A common misconception among police officers is that they have the right to order citizens involved in one of their investigations to produce ID upon demand. In fact, their right is subject to legal limitations that most Americans, who readily comply, aren’t aware of, or don’t care about.
There's a small group who've educated themselves and are anxious to confront cops exceeding their authority. YouTube is full of videos documenting how these self-taught legal experts, called “auditors,” bait the police into demanding their ID, and then humiliate them by explaining why they're not going to comply. And there's another group that employs similar tactics. Refusing to produce their driver's license for a cop at a traffic stop, they'll say things like, “I will not comply,” or, “I'm not driving, I'm travelling.” They speak in pseudo-legalese gobbledygook that means nothing to a police officer.
Instead of embarrassing an ignorant cop by citing the law, these situations usually end up with the officer dragging them out of their car, sometimes after smashing the window in order to get inside. It's all documented on YouTube, without a single success. Members of this group of ineffective dissenters call themselves “sovereign citizens.” Refusing to recognize the legitimacy and authority of the government, they claim the right to choose which laws they will and will not obey.
When a sovereign citizen says they're “traveling,” not “driving,” they're expressing the belief that as long as they're not involved in any commercial activity—e.g. transporting goods or passengers—they're free to drive without a driver's license, plates, registration or insurance. When law enforcement asks them to produce these documents, they say, “I’m travelling in my private conveyance.”
This view’s based on their peculiar interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees “the right to travel freely between states.” While that amendment does guarantee citizens freedom of movement, it says nothing about commercial activity, nor the right to operate a motor vehicle on public roads without regulation. If someone wants to walk from one state to another, the 14th Amendment guarantees that right, but not if they're driving a motor vehicle. The courts have repeatedly rejected the “travelling” argument, calling it "nonsensical,” “frivolous,” and “pseudo-legal.” But the sovereign citizens are undeterred by the lack of even one court ruling in their favor.
Sovereign citizens use word games that, while intended to befuddle the police or judges, usually end badly for them. One tactic is to ask the same questions over and over again, arguing in circles as to why a cop is impeding their freedom. When pulled over for, say, expired license plate tags, they’ll ask, “Have I committed a crime?” or “Have I caused harm to anyone?” Though dead tags is normally not a “crime,” it is illegal to drive with them, giving the police a legal reason to demand a driver's license even if the driver has caused no “harm” to another person.
Sovereign citizens believe that people have dual identities: a physical, “living self”—sometimes called a “natural person”—and a separate legal identity called the "strawman” that’s a corporate entity created by the government to allow the Federal Reserve to hold in trust that citizen's inherent “unlimited value”—a trust they then use as collateral to take out loans against a supposed foreign debt that the U.S. going off the gold standard incurred. They claim that government documents, such as birth certificates and driver's licenses, use all capital letters for the name (e.g., "JANE DOE”) to indicate the corporate "strawman" version of an individual. This is why a sovereign citizen, when a judge in court asks them for their name, will talk about being a "living, breathing human being."
The argument is that not being a fictitious, government-created “strawman” makes them immune from laws and the court's jurisdiction. Easy-going judges react to this ridiculousness with amused detachment, while the less patient ones often come up with creative punishments for wasting the court’s time. They'll also assign legal counsel to a sovereign citizen so they can speak to someone to have a conversation with, instead of having to try to decipher a code.
Sovereign citizens believe that if they sign, for example, a fishing permit, that they're entering into a contract with an illegitimate government, thus surrendering their sovereignty. Some add “all rights reserved” to their signatures, which they think will immunize them from entering into a contract with an illegitimate government. A common tactic is to include “UCC 1-207” or “UCC 1-308” with their signatures on official papers—traffic tickets, tax forms, or loan agreements, etc.—a reference to The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a set of standardized laws adopted by most U.S. states to govern commercial transactions. It’s business law, not criminal law or constitutional law, but sovereign citizens have jumped to the conclusion that, because the UCC is so widely adopted, it's the law of the land, overriding all other laws.
Moreover, sovereign citizens misinterpret the UCC’s usage of technical terms like “person,” “entity,” and “debtor” as referring to hidden legal personas. They've convinced themselves that the UCC’s language provides them with a path to personal freedom from government control.
Sovereign citizens believe the UCC gives them the legal right to gain control over the imaginary government trust funds the government set up for their “strawmen” when they were born. There's never been a case in which a sovereign citizen has been able to claim the vast sums they claim are tied to their “strawman” identity that's tied to their birth certificate or social security number.
The “strawman” theory reflects conspiracy thinking that began in the 1970s, growing out of a mix of tax-protest movements and misunderstood legal terms. Anti-tax activists like Irwin Schiff and others argued that the government tricks people into paying taxes, that legal language hides secret rules, and that the U.S. is actually a corporation. In the 1990s, a man named Roger Elvick (who ended up in prison), using misinterpretations of real legal terms, put forth the “strawman” theory that when you’re born, the government creates a corporate version of you that's attached to a secret Treasury account worth millions that can be accessed by filing UCC forms and other legal documents.
Some courts put people's names in all caps for formatting reasons, which the sovereign citizens have decided is how they indicate the “corporate” you.
Via the Internet, the wacky ideas of the sovereign citizens spread through message boards, self-help legal gurus, YouTube seminars, and anti-government circles. Sovereign citizens are unique in that they require no positive feedback to continue with the same failed tactics. They have no real heroes because none of them have succeeded. When so much time, money, and resources have been devoted to a cause, admitting it doesn’t work is painful.
There must be some faint hope that keeps the goofiness alive. What else could it be other than the belief that each sovereign citizen has a shot at getting their hands on that pot of gold in their strawman’s name with that elusive, perfect UCC filing?