u/DNetolitzky

Where I live a lawyer or ex-lawyer is prohibited from serving in juries. I kinda regret that.

But in Australia you just show up! Cool!

Yes, this is a pseudolaw thing.

I'll say this: the Common Law Court of the Sovereign Peoples Assembly of Western Australia has beaten out any Canadian court I've attended on one key point: they supply branded water bottles!

Pretty aggressive sentences, too. This judgment imposed 150 year, and $300 million (gold bullion) penalties on a bunch of psychiatrists.

I also like how the judgment clarifies the exchange rates for gold and worthless fiat currency at the judgment date. It's these little details that encourage institutional trust.

Too bad this isn't a Canadian outfit. It'd give me an excuse to write about the CLC SPAWA and in a legal constitutional sense evaluate what would be the consequences of such a judgment. Yes, it's probably not enforceable. There would likely not be any criminal prohibition breached in Canada by the Court, though its Sheriffs could be in trouble.

But what I find intriguing in a goofy law formalities/procedure sense is what about the "No Appeal" clause. At least in Canada that would not work. But explaining why would be fun.

Oh well.

Looking at the CanLII website and my notes, it appears the Meads v Meads decision has been cited in 536 court cases in 11 jurisdictions worldwide.

That's almost certainly a substantial underestimate.

Not bad for a trial-level decision that, purportedly, is nothing but obiter.

If you haven't read it, here's a link.

(It's long.)

Call it “vignettes from an invisible war”.

Written for interested laypersons, “Outlawed”, by Profs. Harry Hobbs (Australia UNSW) and Stephen Young (New Zealand UOtago), introduces pseudolaw, surveys its history, operation, and manifestations worldwide.

I recommend Outlawed to those who are curious about pseudolaw, pseudolaw’s origin and evolution, the weird persistence of these concepts in the face of inevitable failure. The authors are academics who have written extensively about pseudolaw, related litigation, and its host populations. These are well-informed subject experts.

Hobbs and Young provide probably the best summary I’ve ever read of pseudolaw’s multistage growth and incubation in dissident US political/cultural circles. The authors have expertly identified key characters like King of Hawaii and Judge Plenipotentiary David-Wynn: Miller and friend of elves and fairies Winston Shrout to illustrate how pseudolaw grew both as a nest of interwoven concepts and as a marketplace product. Other individual personalities and their activities that are explored in Outlawed were obviously selected to be interesting – or appalling – but these individuals usually are also fair representatives of the travelers in this strange shadow-world.

The text does not conduct a technical deep descent into the “law law” of this stuff. As the authors observe, you can go to academic texts and the famous Canadian Meads v Meads court judgment for that. But key points are covered, particularly Strawman Theory, the weird duality of flesh and something imaginary that is the hallmark of most pseudolaw schemes worldwide. More importantly, the “why” of these ideas and their appeal is an ongoing narrative thread. In doing that Hobbs and Young explore one of the critical mysteries of pseudolaw schemes, their promoters, and proponents. Why would you invest money and time to use something that never works? Outlawed explores a number of explanations:

• desperation with no apparent (legitimate) recourse
• alienation from state and (real) law
• political and religious ideology
• marginal and subcultural affiliations
• the drama and theater of pseudolaw
• a social sense of empowerment and resistance, but one with no real operational effect.

All these are valid. The one motivation that is not examined is quick and easy money – simple greed – but to be fair to the authors, the “mercenary” populations (my term) who operate in that manner are not well understood at present. Arguably, the mercenary subtypes are not really pseudolaw adherents. But now I’m meandering.

What matters is that Outlawed recognizes and digs deep into why there is no simple explanation or foundation for people adopting this weird not-law. Hobbs and Young correctly (in my opinion) conclude that with such a complex set of motivations and personalities there cannot be a quick and easy fix. Pseudolaw, as a mind-virus, is going to spread until it exhausts its potential hosts, and, even then, it won’t disappear. Believers get seriously invested. Some are probably too embedded in a conspiratorial and irrational zeitgeist to ever operate in a way most of us would consider “rational”.

Now that leads to a delicate point. Pseudolaw harms people. Pseudolaw leads to violence. Outlawed identifies and describes in sometimes quite graphic detail violence that has resulted from pseudolaw beliefs. That’s important. These are dangerous ideas. We should not minimize that fact, and the risks posed to state, court, and law enforcement actors. But Hobbs and Young also explore how pseudolaw harms its users. That’s a tricky balance. We are looking at a kind of conceptual pathogen, a memetic disease, that badly damages all those it contacts. That makes its users victims in a very meaningful sense. Those who propagate pseudolaw for profit warrant no such sympathy. But Outlawed walks a fine line between deserved denunciation, alarm at consequences, but also pointing to the wreckage left behind – all of it.

That’s critical, in my opinion. This arms-length perspective separates disease symptoms from the mind virus that caused those. It’s easy to make fun of these people – and sometimes they deserve it – but in a social, functional sense, it’d be better to find other ways to manage pseudolaw and its deleterious effects. We benefit little if we stand back and watch infected hosts hurl themselves into heaps of razor wire. And sometimes they drag us in with them.

