments, sovereign citizens continue to attempt to evade these responsibilities, resulting in even more wasted judicial and executive resources to further prosecute them. The actions of sovereign citizens further slows down an already inefficient court system and delay legitimate cases from vulnerable groups from getting access to justice. Additionally, cases that require time-sensitive outcomes ( like family violence survivors or rent disputes) are further delayed, which creates unequal barriers to justice.
Sovereign Citizens also attack fundamental principles of law , like the rule of law. The rule of law is a fundamental concept in law which entails that all individuals are all under the subject of the law and that no one is above the law itself. However, many sovereign citizens argue that they are exempt from the rule of law as they never accepted a contract with the government to be subject to their laws and as such, they claim to have ‘sovereignty’ against the Australian government. These claims create a plethora of problems as they incite doubt and inconsistencies within the legal system and create an inequality between them and other individuals who are subject to the law . Sovereign citizen arguments have also started to spread towards First Nation People’s rights and may dissuade people with genuine native title claims from pursuing them. An example of this is through the creation of the Original Sovereign Tribal Federation (OSTF), which was a group of individuals claiming to be First Nations people who spread sovereign citizen arguments in relation to native title claims. The OSTF made a publication denouncing native title as ‘slave’s title’ , making bizarre claims that land councils were ‘corporations’ that ‘have been committing genocide ethnic cleansing’ and claiming ‘inalienable and unassailable rights and freedoms’ over all land in Australia. Additionally, supporters of the OSTF, seemingly in anger against the government, attacked and allegedly set fire to the main entrances of Old Parliament House in Canberra.[15] The process of making a claim for native title is already frustrating and tedious, requiring years of litigation, vast quantities of evidence and considerate emotional investment for the claimants. The OSTF’s sovereign citizen rhetoric further damages the process of native title claims as it both preys on individuals by using their anger against the system following an of their negatively impacted by native title claims. Additionally, the OSTF’s arguments are potentially derailing other claimants from what could be successful litigation and acknowledgement of native title and also deterring individuals with true concerns from attempting litigation . It is important to note that the OSTF is just one of many sovereign citizen groups that undermine First Nation People’s rights and are a symptom of a larger issue.
III SOLUTIONS TO ADDRESS SOVEREIGN CITIZENS
The addressing of the sovereign citizen movement has proven to be a difficult task. Whilst their arguments in court drag out court proceedings and waste judicial resources, the simple dismissal of these claims may add further fuel to their ideologies by appearing to be unjustified in their eyes. It may be that the best solution to defeat these claims and prevent the constant repetition of the same claims from the same litigants is for the courts to actively engage with their arguments, dismantling them piece by piece, with judges being the best authority to educate them on these matters. 14This was proven in a New South Wales case in which Sudy, a former sovereign citizen and litigant in this case, credited the patient judgement of the Magistrate in his case from challenging from his unfounded sovereign citizen beliefs and ultimately convincing him to abandon those beliefs. However, this approach does not work for all cases, as many litigants may be stubborn and refuse to change, and it may be necessary to adopt similar court practices like in Canada. Following the ruling in the case of Meads v Meads, courts in Canada started implementing procedures like the identification of many common motifs that appear in filings and then rejecting these filings and returning them to the litigant. These practices, as Rooke ACJ explained in Re Gauthier intercept the misguided litigation at the earliest junction and allows litigants to abandon these fictitious arguments before wasting even more of the court’s resources. It is obvious that no singular approach will truly work, and courts in Australia will be required to adopt a mixture of these two practices in order to better combat the rise of sovereign citizen arguments.
There is also a growing need to educate the public about sovereign citizens and their ideologies and its dangers. Many people are ill-informed about this topic and eventually find themselves trapped within these rabbit holes of sovereign citizen arguments. There needs to be more resources, articles and cases to challenge these ideas and with the growing presence of these sovereign citizens, a unified governmental response should be co-ordinated to inform the public about this growing issue. Additionally, the Australian government should create laws in order to better target these sovereign citizen groups is a controversial topic. On one hand, the creation of these laws could act as a deterrence towards sovereign citizen activities, especially in the court systems, and prevent further blockages. However, on the other hand, the presence of these laws may incite even more anger against the government and cause sovereign citizens to further cement their beliefs. The United States government has implemented laws that actively target sovereign citizen groups, which have resulted in hundreds of arrests but the ideology has still persisted and grown despite these attempts.
IV CONCLUSION
Sovereign citizen arguments stem from a variety of social problems like the anger against government restrictions, the ever growing distance between the judiciary and the public or a need to escape from tough situations and assert control. It is clear that these issues are only going to worsen, and as such, there needs to be a strong response to this misguided ideology before it cripples the judiciary system. Now is the time for our government and us to take action.