Pseudolaw

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'''Pseudolaw''' encompasses any legal theory developed or action taken that relies heavily on [[Special%3AAllpages&from=&namespace=106|frivolous]] arguments trumped up in legal language. Pseudolaw shares many homologous and analogous traits with [[pseudoscience]] such as the use of [[argument from authority]], [[equivocation]], and [[quote mining]]. Like pseudoscience most of the proponents of pseudolaw are laymen with little to no legal experience (outside their own trials and incarcerations). While the vast majority of those in the legal profession reject the arguments, there are a few [[crank]]s with law degrees and licenses that push pseudolaw as well.
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'''Pseudolaw''' encompasses any legal theory developed or action taken that relies heavily on frivolous arguments trumped up in legal language. Pseudolaw shares many homologous and analogous traits with [[pseudoscience]] such as the use of [[argument from authority]], [[equivocation]], and [[quote mining]]. Like pseudoscience most of the proponents of pseudolaw are laymen with little to no legal experience (outside their own trials and incarcerations). While the vast majority of those in the legal profession reject the arguments, there are a few [[crank]]s with law degrees and licenses that push pseudolaw as well.
  
 
==Signs of pseudolaw==
 
==Signs of pseudolaw==

Revision as of 21:37, 4 May 2008

Pseudolaw encompasses any legal theory developed or action taken that relies heavily on frivolous arguments trumped up in legal language. Pseudolaw shares many homologous and analogous traits with pseudoscience such as the use of argument from authority, equivocation, and quote mining. Like pseudoscience most of the proponents of pseudolaw are laymen with little to no legal experience (outside their own trials and incarcerations). While the vast majority of those in the legal profession reject the arguments, there are a few cranks with law degrees and licenses that push pseudolaw as well.

Contents

Signs of pseudolaw

Much like pseudoscience, one of the first hints that a legal theory is pseudolaw is when it bucks against established legal consensus and precedent. However, while necessary this is not a sufficient condition. Much of currently accepted law was once against precedent. The primary thing to look for is if the legal theory or argument has been tried before a court and whether it was rejected. If an argument has been rejected by the courts on a repeated basis anyone attempting to push that argument is practicing pseudolaw.

While the ultimate test of pseudolaw is how it is ultimately perceived and used in a court of law (just as with pseudoscience the ultimate test is how it performs with predictions against empirical reality) there are many red flags that can identify pseudolaw even without a court ruling. These include, but are not limited to:

  • Over reliance on technicalities such as spelling or grammar. For example,some people argue that the traditional use of all capital letters for names in court briefings is a different entity than the actual person in the case.[1]
  • Quoting Supreme Court cases out of context, usually one or two sentences, or sometimes even a phrase. Tax protesters are found of quoting Supreme Court opinions that say that the Sixteenth Amendment "conferred no new power of taxation." Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103 (1916); see also Brushaber v. Union Pac. R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916) to argue that the income tax is illegal. However, the ruling is not saying that the 16th amendment did not provide power to tax income, but rather that Congress already had that power. This is classic quote mining.
  • Reference to other arguments that have been rejected as frivolous by courts. Pseudolaw concepts flock together and cross-pollinate.
  • Arguments that refer to the United States of America Incorporated or to the Federal government somehow seeming to be a private enterprise or company. [2]
  • Jurisdictional challenges that focus on claiming the federal government has no right to try cases in states. A favorite is to claim that any court with gold fringe on the flag is a "maritime" court not a real court.[3]
  • Arguments that try and say the court has no authority over an individual unless that individual has consented to that authority. This is often phrased as along the lines of "once you accept an attorney, you're bound by contract to the court, but if you refuse an attorney they have no authority."
  • Intense hatred of lawyers and the bar, reference to the bar as being run by the Illuminati or Masons, and encouraging people with little to no legal training to refuse appointed attorneys and proceed pro se.[4]
  • References to the Titles of Nobility Amendment (the so-called "missing 13th Amendment" to the United States Constitution). Similarly, some pseudolawyers even argue that persons who use the title of "Esquire" (generally practicing attorneys) are not citizens and cannot hold public office.[5]
  • References to the Uniform Commercial Code in cases which do not involve private commercial transactions (such as criminal, traffic, and tax cases)[6]
  • Pseudolawyers are fond of making up jargon from Latin, that they claim derive from common law and give people special rights that others do not such as juris spurious when used in filing claims. [7]
  • On a similar note, pseudolawyers often misuse legal terminology, often because they do not have a full understanding of the concepts they are attempting to discuss.
  • Extraordinary claims such as being able to get anyone out of jail, no matter what they were convicted of, in a matter of weeks. [8]

High profile pseudolawyers

Pseudolaw practitioners can fall into several categories, primarily laymen with no legal training or license who "advise" clients, and true lawyers that have embraced crankhood to push some particular pseudolaw theory. From time to time one of these pseudolawyers will gain press attention because their ideas are being used in increasing numbers, or in a high profile case, or because they themselves are being prosecuted.

