Nomophilia

'‘Sovereign Citizen Gets Roasted’: On the Nomophilia of Sovereign Citizens and Their Settler-Colonial Critics' by Liam Gillespie in (2025) Social & Legal Studies comments 

Sovereign Citizens have gained mainstream attention by refusing to recognise law. This attention often entails ridicule, as illustrated by viral Sovereign Citizen arrest videos. This article critically examines both Sovereign Citizen ideology and the voyeuristic enjoyment of their humiliation. First, I propose that although Sovereign Citizen ideology is premised on rejecting law, it nevertheless paradoxically exhibits ‘nomophilia’, a love of law, insofar as its rejection attempts to secure precisely what law affords Sovereign Citizens: namely, possession of expropriated lands. Next, I argue that the widespread ridicule of Sovereign Citizens also tends towards nomophilia insofar as it facilitates the enjoyment of seeing the law ‘done’ to others by subjects who, through their enjoyment, can position themselves on ‘the right side’ of the law. I argue that while this ridicule works to pathologise Sovereign Citizens, it also attempts to discursively counteract Indigenous sovereignty by reinforcing the putative supremacy of law.

Gillespie argues

While Sovereign Citizens are positioned as subjects worthy of derision and mockery, the law enforcement who‘humorously’ rein them in are portrayed favourably. They are, for example,‘quick-thinking’ judges and cops who ‘destroy’ Sovereign Citizens by upholding the law and doling out its‘lessons’. In this article however, I argue that although seemingly counterposed, both the phenomenon of Sovereign Citizenry – which is described below – and that of enjoying their ritual humiliation, occur as a function of what Maria Giannacopoulos (2011, 2020a, 2022) has called ‘nomophilia’: an uncritical love of Western law which works to obscure its relationship to settler-colonialism (which, as I explain, is precisely the context in which both Sovereign Citizens and Sovereign Citizen-related copaganda have thrived). I propose that this nomophilia works discursively and surreptitiously – and in the case of Sovereign Citizens, paradoxically and ironically – to reinforce law’s coloniality by enshrining what Goenpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson has called the ‘white possessive’ function of Western law and notions of its rule (2015). 

To substantiate this argument and its relevance, the article will proceed in three substantive parts. First, I provide an overview of the Sovereign Citizen movement, which could more accurately be described as a series of loosely connected movements, clustered under an umbrella term (Baldino and Lucas, 2019: 248; Fiebig and Koehler, 2022: 35; Loeser, 2014: 1109). Here, I analyse materials generated by the movement, including its discourse, objectives, and bespoke legal documents in order to elucidate the core features of the movement and the structure of its ideology. As I explain, the central pillar of Sovereign Citizenry is the notion that contemporary governments and states are ‘illegitimate corporations’ whose law/s can be refused so that a supposedly original and radical individual sovereignty can be reclaimed. I show how Sovereign Citizens attempt to effectuate this restoration by creating and invoking their own alternative laws – often referred to as ‘pseudolaw’ by law enforcement, policymakers, and scholars alike – through which their closely bound communities can first be inaugurated and can then subsist. In outlining these ideological contours, I briefly canvass the origins of the movement, including its historical and contemporary links to white supremacist militia groups like the Ku Klux Klan, anti-government conspiracy theories, and so-called ‘paper terrorism’. 

In the second part of the article, I argue that despite their apparent rejection of law, and their claim to be its victim, Sovereign Citizens nevertheless exhibit a paradoxical form of nomophilia. This nomophilia relates to what Robert Cover has called ‘jurisgenesis’, a term denoting the formation and formulation of ‘tight communities’ through the production of ‘legal meaning’, to which shared narratives and mythologies are attached (1983: 11–15). This is because while Sovereign Citizens performatively reject what they take to be ‘official’ law, their rejection does not constitute a refusal of law tout court. Rather, it is designed to effectuate a conditional refusal that makes way for a ‘higher law’ supposedly generated both from within and for themselves, which they take to be grounded in what they call their ‘natural’, flesh-and-blood-persons’. Accordingly, I argue that the Sovereign Citizen rejection of state law is not purely an act of negation, but rather, is nomophilic and jurisgenerative to the extent that it works to produce and sustain Sovereign Citizen communities. 

While the notion Sovereign Citizen ideologies can be jurisgenerative and nomophilic already troubles common understandings of the movement – which is typically characterised as one built around a wholesale rejection of law – the purpose of my argument runs further. I argue that insofar as Sovereign Citizen movements have almost exclusively emerged in (settler-)colonial contexts, their attempts to ‘reclaim’ what they call their ‘sovereignty’ by rejecting law paradoxically amount to an attempt to secure precisely what that very law has afforded them in the first place: namely, presumed status within, and ownership over, expropriated lands. This is because Sovereign Citizens purport to reject what they imagine the law to be so that their presumed sovereignty can be grounded in their own individual bodies, à la white nativism. To this end, I argue Sovereign Citizens exhibit a paradoxical form of nomophilia whereby they ultimately love the law they claim to reject in a formation that resonates with Moreton-Robinson’s articulation of ‘the possessive logics of patriarchal white sovereignty’ (2015: xi). 

