
Enjoy the Silence: Pseudolaw at the Supreme Court of Canada
Author(s) -
Donald Netolitzky,
Richard Warman
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
alberta law review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1925-8356
pISSN - 0002-4821
DOI - 10.29173/alr2593
Subject(s) - supreme court , law , silence , cornerstone , political science , sociology , history , philosophy , archaeology , aesthetics
Pseudolaw is a collection of legal-sounding but false rules that purport to be law, employed by groups including the Detaxer and Freemen-on-the-Land movements. While pseudolaw is universally rejected by Canadian courts, no Supreme Court of Canada decision addresses these concepts. This study reviews 51 unsuccessful Supreme Court leave applications that potentially involve pseudolaw to determine what pseudolaw issues were raised, whether those issues were comprehensible, and therefore if by its silence the Supreme Court has implicitly rejected these concepts.
Some pseudolaw-related leave applications were not comprehensible to a legally trained reader; however, the remainder clearly imply that the Supreme Court of Canada has been exposed to the cornerstone concepts of modern pseudolaw, including “Strawman” Theory, and has rejected these ideas as not having national significance.