Outlawed tries to propose solutions and mechanisms. However, the authors acknowledge there isn’t any simple answer. I agree.

Outlawed has certain weaker aspects. The authors focus mainly on pseudolaw’s manifestations in the US, which is important and necessary in a historical sense, and on the Australian and New Zealand branches, the authors’ regional domain of expertise. I do the same when I write on this subject. I know Canadian pseudolaw better than other alternatives, and so I draw many examples from that admittedly well-studied milieu.

But this focus means the reader will not fully experience the weird global complexity of pseudolaw phenomena. That’s not to say Outlawed doesn’t acknowledge and touch on the international nature and expansion of pseudolaw, but that’s secondary. The book’s jurisdictional focus is a comparatively minor issue. What would make an interesting deeper investigation is why pseudolaw’s manifestations in different jurisdictions are sometimes very different. For instance, pseudolaw has never really taken hold in Canada, at least compared to the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Nobody knows why, but when the authors discuss how to manage pseudolaw and its believers, the markedly different international outcomes are not addressed. To be fair, commenting on that would involve a lot of guessing and hypothesis. Inter-jurisdiction variation is an issue that will likely be the subject of much discussion in the emerging academic community of pseudolaw investigators.

Hobbs and Young are sharply critical of how the common law operates in an institutional sense. Law is oblique and overly complicated. Law uses opaque and cryptic language. In a practical sense law is more a playground for the wealthy than those who more often suffer its negative effects. Litigation is expensive – at least if you want a lawyer on your side. I don't disagree with that, but the authors use that as the foundation to argue for more access to legal professionals, for plain-language materials, for resources pulled out from behind paywalls, even judges taking on a more public role. I don’t think that’s wrong, but my perspective is skeptical at the institutional level. I very much doubt the common law tradition and its rules could ever be a functional apparatus. But then again, I’ve never believed in “the law” in the same sense as most who practice, teach, and judge in that domain. Just label me a heretic, but the result is I personally find those propositions somewhat quaint.

Instead, if you asked me what to do? Decapitation. No no no, I’m not saying capital punishment, I mean targeting key node individuals. In Canada pseudolaw populations suddenly turned belly up when their leader figures were the subject of criminal prosecution, so there’s a precedent.

These are comparatively minor concerns. I do not always agree with Hobbs and Young, but I did not at any point identify any errors in Outlawed. The citations I checked were accurate. The language is clean, accessible. The only jargon is the jargon of pseudolaw itself, and Outlawed usually digs down to explain that language when comprehension is relevant, rather than just a muttered “WTF?”

Outlawed introduces a world that is a weird and peculiar place. But then, that’s really what it’s like. If not even weirder than you would expect from this introduction.

It’s a pity the book is still pricy. With taxes this set me back $70 Canadian, ordering through Amazon and with import duties. I’d have thought a Penguin publication would be a little cheaper? Maybe subsequent regional editions? There should be local editions.

But it’s a good piece of work, and one I don't hesitate to recommend. There are no other publications in the marketplace that serve this niche. But that’s not a “win by default” conclusion. Outlawed is a solid, thought out, nuanced investigation. No special education or training is needed to make good use of Outlawed. I am already using it as a reference for my own writing in this subject area.

The authors should be commended. I expect Outlawed will stand as an authoritative important text, a milestone in commentary on this subject.

Author: Harry Hobbs, Stephen Young (@SteveIsInOtago)

Title: Outlawed: Responding to the Global Rise of Sovereign Citizens and Legal Conspiracies

Publisher: Penguin Australia

Publication date: August 18, 2026

261 pages, no illustrations

ISBN 978-1-76162-174-1

South Africa’s High Court issued an important judgment, a comprehensive rejection of core pseudolaw motifs. Judge Du Plessis explicitly adopts Canadian and other commonwealth approaches, especially Meads v Meads.

This arose against a mortgage elimination claim. The Adams, a husband and wife duo, claimed they are “sovereign Aboriginal living persons” and therefore not subject to court authority. The Adams stopped paying in 2021. They deployed typical Strawman Theory arguments, they had “allodial” title, and are only subject to “common law” and an “Aboriginal legal system”. Banks do not lend money but instead the funds were from the ADAMS or Adams, themselves.

Cutting to the chase? They get a free house.

Judge Du Plessis explicitly sets out to conduct a comprehensive rebuttal of the pseudolaw arguments deployed by the Adams:

>I deem it necessary, to some extent, to address the main submissions as grouped together above, to develop an approach that is appropriate in instances such as these, where litigants purport to deliberately place themselves outside the rules and the law and rely on pseudolegal arguments to do so. Guidance can be found in foreign case law.

And Du Plessis turns to Australian, New Zealand, but mainly Canadian caselaw. Meads is just the starting point, Du Plessis also reviews other key Canadian cases that describe Strawman Theory, and which conclude that simply raising Strawman Theory motifs are “a marker of bad faith and vexatious, abusive litigation.” Yup. Kick ‘em while they’re down.

