ISSN: 2710-4028 DOI: doi.org/10.54208/1000/0006 157
scientific articles), the nature of the community that
created them, and the purpose for which they were
created (Bhatia, 2011, p. 241 Biber, 2010, pp. 241–
242). A register often appears across multiple distinct
genres. Legal English, for example, is used in both
the sorts of legal filings examined in this study and in
judicial opinions, both of which could simultaneously
be said to belong to a single superordinate “courtroom
document” genre. The concept of genre is not limited
to a single organizational level. Breeze (2019, p. 81)
makes reference to this portable quality of register in
her discussion of a “transversal legal register that cuts
through different genres” (emphasis in original). With
this in in mind, Sovereign Citizen pseudolegal texts
can be broadly thought of as a genre that copies both
the structure and register of legitimate legal texts in an
attempt to imbue itself with the authority of those texts.
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once
said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic” (Clarke, 1983, p. 36)
and several commentators (e.g., Dew, 2015 Netolitzky,
2018 Wessinger, 2000) have suggested that Sovereign
Citizens seem to view the legal system through a
similar lens. This magical explanation of Sovereign
Citizen pseudolegal thought goes as follows: Sovereign
Citizens are generally individuals who do not have
a strong understanding of the structure of the legal
system or the way it operates. In their encounters with
its representatives (i.e. lawyers, police, judges, etc.)
Sovereign Citizens see those representatives perform
legal rituals that they do not comprehend and that have
dramatic real word effects (e.g., they receive a traffic
ticket, are arrested, or have their homes foreclosed
upon). Whether consciously or not, because of their
lack of understanding (or perhaps because of a willful
misunderstanding) of how the legal system functions,
Sovereign Citizens conclude that those legal rituals tap
into some element of the “supernatural” and decide to
attempt to claim that power for themselves to turn it
against their oppressors (Wessinger, 1999, p. 38). To
bolster their efforts in what they perceive to be a form of
magical combat, Sovereign Citizens do not just copy the
form of existing legal rituals instead, they make efforts
to enhance what they believe to be its most magically
salient features.
Though it may initially seem strange, Sovereign Citizens
are far from the first people to make such a connection
between magic and the legal system. Law has long been
described as a form of “social magic” (Bourdieu, 1987,
p. 840 see also Frank, 1949, p. 181) and there are clear
parallels between the popularly understood importance
of “magic words” and the real and highly publicized
instances in which an individual’s failure to follow a
prescribed legal formula has resulted in significant real
world consequences, such as when a suspect’s telling
the police to “just give me a lawyer dog” was found to
be insufficient to invoke his right to counsel (Jackman,
2017) or when Barack Obama had to retake the
presidential oath of office after deviating slightly from
its constitutionally mandated form during his 2009
inauguration (Zeleny, 2009). Even those who would
not otherwise describe the practice of law as inherently
magical, including many lawyers, feel that the language
used in legal contexts is what actually “carr[ies] the
power of the law” (V. R. Charrow et al., 1982, p. 182) and
it has been suggested that the general public recognizes
legal texts as signs (in the semiotic sense) of the power
of the legal system before they process any particular
semantic content those texts may contain (Goodrich,
1990, p. 209). Magic as understood for the purposes of
this article can be defined as “pertain[ing] generally to
human control over supernatural forces” (O. Davies,
2012, p. 1) that is in many ways similar to Austin’s
classic positivist definition of law as the “commands of
a sovereign” (Bix, 2023).4
1
The main difference is that
where the sovereign commands their subjects, the
magician commands the entirety of the world around
them.
