What’s a “sovereign citizen “?

People of inexplicably confident certainty that they alone have discovered legal loopholes enabling them to ignore laws they don’t like while benefitting from public services and infrastructure of a nation they assert they are not a citizen of. It’s delusional ignorance.

The core belief of sovereign citizens -- initially, anyway -- is the notion that since government exists at the consent of the governed they can "opt out" of being subject to the laws of wherever they are.

This has a tiny grain of legitimate logic to it, in that not a single person on Earth is given a choice of society and/or country to be born into. Governments attempt to exert absolute authority over everyone within their spheres of influence regardless of what those people may happen to think of the matter, and the feasibility of them physically leaving said society/country notwithstanding. All laws are just words on paper, after all, and from a certain perspective completely artificial, arbitrary, and transient.

Where it all breaks down is that these people typically arrive at the above conclusion by being absolutely stark raving loony, and typically want to have their cake and eat it, too -- they don't want to be subject to obeying laws, or paying taxes, or having to register their vehicles and get driver's licenses, pay child support, etc., but they still somehow feel entitled to the use of public infrastructure like roads and bridges, police and fire services, municipal water and sewer use, and so forth. In modern times a simple "no gubmint can tell me what to do and I'm answerable only to myself" outlook has mutated into this arcane and nebulous pseudo-religious willful misinterpretation on the wording of laws, what is and is not printed CAPITALIZED on various government documents, and fixation on "contract law," treating every interaction between everyone and every thing as a "transaction" which the sovereign citizen believes is inherently negotiable (always in their favor, of course).

This is furthered by shucksters who sell books and seminars to idiots the types of people who have the right type of chip on their shoulders, which purportedly contain the secret knowledge and legal incantations to make all this work but are, of course, just bullshit. Usually people who entangle themselves in SovCit bullshit are trying to weasel out of of some particular financial obligation. Not wanting to pay child support seems to be a very popular one, as are taxes in general, fines, loans, and liens.

The whole thing is just fascinatingly whacked the more you look into it. Here's the RationalWiki article on it, for instance:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen

Further to the other answers, "sovereign citizens" are an interesting variant on a "cargo cult" mindset.

The cargo cults, if you've not heard of them, came about after WWII. The Allied forces, advancing through the Pacific, set up airbases on various islands. These islands had tribes living on them. The tribes got a crash course in the wonders of modern society, American army style. Unfortunately, the gap between their experiences, and the world they were now exposed to was huge, and brief. A lot of misunderstandings were made (either due to insufficient background knowledge, or bored/malicious information from the troops involved).

When the allies upped stakes and left, the tribes were left a little shell shocked. They had the bright idea that if they recreated what the Americans had done, they too could summon the metal birds from the sky, full of a vast wealth of cargo! They then went about reproducing everything they had seen. They built runways, control towers, and fake planes, to bait down the cargo planes. But it never worked! They obviously weren't doing it exactly right. So they tried harder, recreating all they could as closely as they could.

Now to us, this seems crazy. Of course you can't summon a cargo plane by sitting in a wooden "control tower" talking into a coconut! We have a larger context however. We know that those planes were sent, not summoned etc.

"Sovereign Citizens" have a lot in common with these cults. However, they are focused on the legal system. Most legal systems are convoluted and arcane. They are less designed, than accreted over time. Lawyers, and the hyper rich who imply them, use this to run rings around the systems in place. They used complex legal entities to game the system to their advantage.

"Sovereign Citizens" see this and thought "why can't we do that?". Unfortunately, they didn't understand what was actually happening. They tried to recreate it, but lacked fundamental information. Even worse, a number of grifters found them, and decided they were excellent marks. They fed them additional bullshit, and gave them ever more complex instructions to make their plans work. When they failed, it's obviously because they did it wrong, or got out-spelled, not because the instructions were BS to begin with.

In short, "Sovereign Citizens" are a mix of the desperate, the stupid (not always the same thing!), the brainwashed and the grifters, all wrapped up in an almost religious cargo cult.

That phrasing refers to a very broad set of movements and individuals. The usual core beliefs are:

• Legislation in their jurisdiction and the government's authority to enforce it is in some way defective.
• People in their jurisdiction can opt out of laws and government, and live only under "natural law".
• People have to perform a set of legal procedures (spells, effectively) in order to achieve that.

Exactly why and how law/government authority is defective, how they understand natural law, what the spells are that they have to cast - all of these are extremely variable both between jurisdictions and between individuals.
Primarily it's a set of grifters charging money for courses and materials to learn about these beliefs from whoever they can convince. Sometimes, as in Germany, it's a group of neo-Nazis plotting to reinstate the Kaiser.

You might enjoy münecat's longer form explanation.

Basically a bunch of people who claim to not be citizens of any nation and will therefore try to claim they essentially have diplomatic immunity no matter where they go. Combine that with the personality and knowledge base of a meth fueled jailhouse lawyer. Actually, that's an insult to meth fueled jailhouse lawyers and I take that back...

The best explanation (ever) for a sovereign citizen is found in a legal opinion by a Canadian judge. He spends about 176 pages delineating their beliefs, origins, and manner of interacting with the legal system.

https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012abqb571.html

You know how lawyers shout "objection!" in court and it causes things to happen? Sovereign Citizens believe all laws work that way. If you find the right words, phrase, or document, you can bend the legal system to your will.