New Zealand caselaw provides the theoretical authority to deny Indigenous claims in relation to private contract. The “banks make money from thin air” argument is rejected with reference to more Canadian cases from Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta.

It’s worth reading this decision to witness just how much the activities of courts in certain foreign jurisdictions here have assisted where pseudolaw emerges in a new context. But Judge Du Plessis goes further. He then takes those principles to rule on how pseudolaw applies (or rather doesn’t apply) in South Africa. Take this rebuttal of Strawman Theory:

>... The ALL CAPS/strawman theory is inconsistent with the basic principles of legal personality under our law. Legal personality is conferred on legal subjects, and there are two categories: natural persons (all human beings) and juristic or artificial persons. A juristic person, such as a company or bank, is a legal subject distinct from its members, often incorporated under general binding legislation. Such a juristic person has its own rights, duties and capacities to act through its various functionaries, and those actions of the functionaries bind the juristic person. Nothing in our law recognises a third category of hidden “strawmen” attached to natural persons via typography or birth registration, nor does the use of capital letters in a person’s name create a separate legal subject.

>... In other words, a natural person’s name may appear in different typographical forms in documents and records. This does not create a second legal person or a juristic person, nor does it affect their capacity to contract, or their liability should they fail to honour the contract.

... the bank is incorporated as a public company under South African law and is a recognised juristic person. It is entitled to sue and be sued in its own name, and to enforce contracts into which it has lawfully entered. Nothing in our law prevents a bank, as a juristic person, from contracting with natural persons (or from being represented by attorneys and counsel in enforcing its rights). The “strawman” / ALL CAPS theory, therefore, provides no basis in law for the respondents not to be held to the contract.

Judge Du Plessis does the same for pseudolaw arguments on jurisdiction and indigenous status and rights, and banks do not lend money and “securitization” arguments.

The Adams arguments are tossed, and the bank takes possession of the residence:

>The respondents’ submissions are advanced with conviction, but conviction does not convert pseudolaw into law. Foreign courts have observed that OPCA strategies can, in fact, compound the prejudice of indebted homeowners by delaying resolution and increasing costs. South African courts must, in my view, follow the same path: treat such arguments as legally ineffective, while ensuring that defendants are heard and that ordinary defences, where properly raised, are fully considered.

>... I therefore find that the defendants have not disclosed a bona fide defence as required by Rule 32(3)(b). Their affidavit is largely argumentative and ideological, but does not raise any triable issue on the validity of the loan, the bond, the default, or the quantum.

The Adams counterclaimed for millions on various pseudolaw bases, which naturally gets nowhere. The Adams are ordered to pay the bank’s litigation expenses per the mortgage contract.

This decision is a solid, careful piece of work. I recommend that judges where possible do not just reject pseudolaw schemes, but explain why those concepts are factually and legally incorrect. Judge Du Plessis did exactly that. As noted above, foreign caselaw provided the foundation and framework, and demonstrates the Adams’ ideas were not some eccentric novelty, but instead a part of a global phenomenon, where the same not-law is advanced over and over, with no success.

This decision is a solid foundation for future pseudolaw-related jurisprudence in South Africa. While this is the first judgment from that jurisdiction that I am aware of to identify and attack pseudolaw squarely with that nomenclature, this judgment was not the first point where pseudolaw has been promoted in that country.

In the 2010s a guy named Michael Tellinger promoted “Ubuntu” pseudolaw theory, set up a marginal political party, and claimed you can pay off debts with glorified IOUs. Tellinger is a colourful character, a former 1980s pop star and expert in the Anunnaki, those nasty Sumerian gods who created humanity as gold mining slaves. DAMN YOU ENKI!!!

Tellinger did try his promissory note arguments in court. Where they flopped repeatedly:

Standard Bank of South Africa Limited v Tellinger (13340/2011) [2011] ZAGPJHC 70 (3 August 2011)

ABSA Bank Ltd v Terblanche and Another (17330/2012) [2012] ZAWCHC 369 (30 November 2012)

Birch v Firstrand Bank, Pike N.O. and Others v Firstrand Bank, Firstrand Bank v Pike N.O. and Others (1050/2011, 1415/2012, 3774/2015) [2016] ZAECGHC 54 (3 June 2016)

But you’re not surprised now, are you? Again, this goes to show how nothing much in the pseudolaw world is ever new. Recycle, rinse, reuse.

Here’s Judge Du Plessis’s Adams decision.

Worth the read and review as a template response to pseudolaw.

(That is not a legitimate legal identification document but a pseudolaw forgery - see R v Ayyazi, 2022 ABQB 412.)

Something weird about lawyers. You put a document with big ink and/or blood fingerprints on it, postage stamps with cryptic codes, and a signature line that reads UCC 1-308 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED!

And you ask the lawyer to notarize it.

A surprising number say Okey Dokey!

This makes me crazy. I’ve seen this hundreds of times. Documents with duplicate names in different cases and colours. Documents that purport to be contacts between BILL SMITH and Bill Smith. Documents invoking bible passages as law. Documents that are called “Notary Judgments”, and that if you read ‘em, purport to be binding supra-court decisions.

