Who is sovereign

The basic question, in particular, is whether the German federal and state governments can decide on such fundamental restrictions of basic rights such as freedom of assembly, of movement, or freedom of profession and enterprise. In almost inconspicuous fashion, the third sentence in Article 2, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law allows for such a restriction:. Freedom of the person shall be inviolable.

These rights may be interfered with only pursuant to a law. Normatively, the law is a trivial one compared to the basic rights that it restricts. The longer the restriction of basic rights goes on, the thinner the legal basis becomes: what then becomes necessary is a more substantive, preferably a constitutional norm or a speedy legitimization via parliament.

The first does not exist in the German Basis Law, the second one is problematic since it degrades parliament to a non-deliberative rubber stamp institution. The German government is acting on a rather thin legal base.

This holds a forteriori for the question of democratic legitimacy. The emergency powers exercised at the federal and state levels can only be justified with reference to averting imminent catastrophe. It is, however, a behavioralist misunderstanding to think that it is possible to legitimize the current measures simply through the support of the population as measured in opinion polls. Zur Lage der Demokratie in Deutschland, Springer Here, the principle of proportionality comes into play.

Specifically, this means: the massive restriction of basic rights has to be appropriate, necessary, and proportionate. Is this the case? The short answer: a sovereign citizen is someone who believes that he or she is above all laws. Any law, at any level of government. It can be a big law, like paying income taxes, or a tiny one, like licensing your pet Chihuahua with the county.

You start by looking for a combination of quotes, definitions, court cases, the Bible, Internet websites, and so on that justify how you can ignore the disliked law without any legal consequences. Be imaginative. Pull a line from the version of the Magna Carta, a definition from a legal dictionary, a quote from a founding father or two, and put it in the blender with some official-sounding Supreme Court case excerpts you found on like-minded websites.

When you can pick and choose which laws to put through your special blender, you are effectively putting yourself above all laws. Sovereign citizens are true believers. They generally entered the movement by buying into a scam or conspiracy theory that not only promised them a quick fix to their problems, but wrapped such solutions in a heavy layer of revolutionary rhetoric.

Once a sovereign feels the flush of excitement and self-importance that comes from acting as the David to the U.

These sovereign citizens are also doomed to failure; the tax collector, prosecutor, and judge have all heard these same legal theories dozens of times already and understand that they are bogus. When a person believes his cause is just, yet he meets failure over and over and over again, there comes a point where he has to make a decision: he can admit his theory is wrong and walk away, or he can fight dirty. Some sovereigns plot a violent revenge, hoping to inspire others in the movement to reach their breaking point sooner.

For example, after twenty years of attempting to persuade the IRS and the Tax Court that his blender salad of legal theories was accurate, in , private pilot Joseph Stack flew his airplane into an IRS building in Austin Texas, killing one tax collector, and injuring thirteen others. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well. Their recommendations often include tax evasion, adverse possession squatting on a property that does not belong to them or ignoring laws regarding drivers licenses, vehicle registration or license plate possession.

They base these activities on their belief that free men and women, as they call themselves, are not bound by the laws in question. Sovereigns assert they are traveling, not driving, since they are not transporting commercial goods or paying passengers. Those who are attracted to this subculture typically attend a seminar or two or visit one of the thousands of websites and online videos on the subject and choose how to act on what they have learned.

But a conservative estimate of the number of all kinds of tax protesters today would be about , Using this number and information derived from trials of tax protesters and reports from government agencies, a reasonable estimate of hardcore sovereign believers in early would be ,, with another , just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges, for an estimated total of , As sovereign theories go viral throughout the nation's prison systems and among people who are unemployed and desperate in a punishing economy, this number is likely to grow.

The weapon of choice for sovereign citizens is paper. A simple traffic violation or pet-licensing case can end up provoking dozens of court filings containing hundreds of pages of pseudo-legal nonsense.

For example, Donna Lee Wray — the common-law wife of Jerry Kane, who was half of the team that killed the two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, in — was involved in a protracted legal battle in over having to pay a dog-licensing fee. She filed 10 sovereign documents in court over a two-month period and then declared victory when the harried prosecutor decided to drop the case.

The size of the documents is an issue since already-swamped courts are forced to respond to them, but so is the nonsensical language the documents are written in. Sovereigns believe that if they can find just the right combination of words, punctuation, paper, ink color and timing, they can have anything they want — freedom from taxes, unlimited wealth and life without licenses, fees or laws.

These liens can be for millions , billions or even quadrillions of dollars. They have also perpetrated a number of illegal housing related money-making schemes. They have signed up for Section 8 as landlords for properties they do not own. They have talked homeowners in the midst of foreclosure into quitclaiming their property deeds to them and charged the homeowners fees to stop foreclosures they have no ability to stop.

Over the course of four years, the U. Starting in the mids, a period when the sovereign movement was also on the rise, states began to pass laws specifically aimed at these paper-terrorism tactics. In April , the state of Colorado cracked down heavily on sovereign activity by charging a group of sovereigns, known as the Colorado Eight, with racketeering.

Bruce Doucette, the most prominent member of Colorado Eight, is best known for holding a faux trial in Burns, Oregon, that put public officials on trial. These officials had opposed the Bundy brothers occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Doucette was sentenced to 38 years in prison for his crimes. A co-defendant. Stephen Nalty, was sentenced to 36 years in prison, and another, Steven Byfield, was sent away for 22 years. Most new recruits to the sovereign citizens movement are people who have found themselves in a desperate situation, often due to the economy or foreclosures, in search of a quick fix.

Others are intrigued by the notions of easy money and living a lawless life, free from unpleasant consequences. The sovereign group Republic for the United States of America RuSA successfully recruited members over the past decade by marketing themselves as sovereign Christians who were forming a government that would one day run America. Led by James Timothy Turner, from a small town in Alabama, the group spread its message nationwide forming chapters throughout the U.

Headquartered in New York and led by John Darash, the group focuses on creating common law grand juries. When the Bundys, sovereign citizens who coordinated standoffs at their ranch in Nevada in and at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in , shared their ideologies with huge groups of antigovernment patriots, they reached other potential recruits. In , Ryan Bundy ran for governor of Nevada on a sovereign citizen platform that included the right to travel. He lost the election, garnering only 1.

Embry helped him complete several legal filings using sovereign citizen terminology. Embry is a member of a group of faux marshals called the Continental Marshals for the Republic, whose members were often recruited by the sovereign group known as the Superior Court of the Continental united States CuSA , which coordinated common law courts in various states.

They make their own uniforms, fake badges and identification cards. According to their handbook:. Some of the so-called marshals have taken their position very seriously. Four were arrested on Feb. They unsuccessfully attempted to use their status as marshals to break him out of jail. The conspiracy-laden messages influenced some of adherents to join the sovereign citizens movement.

In times of economic prosperity, sovereigns typically rely on absurd and convoluted schemes to evade state and federal income taxes and hide their assets from the IRS. In times of financial hardship, they turn to debt- and mortgage-elimination scams, taking adverse possession of properties, techniques to avoid child support payments, and even attempts to use their redemption techniques to get out of serious criminal charges. On the rare occasion where they succeed in obtaining money through their schemes, it is based on criminal exploitation of a loophole in the tax or financial system, or outright theft, and their perceived success is often followed up with prosecution for the crimes they have committed.

Many sovereign citizens have been charged, sentenced and imprisoned for their wrongdoing.