Pseudolaw

Pseudolaw consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be based on accepted law or legal doctrine, but which deviate significantly from most conventional understandings of law and jurisprudence, or which originate from non-existent statutes or legal principals the advocate or adherent of incorrectly believes exist.[1] It is sometimes referred to as "legalistic gibberish".[2] The more extreem examples have been classified as paper terrorism.

Followers of such ideologies can cause problems for courts and government administrators by filing unusual applications that are difficult to process. Courts in Canada refer to such arguments as Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments, and have called them frivolous and vexatious.[3] There is no recorded instance of such tactics being upheld in a court of law.[4]

Common among psudolegal beliefs is a belief that one is partially or fully sovereign from the country in which they live, and believe that no laws, or only certain laws, apply to them. Groups espousing such pseudolegal beliefs include freemen on the land and the sovereign citizen movement. Some believe that their state itself is illegitimate, such as Reichsbürgerbewegung.

Also under the umbrella of pseudolegal arguments are conspiracy theorists who believe there is a secret parallel legal system that one can access through certain means, like using a secret phrase or by placing stamps on the right place on documents. For example, the redemption movement believes that a secret fund is created for everyone at birth by the government, and that a procedure exists to "redeem" or reclaim money from this fund. See tax protester conspiracy arguments for a discussion of these beliefs related to tax law. Many of these revolve around the "legal name fraud" movement, which believes that birth certificates give the state legal ownership of a personal name and refusing to use this name therefore removes oneself from a court's jurisdiction.[5][6] Various groups advocate that one can avoid this state ownership by distinguishing between capitalized and non-capitalized versions of one's name, or by adding punctuation to one's name. See strawman theory (also known as the capital letters argument) for more information.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Powell, Corey (March 21, 2016). "Here comes pseudolaw, a weird little cousin of pseudoscience". Aeon. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  2. ↑ "T.C. Memo. 2000-11" (PDF). ustaxcourt.gov. U.S. Tax Court. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  3. ↑ Meads v. Meads, 2012 ABQB 571(CanLII), Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta, 18 September 2012, para. 77
  4. ↑ Bizzle, Legal (18 November 2011). "The freeman-on-the-land strategy is no magic bullet for debt problems". The Guardian.
  5. ↑ Dalgleish, Katherine. "Guns, border guards, and the Magna Carta: the Freemen-on-the-Land are back in Alberta courts". lexology.com. Lexology. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  6. ↑ Kelly, John (June 11, 2016). "The mystery of the 'legal name fraud' billboards". BBC News. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.