This research project investigates the phenomenon of ‘pseudo-law’ in the UK. I am looking into how critical groups of citizens are using unorthodox interpretations of historical legal texts and legalistic formalities to challenge state authority.
In the UK, worldviews based on idiosyncratic ideals of an ancient, hidden but still valid ‘common law’ purportedly superior to statutory legislation originally stem from a movement known as ‘Freemen on the Land’. Freemen ideas trace their roots to 1960s-1970s North American anti-government ‘Sovereign Citizen’ and ‘Detaxer’ movements, which appear to have first gained a foothold in the UK following the financial crisis of the late 2000s. While a small body of literature exploring Freemen and related groups in other common law jurisdictions (notably the US and Canada) exists, not much is known about the use of pseudo-legal arguments in the UK today.
This project seeks to address this gap in the literature by offering new data and an in-depth analysis to better understand UK-based pseudo-law. My main research goal is to enable an evidence-informed assessment on the implications that pseudo-legal arguments may carry for state institutions as an unconventional form of challenge to sovereign authority. To achieve this goal, I adopt a qualitative methodological approach based on internet ethnography which looks at both online and ‘real-world’ dimensions of pseudo-law. My study consists of two main stages. The first stage is a thematic analysis of online content seeking to map pseudo-legal talk and ideology. The second stage of the project, moving from the information collected during the first stage, will involve an archival search for court judgments on cases dealing with pseudo-legal arguments, with the aim of building a dataset which should offer an insight into the interplay between pseudo-legal ideas and the UK court system. Additionally, I will be looking at instances of extra-judicial interaction with public institutions by drafting a digital survey to obtain information on the volume and nature of cases of pseudo-law arguments involving selected local authorities.