Documents that threaten law enforcement, court staff, judges. Documents that purport to create a licence to kill.

Okey Dokey!!! Okey Dokey!!!

Do I seem pissed off? I’m pissed off. If there is a profession on the planet that ought to have an internal checkbox that I maybe should scan something before I slap my signature on it and seal it with a magic stamp? It’s lawyers.

But they #^&@# keep notarizing the F’ing things.

I’m posting about a lawyer in Alberta who finally got a professional sanction for doing this. Her name is Grace Akpan, of Calgary. Her activities led to a string of court judgments and now, finally, a disciplinary outcome.

Akpan notarized documents purporting to unilaterally terminate a drug prosecution. Drug trafficker and illegal handgun owner sends them to the Alberta Court of King’s Bench threatening court staff. The ABKB (ACJ John Rooke) reacts negatively and fines Akpan:

• R v Ayyazi, 2022 ABQB 412 (This one attaches the documents Akpan notarized and the obviously fake Government of Canada ID she accepted) (Shure looks real to me - the back is even worse - also reproduced in the judgment.)
• R v Ayyazi, 2022 ABKB 836

The Alberta Court of Appeal overturns the sanction on the basis of procedural (un)fairness. Goes back to the ABKB: Akpan (Re), 2024 ABCA 232

ABKB (ACJ Blair Nixon – Rooke is now retired) does it over and again fines Akpan:

• Akpan (Re), 2024 ABKB 417
• Akpan (Re), 2024 ABKB 651

Back to the ABCA, where the Court says yes, Akpan did a bad lawyer thingie. But courts shouldn’t sanction lawyers for bad lawyer thingies. That’s up to the Law Society of Alberta: Akpan (Re), 2025 ABCA 47

Now, throughout all this Akpan takes the position that she never did anything wrong. She was acting as a notary. She witnessed someone sign a document. She looked at the dude’s (fake) ID, checked the name signed, looked at the picture on the (fake) ID, and it’s the dude. That ends it. Notaries witness signatures. And anyways, she’s never heard of Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments or OPCA. Can’t mean anything.

The various court decisions all agree that Akpan in doing that ignored three things.

1. Notaries in Alberta have professional obligations to not endorse or validate fraudulent documents, and pseudolaw documents are fraudulent documents. That’s a duty imposed by the Alberta government.
2. Both the Alberta trial and appeal courts have instructed lawyers should never notarize or formalize pseudolaw documents. What is a pseudolaw document? That is detailed in the Meads v Meads, 2012 ABKB 571 decision
3. The Law Society of Alberta has explicitly instructed its members on multiple occasions to not notarize pseudolaw documents.

I am pleased to report that the Law Society of Alberta has concluded a disciplinary process in response to Akpan’s activities, and suspended her for one month for having brought the administration of justice into disrepute. That’s actually a pretty strong sanction for something like this. Here are the decisions:

• Misconduct: Law Society of Alberta v Akpan, 2026 ABLS 4
• Sentencing: Law Society of Alberta v Akpan, 2026 ABLS 17

Akpan’s arguments in the disciplinary proceedings did not benefit her. Her position continued to be she did nothing wrong. Akpan admitted she had received notification from the Law Society of Alberta not to notarize pseudolaw documents, and that pointed to where there was information about how to identify those materials. Akpan argued what she notarized wasn’t unusual. She acknowledged the drug trafficker’s documents targeted the court as a “complaint”. That’s fine. People should be allowed to “complain” to and about courts.

Akpan said she is not a litigator. Therefore, she did not have to read the Law Society’s warnings about pseudolaw documents.

Akpan rejected that OPCA/pseudolaw documents are something that she knew about then or currently. The LSA decision quotes her exact words. They’re worth reproducing:

>Like I said in my testimony yesterday, as at the time, I was not familiar. And, even today, I may not be familiar with this concept because it's not written in any book to say, okay, look at it. This is how it looks. This is what they say. Even document, in my understanding, is untrue, is false, is this, and that. I acknowledge what I'm going through. But if I see it -- a -- an OPCA document, I may unlikely recognize it because it's a difficult task. That's just what I'm saying. It's a difficult task. It's a concept that not everybody is aware of it.

Now, I note that Canada has the most extensive corpus of court case law detailing the nature and substance of pseudolaw arguments, and what the relevant documents and materials look like.

There is also a large volume of Canadian academic writing on the subject, most of it by yours truly. I even wrote a paper cautioning lawyers to please not notarize pseudolaw documents. Akpan is practicing in the province where there is a literal textbook on pseudolaw pretending to be a court judgment. Some people even report to me that it’s kind of fun to read!

Akpan concluded she did nothing wrong. In fact, she’s the victim. So many lawyers notarize pseudolaw documents (and that’s true!) that she here is the subject of unfair treatment. She has been targeted. That is bias and discrimination. I note here that Akpan is of Nigerian origin and was trained as a lawyer in that jurisdiction. That allegation was rejected by the Law Society. If she did something wrong, then Akpan’s position is that the only punishment she should receive is an instruction to get educated.

