Sovereign citizens, admiralty court, $5 and a bag of chips

[HenryDorsetCase]

Judge Posner would like a word.

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/02/judge-posner-lights-into-pro-se-sovereign-citizen/

[Ixion]

Judge Posner would like a word.

http://abovethelaw.com/2015/02/judge-posner-lights-into-pro-se-sovereign-citizen/

Oddly enough, deep underneath the steaming pile of gibbering insanity there is a faint skeleton of truth.

Long ago, about 800 years ago, English law was settling into two great streams. One was civil, or Roman law, based on the Code of (Emperor) Justinian, which had cognizance of religious matters (marriage, wills, blasphemy buggery sheep shagging etc) , and of admiralty matters ( mainly commercial law but some criminal law also, eg piracy).

The other was the Common Law, which came down, more or less, to ' that's the way we've always done it hereabouts'. There were very few statutes then, perhaps half a dozen at Most ( glass of water and smelling salts for Mr Dorset Case and his learned brethren) . Common law had cognizance of most crimes. But, there were no police then . So, if you accused someone of a crime, say nicking your motor bike, you hauled him up before the judge yourself and , if the judge thought there was a case to answer ( I'm simplifying here) he ordered a trial. No lawyers though, what he meant was that there would be a Trial by Battle. You and the accused faced off with sharp pointy things and belted the bejasus out of each other until one of you was dead.

Obviously, then a common law trial could not proceed unless there was an aggrieved party present, with sharp pointy thing. So Bracton, the famous jurist would have cautiously agreed that the only court in which a criminal case could be prosecuted , absent the aggrieved party, was the Court of Admiralty.

So late as the sixteenth century , complainants had to lodge a recognizance that they would turn up with SPT. Then the lawyers decided to simplify matters with a legal fiction that in every case the prosecutor would be deemed to be that well known gentleman, Mr John Doe. But trial by battle was not abolished until 1819 .

There are other such faint glimmerings of reality. It is as if someone has become totally shitfaced and in that state read a book of legal history , and in one of those periods when one, when in that state, returns to semi consciousness, had written a summary of it.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested in this most fascinating topic, I recommend, as a simple but scholarly introduction, "The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I " by Sir Frederick Pollock