Sovereign Citizens: Insight into public attitudes to law

Dr Luuk de Boer researches the problem of trust in legal institutions. More specifically, his research focuses on so-called Sovereign Citizens: a group of people who reject legal systems.

Sovereign Citizens do not simply reject the societies they live in. Their dismissal of the rule of law, paradoxically, takes place in courts of law, is advanced with (pseudo)legal arguments, and produces parallel legal institutions. Their rejection of the legal system seems to be strangely legal.

Luuk de Boer is an assistant professor of Legal Methods. He has looked at the phenomenon of Sovereign Citizens from the perspective of separate court cases, criminal law in general and the philosphy of libertarianism. He tries to answer the many questions that still surround this topic.

In this video, Luuk talks more about his research.