The Law Society concluded Akpan’s misconduct was serious, she defied court and Law Society instructions, and her continued rejection of pseudolaw as a category of problematic conduct warranted a month suspension, mandatory education, and $7,000 in costs.

This is a step in the right direction, in my opinion. That’s a meaningful sanction. Hopefully lawyers in Alberta and Canada will take note. What doesn’t get stressed in the Law Society’s analysis is the dangerous aspect of notarizing pseudolaw documents which is specific to Canada (though I’m aware the same motif is now appearing in the U.K.).

There’s a myth that was invented by the founder of the Freeman-on-the-Land movement Robert Menard that notaries are in fact super-judges, who possess the highest legal authority. Pseudolaw types in Canada frequently use the “Three/Five Letters” process to create what is purportedly a binding judgment, the notary being the "super-judge" who endorses the last document. And that (supposedly) overrides all court and state authority. You can naturally see why that makes notary services very, very popular in Canadian pseudolaw circles.

The documents Akpan witnessed include claims of authority by the drug trafficker to use force to respond to law enforcement and Crown Prosecutor activities. They are outlaws. While it’s not explored anywhere in any detail in the disciplinary or court records, Akpan’s client looks to be a Moorish Law affiliate, a pseudolaw movement linked to organized gangs, drug trafficking, and violent crime.

Now I’m waiting to see if Canada’s lawyer education organizations track me down, since I’m Canada’s subject expert on this stuff. I think I’ll strip-mine Monty Python’s “How to Recognize Different Types of Trees From Quite a Long Ways Away” format.

(Actually that’s quite a valid approach. Strawman Theory motifs are the easy give away that should lead anyone to say “Do Not Touch”.)

(Ok, blood on paperwork should probably also count.)

Pseudolaw “law schools” always intrigue me. Why would you trust an "institution" that places itself outside the legal norms?

Awhile ago my favourite, the "Erwin Rommel School of Law" which had run since the 1970s disappeared. Yes, that Rommel.

But it's back! Still run by Michael Halsey Brown, though now he has a number of collaborators. Of course, you want to visit.

Why Rommel? “Rommel accomplished more with less than anybody in the 20th century.”

I often used the ERSOL website when conducting educational sessions, it inevitably sent judges howling with laughter. Thus, I was saddened when the ERSOL disappeared offline something like four or five years ago. At that time you could purchase Brown’s entire library of resources, “The Whole Nine Yards”, for a modest $1,499. Well, the price has dropped to a mere $750, all on a convenient USB Flash Drive and “professionally organized”.

I’ve never purchased the package so I can’t comment on the details. It’s a little surprising how Brown’s key materials never ended up on Scribd or other public sites, at least that I noticed. My quick search today did however locate his 1974 text “Iron Claws: Grip Development and Bench Press Course”. No law stuff that after a quick scan. Here you go, you curious ones.

Brown describes himself as a “modern renaissance man”, and an incomplete list of his publications nails the point with a dagger. Where does one start?

•  “Brown’s Book of Carburetors”
• “The Case for Polygamy” (oh, look what the alpha male has to say)
• “The Erwin Rommel School of Law – How to Defeat an Illegal Legal System” (with macramé – duh)
• “Suppressed Inventions & How They Work” (quietly, they’re suppressed)
• “Sex, Money and Power: The Bible Shows You How”

Anyways, back to Brown’s pseudolaw texts. Is it incongruous that the cover art for “How to Defeat an Illegal Legal System” illustrates some kind of M4 Sherman? Just saying. You’d think Erwin would prefer a Panther.

Or a StuG. More than a little partial to those, myself. Nasty functional looking things.

Pseudolaw and Sovereign Citizens (eds Harry Hobbs & Stephen Young), an academic anthology of articles on pseudolaw phenomena worldwide, is now available in softcover.

Still not cheap, but an interesting and useful resource, recommended to those interested in the subject. The authors bring many different perspectives to the subject from international angles.

Full disclosure: yes, I'm the author of one chapter. No, I'm not getting paid anything from proceeds of sales.

I do it for the sick kicks.

In Canada a new variation on pseudolaw is increasingly common. Being "Indigenous" makes you outside the law in magic ways.

That goes in weird directions, for example in a recent Saskatchewan appeal decision to eliminate a mortgage debt owed by Marlin Marynick.

That's nonsense and simply illogical in many senses. But the Marynick litigation is consistent with the broader pattern that pseudolaw schemes involve a "duel of laws". I have a law, and my law is more powerful than yours. We've seen this duality in many forms. Admiralty Law vs Law of the Land. Contract Law vs Natural Law. Equity versus Common Law.

In the case of Marynick we don’t see the details of his exact pseudolaw scheme, rather pseudolaw came up early on in a procedural context. What is disclosed is:

1. Marynick had a mortgage, he stopped paying.
2. Rather than waiting for foreclosure Marynick preemptively sued his lender, demanding the lender prove the debt was based on a valid mortgage, and that the lender hadn’t sold off and “securitized” his debt to someone else.
3. The trial court called that as bullshit.
4. Marynick appealed, but also demanded he is represented by an “Indigenous Representative”, John Cipolla, who is not a lawyer. 
5. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal rejected Cipolla as a representative because he is a known pseudolaw (“OPCA”) litigant.
6. Marynick Did Not Consent!!!

