I have written before about the Freeman of the Land phenomenon, last time using a Tom Jones lyric, this time it is Billy Bragg.
https://suesspiciousminds.com/2013/12/18/now-you-found-the-secret-code-i-use/
It doesn’t tend to work, when you try to use legal gibberish to persuade a Court that they have no power to deal with your case or make decisions.
Her Honour Judge Lynch dealt with this sort of thing very well in Re A Child 2015 (none of this is binding precedent but it is illuminating nonetheless)
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2015/B34.html
The backdrop to this was that very serious findings of sexual assault against the children were made against the step-father, and mother was found to have failed to protect. Criminal charges for these matters are pending against the step-father.
The mother and step-father in this case refused to participate in a social work assessment. An independent social work asssessment was arranged and they refused to participate in that too. They also made various applications in the High Court about the Judge.
Sadly, given how things turned out as a result of this, the mother had started off the proceedings in a much better way:-
At the very beginning of these proceedings the mother filed a statement acknowledging she could not put her head in the sand and needed to engage with the court process. She said that she realised she could not remain in a relationship with her husband due to the findings made against him and she said she was prepared to separate from him and put her daughter’s needs above her own. She said her husband accepted that and indeed he confirmed that in his own first statement.
That would have made her prospects of success at final hearing much better if she could have seen that through.
However, by final hearing, they were refusing to accept that the Court had any jurisdiction over them and the child and – this is a new one on me – they put their Child in Trust. They also refused to name the child. (presumably on the basis that if the child had no name then she did not exist as a legal entity. Wrong)
- Turning to the parents case, I should say at the outset it is very clear to me from the documentation they have filed that they do not accept the authority of this court to make decisions regarding their daughter. The father’s first statement from last July, prepared when he was represented by solicitors, exhibit a document setting out his principles and beliefs, relying on for example ‘Canons from the Canonum de Ius Positivum’. In the final documentation filed by the parents on 23 February they have provided a number of documents written in a quasi-legal fashion and which are not always easy to follow. It is maybe simplest to give a sense of this by quoting from the front page these words : “This skeleton argument is valid assertion of divine, inalienable and natural rights, and all right here asserted and reserved are subject to accepted law through justice as preserved by the Holy Bible, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Act 1988, Bill of Rights, Lex Mercatoria, Treaty of International Law, Apostolic Letters issued motu proprio by the Pontiff Francis II”. I confess I have found it hard to make sense of their view of authority, their philosophical stance.
- The parents have also, as I understand their documentation, placed their child within family trust – as they put it, “we have settled her entire Legal Estate into a Private Trust”. As I understand it they take the view that disclosing information pertaining to the existence of the child would be a breach of that private trust, which to them includes the registration of their child’s birth.
- I am not going to address these issues in any detail but I am clear that this court operates within the legal structure of this country, is a lawful body, and has power to make decisions regarding this child. I do not accept that purporting to place her within a family trust precludes this court from making orders in respect of her.
The mother concludes in her final document : “Failure of the judge to consider that the Applicant has proven NO valid cause of action against 1st Respondent and the Applicant holds NO LEGAL TITLE and that 1st Respondent gives NO CONSENT to adoption will result in a clear breach of COMMON LAW, CONVENTION RIGHTS, FRAUD ACT, COURT RULES and all necessary laws that prohibit forced adoption and the judge will unfortunately be held personally liable for abuse of public office and the said breaches of any court order authorizing the abduction of 1st Respondent progeny.” [E183] She therefore requires that the child should be immediately returned to the care of both parents or alternatively the case should be transferred to a High Court judge to determine the case.
The Canons stuff is very peculiar if you look it up. http://one-heaven.org/canons/positive_law/ This is not some cobbled together “Property is theft and down with The Man” nonsense – this is something that somebody has put a LOT of effort into. It might very well represent a different and better version of law than that used by sovereign states – I haven’t time to do the analysis.
But it is no more binding law than it would be binding for me to write down on a piece of paper “George Osborne must pay Suesspicious Minds ten million pounds and Suesspicious Minds must be allowed to be in the next series of Game of Thrones and he must be allowed to be tougher than Bronn, Ned Stark, the Hound and Oberyn Martell put together” and expect a Court to enforce it.
The parents declined to give evidence during the hearing. The local authority wished to cross-examine them and invited me to compel the parents to give evidence. I did so direct, warning them of the consequences, but each of the parents refused to give evidence. I have therefore had to look at their written evidence in the light of that refusal.
