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Sovereign citizen has a totally sane question.
(lemmy.world)
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Definitely not a cause. For a while they were a pain in the ass. Courts and lawyers didn't know how to deal with them and they would keep coming back and back with appeals and collateral actions. Now there's a whole playbook for disposing of their bullshit, doesn't jam things up anymore.
It was originally a mail order scam targeting poor, uneducated people who were charged with crimes, desperate to believe any promise of help.
I know a lawyer about a decade ago who worked for a country government dealing with one. He told me that if the guy had 6 friend he could probably fully demolish the entire government of the county. They would be bankrupt from lawsuits, everyone would be afraid to do anything for fear of getting dragged in, nothing could get approved.
I don't know if he was exaggerating or not but I think there is some truth to it. Things do seem to work only because no one has decided to stop it from working.
Maybe they rattled your friend. A while back a Canadian judge wrote an excellent legal opinion, that is more like a textbook, on who they are, where they came from, and how to deal with their arguments. It's an amazing work of legal research and writing and actually made me sympathize with them. They are victims of a scam and desperate to escape the criminal justice system.
https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012abqb571.html