sovereign Wiktionary
The right of nations to determine their own political status and exercise permanent sovereignty within the limits of their territorial jurisdictions is widely recognized. The activities of Potter’s Posse, many of them crimes, included refusal to pay taxes, filing property liens and committing violence against public officials. These actions, which were established by Gale’s group, have become customary in today’s sovereign citizens movement. What has changed since the movement’s inception is the white supremacist ideology that initially dominated it. Contemporary sovereign citizens hold varying racial ideologies and include a variety of people, most commonly white and African American.
Instead, there are a variety of nationwide gurus and local leaders with individualized views on sovereign citizen ideology and techniques. Their recommendations often include tax evasion, adverse possession or ignoring laws regarding driver’s licenses, vehicle registration or license plate possession. They base these activities on their belief that free men and women, as they call themselves, are not bound by the laws in question. Sovereigns assert they are traveling, not driving, since they are not transporting commercial goods or paying passengers.
We have significant experience representing sovereign wealth funds around the world on strategic and opportunistic investments, investment vehicles, restructuring issues, M&A transactions, project financings, tax structuring, compliance, disputes and legislative change. For example, we represented Qatar Investment Authority in connection with the investment by its principal holding company of more than US$6 billion in ordinary shares, mandatory convertible securities and perpetual tier 1 capital notes of Credit Suisse Group AG. We have successfully assisted many sovereigns around the world with PPP. For example, we represented the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in connection with a 25-year concession granted to a private sector contractor to expand, refurbish and operate the Queen Alia International Airport in Amman. This was the first limited recourse airport financing in the region and is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the region to have been concluded on a PPP basis.
Most new recruits to the Sovereign citizens movement are people who have found themselves in a desperate situation and are searching for a quick fix, often due to the economy or foreclosures. To tap into the secret Treasury account that they believe exists, they file a series of complex, legal-sounding documents. For decades, sovereigns have attempted to perfect the process by packaging and promoting different combinations of forms and paperwork. The only touted success stories are from sovereigns who were in fact committing fraud against the government or private companies by creating counterfeit or fraudulent and fictitious documents.
The Department of Justice considers sovereign citizens a domestic terrorism threat. When a sovereign feels particularly desperate, angry, battle-weary and cornered, his next government contact, no matter how minor, can be his final straw – and the resulting rage can be lethal. These are the most prevalent activities used by sovereign citizens. Sovereign believers come in a variety of ethnicities and religions.
For example, Somaliland is commonly considered to be such a state. For a list of entities that wish to be universally recognised as sovereign states, but do not have complete worldwide diplomatic recognition, see the list of states with limited recognition. State practice relating to the recognition of states typically falls somewhere between the declaratory and constitutive approaches. International law does not require a state to recognise other states.
States are non-physical juridical entities, and not organisations of any kind. However, ordinarily, only the government of a state can obligate or bind the state, for example by treaty. In political science, sovereignty is usually defined as the most essential attribute of the state in the form of its complete self-sufficiency in the frames of a certain territory, that is its supremacy in the domestic policy and independence in the foreign one.
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