One recent (as of October 2007) example is that of Tommy Cryer, a Louisiana-based attorney who has been a popular speaker in the tax protester movement. Cryer claims that there is no law that makes individuals liable for income tax and pushes his theory using all the classic pseudolaw methods discussed above. [9] He was recently prosecuted for willful failure to file an income tax return but was found not guilty by the jury.[10] Because of the rarity of such an event Cryer has received some media attention and tax protesters everywhere are trumpeting this as a victory for their cause. In reality, Cryer got off by convincing the jury he did not willfully fail to file because he didn't know he had to. He was still found liable for the tax and will never be able to use such a defense again. But Cryer has used his "victory" to continue making money on the lecture tour (despite others such as Sherry Jackson who have attempted to use his defense and lost).[11]

Another example is that of Tony Davis and his International Legal Services business. Davis pretends he is a lawyer, though he is really just a convicted felon with no legal training. For the small price of $12,000 he promises to get anyone out of jail no matter what crime they committed or when based on a technicality he claims makes every conviction in the last 60 years null and void.[8] True to form with most cranks and con men, while his theory was rejected outright by every level of the court system, he continues to claim that he is right and victory is around the corner. [12] A similar pattern has occurred with Mitch Modeleski a/k/a Paul Andrew Mitchell and his "Supreme Law Firm", who has filed a number of frivolous lawsuits and threatened a number of people with baseless suits.[13]

Law, authority and hucksters

Though not strictly pseudolaw, many people have attempted to use their position as a "lawyer" to somehow gain authority on issues or even run scams similar to televangelists. For example, Andrew Schlafly (famous for his blog, conservapedia) has a law degree, but has not been involved in any serious legal practice and has not participated in any meaningful way in the legal system. But he uses his position as a "lawyer" to attempt to gain authority to argue his polemic points, such as the link between abortion and breast cancer. [14]

Other examples include individuals such as Jay Sekulow of the American Center of Law and Justice, which is essentially a giant anti-ACLU crank organization. [15] Sekulow files amicus curiae briefs on cases other people have brought up, then pretends on his daily radio show that he is an integral part of all of these cases. He then starts begging for money; he has essentially made a living pretending to be a lawyer and hating on the ACLU.

Neither Sekulow nor Schlafly have participated in a meaningful way in the legal system. While they are lawyers in the loosest sense of the word, the only thing they do with these credentials is use them to fleece the gullible and push an ideologically-driven agenda. This is not technically pseudolaw but it is an important element in the abuse of the legal system.

Pseudolaw and conspiracy theories

Pseudolaw often goes hand and hand with other conspiracy theories. Most pseudolaw practitioners believe there is a vast conspiracy to cover up a group of elitists that control all the judges, courts, juries and the government as a whole. This is why their ideas never work in court--not because they are wrong, but because there is a conspiracy to suppress them (just like the vast materialist conspiracy propping up the Darwinian orthodoxy). This dark group holds all the classic labels such as Masons, Illuminati, and Zionists. There is also a tendency to believe that violent revolution is coming and to stockpile supplies, weapons and ammunition. Many of the militia and extremist groups that have dominated press coverage of domestic terrorism over the last decade have relied heavily on pseudolaw concepts and conspiracies.

Debt elimination scams

Some debt elimination scams are based on pseudo-legal arguments. One such scam that has been circulating for years in different forms claims that the United States Treasury Department has a trust fund established for every U.S. citizen with a Social Security number, which funds can (somehow) be accessed by filing the appropriate paperwork at the county courthouse declaring oneself a sovereign of the "united states of America" and disclaiming federal citizenship in the "United States of America" (note the pseudo-legal obsession with making distinctions where none exist based on capitalization). Then, goes the theory, one need only print a "Sight Draft", or "Bill of Exchange", transferring one's home loans and other debts to the U.S. Treasury Department. These bogus documents are rejected by lenders as a matter of course, and courts have repeatedly found in favor of lenders and against those attempting this method, declaring such documents worthless.

The cost of pseudolaw

The greatest cost is to those that buy into the theories and wind up spending years in jail and often losing all of their life work in the processes. While some of these people may be just greedy and looking for a way out of paying their fair share, some may honestly be seeking something and get pulled in by the cult-like mentality of the movement. Family members of those in prison also face tremendous costs, such as when Tony Davis would go to people and claim to be able to get their family members out of jail for thousands of dollars. When it failed and people tried to get their money back, Davis sued them.[12]

There is also an inherent cost to the legal system in processing the frivolous claims, and to all aspects of government when pseudolaw is taken to the extreme, such as the case of Ed Brown. Ed Brown was a tax protester who bought into all the conspiracy and pseudolaw theories. After his conviction, he and his wife holed up in their house and refused to leave, threatening violent action against law enforcement. The eight month standoff was extremely costly both in terms of dollar figures and the time and energy of law enforcement. [16]

Finally, like all examples of irrationality, there is the intellectual cost of destruction of reason. For all of these reasons, pseudolaw is a dangerously growing trend that needs as much vigilance as any of the pseudoscience movements.

References

  1. Discussion and court cases surrounding the all caps issue
  2. Pseudolaw rant about the USA, inc.
  3. Pseudolaw rant involving maritime courts and the gold fringe on flags
  4. Biblical pseudolaw rant against lawyers and the Bar Association
  5. Essay which makes exactly this argument
  6. Bizarre pseudolaw book referencing the Bible and misusing legal terminology
  7. Motion of Particulars from a victim of pseudolaw
  8. 8.0 8.1 Ex-convict appeals to inmates' hopes for freedom
  9. Summary of Cryer's pseudolaw delusions
  10. Cryer found not guilty
  11. Example of one of Cryer's current paid gigs (he needs the money to pay back taxes!)
  12. 12.0 12.1 U.S. Supreme Court rejects ex-convict's legal argument
  13. Site critical of Paul Andrew Mitchell
  14. Schlafly and his breast cancer rant
  15. ACLJ on the ACLU
  16. Local editorial on the standoff
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