One of the most significant theoretical differences
between the claims to authority of the representatives of
the legitimate legal system and of the Sovereign Citizens
is the ultimate source of that authority. In contemporary
American society, the power of government is said to
stem from the consent of the governed (i.e. the “We the
People” of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution). While
Sovereign Citizens are often quick to cloak themselves
in symbols of American patriotism, as will be discussed
below, authority as conceptualized in their pseudolegal
documents seems instead to stem from powers inherent
to the individual. This article is particularly interested
4 The 18th century positivist legal theorist John Austin should not be
confused with the 20th century philosopher of language John Austin, whose
speech act theory is discussed below.
scientific articles), the nature of the community that
created them, and the purpose for which they were
created (Bhatia, 2011, p. 241 Biber, 2010, pp. 241–
242). A register often appears across multiple distinct
genres. Legal English, for example, is used in both
the sorts of legal filings examined in this study and in
judicial opinions, both of which could simultaneously
be said to belong to a single superordinate “courtroom
document” genre. The concept of genre is not limited
to a single organizational level. Breeze (2019, p. 81)
makes reference to this portable quality of register in
her discussion of a “transversal legal register that cuts
through different genres” (emphasis in original). With
this in in mind, Sovereign Citizen pseudolegal texts
can be broadly thought of as a genre that copies both
the structure and register of legitimate legal texts in an
attempt to imbue itself with the authority of those texts.
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once
said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic” (Clarke, 1983, p. 36)
and several commentators (e.g., Dew, 2015 Netolitzky,
2018 Wessinger, 2000) have suggested that Sovereign
Citizens seem to view the legal system through a
similar lens. This magical explanation of Sovereign
Citizen pseudolegal thought goes as follows: Sovereign
Citizens are generally individuals who do not have
a strong understanding of the structure of the legal
system or the way it operates. In their encounters with
its representatives (i.e. lawyers, police, judges, etc.)
Sovereign Citizens see those representatives perform
legal rituals that they do not comprehend and that have
dramatic real word effects (e.g., they receive a traffic
ticket, are arrested, or have their homes foreclosed
upon). Whether consciously or not, because of their
lack of understanding (or perhaps because of a willful
misunderstanding) of how the legal system functions,
Sovereign Citizens conclude that those legal rituals tap
into some element of the “supernatural” and decide to
attempt to claim that power for themselves to turn it
against their oppressors (Wessinger, 1999, p. 38). To
bolster their efforts in what they perceive to be a form of
magical combat, Sovereign Citizens do not just copy the
form of existing legal rituals instead, they make efforts
to enhance what they believe to be its most magically
salient features.
Though it may initially seem strange, Sovereign Citizens
are far from the first people to make such a connection
between magic and the legal system. Law has long been
described as a form of “social magic” (Bourdieu, 1987,
p. 840 see also Frank, 1949, p. 181) and there are clear
parallels between the popularly understood importance
of “magic words” and the real and highly publicized
instances in which an individual’s failure to follow a
prescribed legal formula has resulted in significant real
world consequences, such as when a suspect’s telling
the police to “just give me a lawyer dog” was found to
be insufficient to invoke his right to counsel (Jackman,
2017) or when Barack Obama had to retake the
presidential oath of office after deviating slightly from
its constitutionally mandated form during his 2009
inauguration (Zeleny, 2009). Even those who would
not otherwise describe the practice of law as inherently
magical, including many lawyers, feel that the language
used in legal contexts is what actually “carr[ies] the
power of the law” (V. R. Charrow et al., 1982, p. 182) and
it has been suggested that the general public recognizes
legal texts as signs (in the semiotic sense) of the power
of the legal system before they process any particular
semantic content those texts may contain (Goodrich,
1990, p. 209). Magic as understood for the purposes of
this article can be defined as “pertain[ing] generally to
human control over supernatural forces” (O. Davies,
2012, p. 1) that is in many ways similar to Austin’s
classic positivist definition of law as the “commands of
a sovereign” (Bix, 2023).4
1
The main difference is that
where the sovereign commands their subjects, the
magician commands the entirety of the world around
them.
One of the most significant theoretical differences
between the claims to authority of the representatives of
the legitimate legal system and of the Sovereign Citizens
is the ultimate source of that authority. In contemporary
American society, the power of government is said to
stem from the consent of the governed (i.e. the “We the
People” of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution). While
Sovereign Citizens are often quick to cloak themselves
in symbols of American patriotism, as will be discussed
below, authority as conceptualized in their pseudolegal
documents seems instead to stem from powers inherent
to the individual. This article is particularly interested
4 The 18th century positivist legal theorist John Austin should not be
confused with the 20th century philosopher of language John Austin, whose
speech act theory is discussed below.
