I spent my first year after law school clerking for a federal judge in Honolulu. One day, the judge's secretary asked me to talk to a gentleman who had come to chat with the judge.
The visitor, a friendly, articulate, middle aged fellow, had some interesting ideas. My main recollection now is that he firmly believed that he was not obliged to pay income tax, because -- essentially -- he had received no money as income. He had been paid only in federal reserve notes, which, in his estimation, were not legal tender and therefore not taxable.
He had some legal arguments, which I now forget, but what surprised me was that he had no interest in the views of the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the federal reserve system. The Supreme Court, I gathered, was simply part of the problem.
I was reminded of this introduction to the strange world beyond academia by a story in today's Spokane Spokesman-Review. It seems that there is now a group of individuals, hitherto unknown to me, who deny that they are citizens of the United States. Ok, you say, lots of people fit that description, even among American residents. But members of this group deny that they are citizens of any nation. They call themselves "sovereigns," and each is apparently a nation unto himself.
The newspaper story was prompted by the appearance of Adrian Shannon before a Spokane judge on charges of possession and distribution of marijuana. Mr. Shannon, like other "sovereigns," denies the legitimacy of all federal, state and local agencies. They believe themselves exempt from needing drivers' licenses and birth certificates, paying taxes, and being held accountable under criminal law.
No man is an island, entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
--John Donne
Actually, not so, Mr. Shannon and other sovereigns would assert. They want no part of any continent, of any main. Each sees himself as a one-person St. Helena or Easter Island.
“People call it a movement, but it’s individuals, literally sovereigns, that are all learning, ‘Hey we don’t have to put up with these ridiculous laws, because we are the government,’ ” Shannon said.
Apparently sovereigns do not always rely on profound philosophical arguments to win their points, however. Mr. Shannon, for example, claimed that his case was not properly on the day's court docket. Why so? Because his name had been written entirely in capital letters on the docket. Names written in all-caps do not apply to individuals, to his way of thinking, but only to some sort of corporate entities assigned governmental codes.
Judge Price ruled, more or less informally, on this contention:
“Well, whatever your name is, sir, get up here,” Price said.
“May I retain all my rights?” Shannon asked.
“Sir, get up here or you’re going to jail,” Price said.
"Sovereign" may simply be a more recent name for a fairly well-known type of legal species known as a "crackpot." (And I mean that in the best possible way.)
For example. I once had the pleasure of representing a relatively minor defendant in a lawsuit brought by an Idaho plaintiff, a lawsuit that had ballooned, step by step, from a small legal claim to one against an enormous number of defendants. The lawsuit ended up asserting claims in excess of $1 trillion, and eventually named a number of federal judges, from districts all over the country as additional defendants (any judge who ruled against him on any issue soon found himself part of the lawsuit). By the time I became involved, this intrepid plaintiff from Idaho was seeking, among all his other claims, to have the State of Idaho declared improperly admitted to the union, with an injunction issued returning it to territorial status.
What I learned from that lawsuit (the plaintiff lost, by the way) was that judges are human, too, and they will put up with only so much time-consuming idiocy. Before Mr. Shannon proceeds much further down this trail, engaging himself in an adversarial posture with the judiciary, I suggest that he think through his options carefully.
No comments:
Post a Comment