 And Marynick’s appeal gets punted. And as is illustrated in the quoted passages, the SKCA didn’t think too highly of Cippola’s antics either. The Court ordered Marynick pay the lender $5,150 in enhanced penalty costs, which the lender will almost certainly collect when Marynick’s home is foreclosed and sold.

 This judgment is noteworthy in a number of senses. One is that the SKCA clearly adopts that pseudolaw is a special category of abusive litigation, and deserves to be addressed in a direct and succinct manner. Note that Meads v Meads doesn’t even get cited. It doesn’t need to be. The OPCA concept is sufficiently known the Court just uses the language and recognizes the relevant category. Pseudolaw is recognized and rejected in Canadian law.

 The Court applied the rule that pseudolaw adherents are not suitable court representatives, ever. In the case of Cippola, what isn’t examined is he is a collaborator with notorious Ontario lawyer Glenn “Spirit Warrior” Bogue, who is the kingpin of this UNDRIP-based claim that Indigenous Law is superior. Bogue was recently disbarred. Cippola, weirdly enough, is apparently a former US judge! Hopefully we get a detailed profile on Cippola at some point – I suspect there’s much more to this story.

But beyond that, here we have a private contract dispute between a person and a financial lender. How is this possibly a matter that even would have an Indigenous element?! Are we going to see traditional practices of ... establishing contracts? Quantifying debt? “Securitization”? The fact that an “Indigenous Representative”, who we will magically presume is expert in Indigenous Law, is being presented as relevant in this context is not just wrong, it’s stupid. But that’s an underlying aspect of pseudolaw. It doesn’t need to make sense in a detailed form, so much as present a drama, a story.

Marynick also has some other unorthodox interests, having written a book about his relationship with Charles Manson. Yes, THAT Charles Manson. Apparently, they shared popcorn among other things. In a CBC news report Marynick reports:

> [Marynick] said the notorious cult leader sought him out because he wanted to make a film, and he heard Marynick had contacts in the film industry.

> "He wanted to dress up like a general and have me dress up like a soldier and command all the armies in the world to stop fighting each other and start fighting pollution," Marynick told CBC Radio's Blue Sky on Monday.

Sure thing Chuck.

Here’s the SKCA court decision: Marynick v Fairstone Financial Inc, 2026 SKCA 72

Marynick and Manson CBC reporting.

And here’s “Charles Manson Now” by Marynick.

New academic paper discussing pseudolaw populations in the Netherlands and Switzerland, examining these phenomena as a reaction by privileged individuals against state interactions.

First review of the Swiss variation I've read.

Full article here.

Another guru website. Apparently former Canadian Muriel Biggs. I remember her back over a decade ago in Alberta.

Obviously she's a devotee of David-Wynn: Miller's Quantum Syntax Grammar.

But check out the cookie permission notices!

They're written in Millerese/Gibberese!

If you want more pain and suffering, the website is here.

It's not written in proper Millerese/Gibberese, but instead a kind of largely readable patois. That too is kind of neat. All the formatting, some of the comprehensibility.

I also enjoy how Muriel explains that money is worthless, but she does earn the value you pay her for the work she puts into your education:

>[The fiction-grammar-paper-money, fractional-currency/money-coupons, stamps, coins, tokens have zero value and are considered worthless in the quantum-grammar-now-space of the CHIEF: Russell-Jay: Gould's performances. Our work earning this money is not worthless.]

Ok! It's "sweat equity" then!

Folks, ready for a fun ride?

A UK pseudolaw outfit, the "Peacekeepers Foundation" solicited donations to contest: Prove UK law is binding. Collected £23,665 from customers/supporters.

Hodder consults LLM, puts together a valid answer. Submits that - gimme the money!

Peacekeepers Foundation welches.

UK court confirms award.

And the decision is here: Hodder v Peacekeepers Foundation, [2026] EWCC 37.

Here’s the text of “The Challenge”:

>"5 figures now for a simple piece of paper produced by parliament where it says parliament can do whatever it wants!!! Show us parliament can impose its will on any individual without a binding obligation entered into by freewill [sic]", followed by a smile emoji.

Yeah, not so literate. But, really, what did you expect?

The UK court decision itself is lengthy and has basically nothing to do about pseudolaw. Instead it’s a question of whether a contract was formed or not between the Peacekeepers Foundation (offeror) and Hodder (acceptor). So it’s classic contract theory. Was there a meeting of minds? What did the parties intend? Attempts by the Peacekeepers to use weasel language get rejected. It’s like a classic law-school exam question.

There’s basically almost no discussion of whether or not UK law is binding without consent because ... well, it’s a UK court. Duh.

As the quoted passage indicates, Judge Blitz of the Court of Bath (the names in this decision are great) doesn’t bother to even address the pseudolaw aspect. He points to Meads v Meads, “complete legal nonsense”, and gets on to the business of contract formation and other technical aspects. Y’know, real law.

