The Political Obligation to Obey: Are Sovereign Citizens Entitled to Declare Non-Consent to State Laws?

Abstract

The contemporary sovereign citizen movement in Aotearoa New Zealand comprises a complex system of pseudolegal beliefs and conspiracy theories derived from a wide range of sources, making its internal logic convoluted and difficult to follow. A core tenet of sovereign citizen argument is the application of a radical version of social contract theory, whereby adherents of the movement imagine they possess a natural and inherent right to self-governance that empowers them to disavow the authority of the government and declare non-consent to state laws. This paper serves as an attempt to make sense of the sovereign citizen movement by searching for consistency between sovereign citizen beliefs and existing theories of political obligation—including foundational and contemporary social contract theories, consent theory and philosophical anarchism, as well as the arguments made by indigenous critics of social contract theory—before undertaking to develop a novel, sovereign citizen theory of political obligation.

This paper concludes that sovereign citizen ideology is broadly inconsistent with established theories of political obligation, though its philosophical roots are identifiably contractarian. While the conventional application of these theories confirms that sovereign citizens are neither entitled nor justified in their derogation from state law, the development of a sovereign citizen theory of political obligation elucidates the societal defects that lead people to develop sovereign citizen beliefs.