The sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of American litigants, commentators, and financial scheme promoters. Self-described sovereign citizens take the position that they are answerable only to common law and are not subject to any statutes or proceedings at the federal, state or municipal levels, or that they do not recognize U.S. currency and that they are "free of any legal constraints". They especially reject most forms of taxation as illegitimate. Participants in the movement argue this concept in opposition to "federal citizens" who, they say, have unknowingly forfeited their rights by accepting some aspect of federal law.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classifies "sovereign citizens" among domestic terror threats as anti-government extremists. In 2010 the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimated that approximately 100,000 Americans were "hard-core sovereign believers" with another 200,000 "just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges."
Read more about Sovereign Citizen Movement: Theories, History, Legal Status of Theories, Incidents, Public Image
Famous quotes containing the words sovereign, citizen and/or movement:
“Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom.”
—Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)
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—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)