One of which is the Peacekeepers Foundation website includes this disclaimer:

>the website provided no goods or services, contained no offers or invitations to treat, and was not intended to create legal relationships

So, in effect, the Peacekeepers make a contract offer, then elsewhere say “these are not the offers you are looking for”. And no, that doesn’t work.

There’s other classic contract law technicalities, intent to bargain and create binding relationships, invocation of the “donate us money for the challenge” and its implications. Fun stuff.

Judge Blitz concludes there isn’t even an issue for trial, and so orders summary judgment. Pay up, Peacekeepers. Right now. Then at the tail end (paragraphs 65 – there’s four of them) basically says that the Peacekeepers pseudolaw stuff is wrong, they’d certainly lose:

>... To the extent that the Defendant suggests that Parliament's inherent ability to legislate is somehow limited due to defects in its constitutional position, this is pseudo-legal nonsense with no prospect whatsoever of succeeding at trial.

>... the Defendant's starting point from which all their arguments in this regard flow is a simple refusal to accept, at least without qualification, the legislative authority of Parliament. The Defendant attempts to explain this wholly unarguable position with reference to a variety of legal principles such as agency, equity, trusts and fiduciary relationships, yet the 'explanation' discloses no actual legal knowledge of the content of such principles. It follows that any opposition to the claim on this basis would have been wholly unarguable and not have any, let alone any real, prospect of success. ...

>Had I been required to decide the matter on this basis, I would have granted summary judgment for these reasons also.

Great fun! Whether Hodder will collect, who is to say? But I can’t think of another instance where someone got a court judgment for money from a pseudolaw promoter.

Something I find extraordinarily neat is how conspiratorial thinking links cause and effect.

See the attached message I received "on some other social media platform" in response to something I wrote. I don't know this individual nor am I exactly certain what he's trying to convey.

But the implications are fun. "Bouvier" and "Black" almost certainly relate to old US-sourced legal dictionaries, "A Law Dictionary" by John Bouvier and "Black's Law Dictionary". Incidentally, there's a broad school of Sovereign Citizen thinking that Black's is the corrupt version, so you should rely on Bouvier's.

According to our friend, some hidden hand in the 1830s allegedly manipulated definitions in two legal dictionaries. That's how you change the law - by changing legal dictionaries. Since, apparently, dictionaries define law.

That, then, supported or created a "judicial monarchy". I'm not confident I understand what a judicial monarchy might be, since the judiciary isn't a hereditary system. Maybe the writer is trying to convey that the judges now operated like kings? Well, in Canada, it's certainly moved in that direction.

Y'know, there's such an intriguing gnostic aspect to all this, to pseudolaw in general. You can twist existence and government structure into something new by altering dictionary definitions. Orwell's "NewSpeak" has nothing on these people.

Dictionaries, man! They're the pillars of reality!

Anyways, I didn't look up the definitions of "administration" and "association" in 200 year old US law dictionaries to see what naughtiness was going on back then. But... if I might be so bold. If the US's two most prominent law dictionaries did change their definitions for two words, that might be because a leading court in the US had made a legal finding that "administration" and "association" meant X but now means Y.

As a vaguely related aside, I used to work in the same courthouse as Justice Jean Côté, formerly of the Alberta Court of Appeal, who is also the author of "Words That Bind: Words and Phrases Judicially Considered by the Supreme Court of Canada and by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to 1949" off Juribiler, which is literally a book of word definitions according to the Supreme Court of Canada. So ... like legal reality defined by words.

I kinda want to track Jean down and see whether he was approached by agents of The Conspiracy to subtly manipulate his dictionary, and Alter The Law from the Words Out.

Tee hee hee.

He'd look at me like I'm a weirdo. Which I am.

Trial judge says “That's pseudolaw, you're gaming the system.”

Offender (or offender's lawyer) rejects: “You're wrong and biased! Gimmie retrial.”

Appeal judge: “Yup, pseudolaw.”

Who gets to decide that?

An interesting question! Who is the expert about law? Or to go a little deeper, who’s the expert about not-law?

This question plays out in the passage reproduced above. But first here's a summary of the proceeding.

Kyle O’Brien was charged with criminal harassment of an ex-partner. O’Brien is initially represented by a defence lawyer. However, at trial O’Brien fires his lawyer and represents himself. He argues the court has no jurisdiction over him.

Doesn't work.

O’Brien is found guilty. He re-lawyers up and is sentenced to 1 year probation. O’Brien, still represented by his sentencing lawyer, appeals on multiple bases, including that O’Brien was incorrectly identified as using pseudolaw as a “get out jail free” mechanism, and that was an improper “alleged bad character finding”. The basic argument is the trial judge thought O’Brien was a bad person for using pseudolaw, an illegitimate way to deny court authority. That then coloured the trial proceeding to a fatal degree.

The appeal judge says no, it’s not evidence of bias that someone classifies you as a pseudolaw litigant when you are a pseudolaw litigant trying to evade criminal liability.

So who knows what is and is not pseudolaw? O’Brien said he is “a self-governing individual” and the court had no jurisdiction. Sounds like pseudolaw. But did either the trial judge, appeal judge, O’Brien’s lawyer, or O’Brien have any expertise on that? Who evaluates what is and isn’t pseudolaw?