It's kind of like thinking the law works like Magic The Gathering. Sorry officer, but I counter your "diving with a suspended licence" attack with my "I'm travelling not driving" spell!

I almost feel bad for them because in some ways the legal system is a game that can be bent to your will. It's just that the best spells cost millions of dollars to cast.

A moron who thinks the law does not apply to them.

Two different categories:

1. People who believe they found the real world equivalent to the 'lower wanted level' cheats in GTA, and can do illegal shit freely as long as they say the right words to the cops when they are inevitably caught
2. Grifters who take advantage of those people, who may or may not be true believers.

Its a fringe group of people (mostly) in the US who believe that the law isn't the law. They either believe that older legal systems are still active, such as the articles of confederation, OE that the usage of certain terms in legal documents constitutes a hidden system.

The most common manifestation is the belief that they can declare themselves immune to some it all of our existing legal code.

They get made fun of a lot because they are fundamentally a kind of decentralized cult, and they do a lot of strange and stupid things. Unfortunately, they also have a habit of doing terrorism, so they are a legitimate danger and not just some fun weirdos.

That being said, they mostly try to print their own license plates and assert that speed limits do not apply to them because they are "free men living upon the land" and they believe they have a right to "travel" unimpeded. That's why you see them mostly in videos of some idiot arguing with a cop that they were "traveling" and not "driving".

A cargo cult.

They see lawyers use big words to make rich people get what they want and they try to emulate that without understanding how it works.

They think their individual rights and freedumbs mean laws don't apply to them.

Some of their grievances are true. The government is often guilty of overreach and trampling on individual rights (like Roe v Wade being overturned, declaring corporate money to be free speech, cops murdering people, cracking down on protests, etc).

However, sovereign citizens think they can use "constitutional logic" to basically do whatever they want. They often find themselves sitting in a cell with Pikachu face, asking for a real lawyer's help.

Perhaps the most egregious (or successful, depending on your point of view) example would be constitutional sheriffs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Sheriffs_and_Peace_Officers_Association?wprov=sfla1

In my opinion, they are basically domestic terrorists, or at least adjacent to that. The 3-letter federal agencies keep a close eye on these types of people.

Someone who thinks they are above the law in every way and actively opposes authority at every instance they can. And I mean every instance. Literally will get pulled over for going 120 in a 30 and they will say "you can't do shit to me". They are literally considered terrorists by the government.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement

If you want a well written break down of them, a Canadian judge wrote a fantastic article:

https://learningcentre.lawsociety.ab.ca/mod/page/view.php?id=251

"Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument litigants"

It's an idiot who insists on inflicting their idiocy on everyone around them. Seriously they're dumb af.

They are people who have fallen for and/or are grifting for a deeply unhinged conspiracy theory that national laws don’t apply to them if they do some certain set of pseudo legal things. What exactly those things are, as well as what laws don’t apply to them,vary widely, but are usually centered around driver’s licenses and car registration, tax evasion and not paying child support.

Past that it’s hard to explain what their beliefs are because it is so vague and ever changing.

Sovereign citizens are to civil lawyers as alchemists are to chemists.

They both invented their own lore to try to make the universe do what they want, except the alchemists actually strived to move towards more reliable and accurate science.

Assholes who appropriated the word "sovereign" and ruined it ior the rest of us. Like, how cryptocurrency ruined "crypto" and blockchain - you can't mention either without getting some kneejerk reaction about mining farms.

There's a belief that (I'm going to heavily paraphrase/over simplify here) when you're born, there are two versions of you ... The 'corporation', and the 'real' you.

Any document issued by the government i.e. birth certificates, social security etc is against the corporate version of you. And as a 'real' person, you are not part of a system you didn't consent to.

So when you get pulled over for speeding, it was your real self who was driving travelling, not the corporation, and only the corporate self is beholden to the law. This same idea is applied to taxes...

A nutcase.

A myth.

I watched münecats video on the topic. Very good and explanatory

These people will happily fork over hundreds if not thousands of dollars for fake IDs and paperwork from con artists, who must be laughing their way to the bank, while also refusing to get official, required paperwork from the government.

I'm so glad you asked. I had improperly assumed.it was referring to native or indigenous peoples from tribal land. I couldn't figure out why all the hate.

People who....

1. Are wastes of oxygen.
2. Should ask for refunds for any tuition they ever paid cause they never learned anything.
3. Almost always drive travel without a license or registration.
4. All of the above.

Dumb.

Are you familiar with the term “dumbass”?

Someone who beleaves that they can get out of some or all the obligations using some magic pseudo-legal phrases.

It started as people trying to imitate rich people exploiting legal loopholes, but then some grifter "guru" found them and decided to make a quick buck giving rather bad legal advice. This worked, causing in more grifters getting in, with depressing/hilarious results.

It's if you want to play Dungeons and Dragons IRL: you can be a wizard class by choosing specific colors of ink as spell components and invoking the power of "maritime law" to bend the world to your bidding.

They time travelling Americans from the 18th and 19th century. Here is a good primer on their beliefs by one of them. https://www.cabaltimes.com/2023/10/05/secret_usa/