The judgment is very thoughtful, very careful and very fair. Sadly for this mother, her belief that this mumbo-jumbo would save her prevented her from the reality of her situation, that what she had said at the outset would probably have resulted in the child being with her, if she had stuck to it.
This mumbo-jumbo is dangerous.
You can rail against the law, argue that the law is unfair, campaign to change the law, try to change the law via appeals or lobbying your MP, but you can’t just put your fingers in your ears and say “This law doesn’t apply to me, la la la”
suesspiciousminds 
I had someone insist that I arrest the judge. My answer was if it’s legal come and do it for me.
I really think this freeman stuff has grown out of desperation not just of care proceedings but because of the growing inequalities in society and the ability to spread the “message” via You Tube,so it’s not going to go away.
Thanks for this, baffling how this stuff takes hold.
It’s not baffling but it should be very alarming!
It’s all too easy for the legal profession to mock Freemen of the Land and their postage-stamped affidavits claiming damages of millions of pounds but perhaps they should look a little closer into the mirror. To an outsider, there is little difference between the real and make-believe pleadings and affidavits – the spirit of Jarndyce v Jarndyce lives on.
If people begin to lose all faith in the law, having rightly perceived that it does not exist for their benefit but is principally to protect and preserve the balance of power between ruled and rulers, and that what little collateral benefit they may previously have obtained has now been virtually extinguished by the almost complete withdrawal of legal aid, who can blame them for clutching at nostrums and snake-oil? Particularly in the “Family” Courts gravy-train, where the judgments dispensed daily are so often far removed from any notion of justice or humanity.
Following, thanks
In the case above the parents’ case was mumbo jumbo.It is true however that judges often make up their own law contrary to all common sense ! I imprisoning a mother for sending a birthday card to her daughter and a father for waving at his children as they passed by his house in a car ;all in the name of a non molestation order ! Molestation is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “to intentionally annoy ” but no evidence was produced at any time to show that the children were annoyed in either case by a birthday card (which was never actually delivered !) or waving.The judge was cross with defiant parents and decided to punish them and to hell with common sense when interpreting the law !
The most obvious example of pernicious law making by judges contrary to common sense is Article 8 of the human rights Act.
The Act states that all have a right to a private family life undisturbed by public authority.I was taught at law school (50 years ago!) that laws should where possible be interpreted so as to give effect to the intentions of those who drafted them and I reckon that precept still holds good.The obvious intention of those who conceived and those who drafted article 8 were that it should protect the human rights of the family from unecessary State interference but our judges have interpreted it as created to protect the State from protesting families and thus gag any aggrieved parents wanting to protest to the media when their children have been taken into care or for adoption !
This perverse interpretation of a law conceived to protect families from the State but used by family court judges to silence and effectively gag parents who might disturb the State ie protecting the State against families, is a disgrace to British justice ;the only judicial system in Europe to misuse the human rights act in such a callous and dishonest way.
I agree with you on the BS these people spout. However, last I checked children taken into care have a less than 20% chance of being received back into the birth parents care. Even had she the mind to work within the law as she should have done, her chances while much better would have still been fairly grim.
Parents have a right to challenge the courts,as there is no such thing as a fair trial in these closed courts.
Many have tried ,an many have lost their cases,but they went inside knowing that they had little option,than to take the alternative advice as they could see that the other option was this.
1) in it to bin it solicitors in the pocket of the LA
2) judges in bed with expert witnesses
3) trial by EW before the case has got off the ground judges accepting what EW has opinion on without even giving a reason
Face facts the general public are losing confidence in courts,an all those people that get paid to set up parents in closed courts.
It’s like this, not like that ,remember the law for refusing to let people die with dignity ?
What happened?
Tell me,am waiting
The families went outside the jurisdiction of the UK law an done it anyway.
This is the point you don’t mention
How much is it costing the legal profession by losing business
The similarities are that the right to have a family life ,are similar to those of the family wanting to spare their loved ones any further pain ,an suffering.
Families are right to flee the UK as they certainly won’t get a fair trial. So what’s the future costs to court going to be then?
How many cases can you afford to chase abroad,just like the right to die cases, an I make no apology for drawing this analogy between the cases,as the subject will affect the most of us families.
The academic spewings on the blogosphere are just that, there is another analogy for you.
These cases with no name, I hope there are some more cases, it will trend even,I won’t point out the obvious, otherwise ,you will stop writing about it,an lets face it, the more you propagate your opinions on cases the better….