Let’s step back a moment. There are actually rules for this. In a courtroom there is only one expert in law. That’s the judge. Everyone else might have an opinion on what the rules and processes of law are, but in the courtroom only one person has that expertise. The judge.

Incidentally, this is why I usually don’t say what the law is or isn’t. Even when I was a lawyer (which I no longer am), I am not an authority in law. If a judge says the law is X, the law is X. I might think that ruling is foolish, badly grounded, illogical, and so on. Doesn’t matter. What a judge says is the law is the law. Until a judge with higher authority says otherwise. People sometimes ask me whether I think a decision or ruling was right or wrong. Who cares. I’m nobody. If a judge says the world is flat – it’s flat, for all legal purposes.

Yes, this makes the biochemist/microbiologist in me irritated. But that’s law. Law does not have to have anything to do with reality. And it’s not unusual that law has limited relation to reality. Tough.

So, in the O’Brien matter, when the trial and appeal judges each rejected that calling yourself a self-governing individual is a get out of jail free card, that’s the law. End of the story.

But is that pseudolaw? That’s a different question.

A judge is the expert on what is Canadian law. But a Canadian judge isn’t an expert in Turkish law, US law, Japanese law. When a court needs to understand what the law is outside its boundaries, then you need an expert witness in the foreign jurisdiction’s rules. Usually that’s a lawyer who is certified to practice in both Canada and the foreign jurisdiction. That expert then explains the foreign rules to assist the court in coming to a conclusion.

Experts provide evidence and context that the court itself does not itself possess. That’s the only time an expert is permitted in a Canadian court proceeding.

I’ve concluded that pseudolaw is a kind of legal system. It’s badly designed, worse implemented, but pseudolaw does have a suite of fairly consistent and interwoven rules, concepts, and procedures. Pseudolaw has alternative but often much overlapping variants. Who is an expert in pseudolaw? Me, for one. There are others across the globe who are lawyers but who have also studied these subjects in depth. In the US I’d flag Caesar Kalinowski IV and Colin McRoberts as excellent candidate experts for the subject. Some academics probably qualify too, such as Australians Harry Hobbs, Joe McIntrye, and Stephen Young.

It's a really interesting question if a pseudolaw guru is themself an expert in pseudolaw. I’ll leave that for another time, but they probably can at least identify their own teachings being applied by others. Freeman-on-the-Land founder Robert Arthur Menard is probably an expert in Freemanism. He invented it.

Most judges are very likely not experts in pseudolaw because they simply do not deal with it often enough, or have studied the subject in depth. I saw no special expertise on the part of the judges in the O’Brien litigation.

Let’s wind back the clock and ask if O’Brien’s defence lawyer could have done better on appeal. What I’d suggest is get a transcript of the trial hearing, copies of any weird documents filed by O’Brien, and the trial judgment. Hand them to a pseudolaw expert – an expert in the foreign legal system in question. Which would very likely be me – no one else in Canada wants this particular “honor”. The expert then prepares a report.

(Going to skip the issue of how to introduce new expert evidence in an appeal.)

The question for the expert report would not be “Is what O’Brien argued as a get out of jail free card Canadian law?” That’s not something a non-judge can decide or even say with any authority. Judges make and set Canadian law. Nobody else.

But what that expert could say is:

>Yes, O’Brien is wrong about Canadian law – the trial judge said so. But the trial judge made a mistake too. She said what O’Brien argued is pseudolaw, as generally defined in the 2012 Meads v Meads decision of Associate Chief Justice John D. Rooke of the Alberta Court of King's Bench. That was wrong. Here are the well-established stereotypic concepts and arguments about law that are recognized as belonging to pseudolaw, a false competitor legal system used to cheat and evade obligations and prohibitions. What O’Brien argued was something else. In classifying O’Brien a pseudolaw adherent, the trial judge made a mistake. That might have or have not coloured her response to O’Brien. That’s not for me to say. That’s the job of the appeal judge. But when she rejected his arguments and labelled them as pseudolaw, the trial judge made a mistake.

You can get law wrong in many, many ways. The person who can say whether or not the error was based in pseudolaw with expertise is an expert in the foreign pseudolaw legal system. So, if O’Brien’s lawyer wanted to win on that argument, he should have hired me. Or someone with a similar expertise.

No, I’m not trying to drum up business for myself with this analysis. But if you’re going to start assigning an illegality to a category, it helps to have someone who can provide more context from a position of authority.

As an aside – because it’s a fun one – once in awhile Canadian legal authorities do actually recognize a non-judge as an expert in law. For example, the Supreme Court of Canada has accepted that books written by a now deceased lawyer / professor named Peter Wardell Hogg are authoritative on the Canadian Constitution and its operation. In effect, the SCC says when it comes to constitutional law, Hogg is an authority, similar to themselves. Unless they choose to override Hogg, of course.

‘Cause judges are always the final voice on what is and is not law.

The O’Brien decision is here: R v O’Brien, 2026 ONSC 3053

It’s otherwise quite unremarkable.