In the third part of the article, I shift to critically examine popular discourse about Sovereign Citizens. As noted above, this discourse is largely perfunctory and mocking in nature, as the popularity of copaganda content showing Sovereign Citizens getting ‘rekt’, ‘roasted’ and ‘destroyed’ well attests. As with the Sovereign Citizen movement itself, I also identify the workings of nomophilia and an attachment to (settler-)colonial law within this discourse. While this love of law is apparent in the ‘comedy’ associated with seeing Sovereign Citizens receive their supposed comeuppance, I suggest again that the contours of this glee run deeper. This is because the pathologisation of Sovereign Citizens as ‘crazy’ practitioners of ‘pseudolaw’ works to discursively mask the contingency of law itself, and its ‘rule’, which are merely taken for granted and counterposed as banal and necessary, and indeed, non-violent. My argument here is not that the phenomenon of Sovereign Citizenry is not problematic and worthy of sustained critique (as I explain, its links to white supremacy and white nativism clearly demonstrate that it is). Instead, my argument is that the predominant manner by which Sovereign Citizens are pathologised – be it through depictions of danger, worthiness of ridicule, or both – is itself also problematic insofar as it both reifies and takes the law for granted, while simultaneously pathologising resistance towards the state, the police, and the law/s they uphold. As I explain, these features of the ridicule and pathologisation of Sovereign Citizens are especially problematic in settler-colonial contexts insofar as they take the law for granted, working to normatively conceal the slow violence, epistemicide, juricide and nomocide it facilitates (Adebisi, 2023; Benjamin, 1978; Derrida, 1986; Giannacopoulos, 2020b; Watson, 2014, 2017) through the production of law’s ‘nomopoly’ (Giannacopoulos, 2020b, 2022, 2023). 

I argue that the juxtaposition of the nomophilia of both Sovereign Citizen ideology and that of the phenomenon of ridiculing and policing them reveals an important structural affinity between the two positions: namely, that both are predicated on their vision of law as being ‘real’ and monolithic and incontestable. For Sovereign Citizens, this law is the ‘natural’ law they locate in their ‘flesh-and-blood-persons’ (as described below). By contrast, for their detractors, it is the singular‘rule of law’ that can and according to them does apply equally to all bodies, irrespective of whether or not they explicitly consent to its rule and application therein. By revealing this affinity, I argue that the respective ideologies of the Sovereign Citizen movement and those who ridicule and police them work discursively to attempt to foreclose Indigenous claims to sovereignty by shoring up their own respective formulations of sovereignty and the alleged sanctity of law.

'Prefigurative Neoliberalism: A Provisional Analysis of the Global Sovereign Citizen Movement' by Amy Cohen and Ilana Gershon in (2025) PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review comments 

Much contemporary research on prefigurative legality turns to left‐leaning activists for ethnographic insights into practices that call forward an alternative legal world. We turn instead to a right‐leaning movement commonly known by scholars as the Pseudolaw movement—or self‐named (by some involved) as the sovereign citizen movement—filled with loosely affiliated groups that share a common ideological approach to law. We discuss the underlying logics motivating sovereign citizens' practices, discussing how a nostalgically based form of prefiguration shapes sovereign citizens' responses to contemporary neoliberal dilemmas. We then compare this right‐leaning movement's approach to prefigurative legality with the approach of left‐leaning activists.

Justice

'What if animals are moral agents?' by Taimie L. Bryant in (2024) 109 Cornell Law Review 1734 comments 

In an essay titled Should Animals Be Able to Sue People?, Professor Sherry Colb considers Justice v. Vercher, a lawsuit brought by Justice, a horse seeking damages for injuries resulting from his previous owner’s gross negligence. Gwendolyn Vercher had already been convicted of animal cruelty and paid the statutorily required restitution, but that restitution was limited to costs incurred for Justice’s care up to the time of the hearing. Justice will need specialized lifelong care. Represented by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Justice brought suit in his own name for monetary damages sufficient to cover those costs. Vercher responded with a motion to dismiss on the ground that Justice lacked standing to sue her. 

Among other arguments in opposition to the idea of Justice having standing to sue, Colb considers the argument that Justice is not a “legal person” because he lacks the ability to fulfill legal duties, which is frequently viewed by courts as necessary for holding legal rights. As Colb puts it, there is an “idea that only those who can respect others’ rights are entitled to rights of their own.” Colb agrees that Justice does not have a legal obligation to respect the rights of humans or other animals, but she analogizes Justice’s situation to that of infants and cognitively incapacitated humans whose rights are recognized and protected without such a requirement of capacity to respect others’ rights or to bear duties in relation to them. Known as the “argument from marginal cases,” it is a claim that recognizing animals as holders of rights (even if limited) is required as a matter of justice arising from the requirement that like entities be treated alike. For Colb, animals’ likeness to humans lies in their sentience, not in their cognitive capacities or their ability to perform legal duties to others. Thus, they should be included in the moral community, and their membership in that community should be reflected in the law in the form of rights and standing to enforce those rights. 

Colb also argues that Justice is the logical plaintiff because he is the actual victim of wrongdoing. This critical point can be missed during abstract debate about whether or not a horse can or should be recognized as the plaintiff in a lawsuit. No one doubts that Vercher lacked the right as Justice’s owner to starve him, fail to provide shelter for him during severe weather conditions, or allow his skin to deteriorate for lack of cleaning and appropriate medical care. No one doubts that Justice is the intended beneficiary of the anticruelty statutes under which Vercher was convicted. What they doubt is that those statutes confer legal rights or that Justice himself should be able to sue her in his own name. Something gets in the way of accepting that the actual, direct victim of acts explicitly recognized under the law as wrongful should be able to sue in their own name, even if that victim is an animal. Yet, if not Justice, who would have standing to seek the restitution needed to address the harm inflicted on Justice? Legal standing to address harm to animals is notoriously difficult. Animals cannot yet sue in their own names, and humans cannot reliably redress wrongs to animals except in limited situations in which an owner of an injured or killed animal seeks redress for harm to their property. Animals are not yet understood by courts or legislatures as the sort of beings entitled to be “legal persons.” 

Whether an animal can be a legal person was raised also in the case of Happy, an elephant living a solitary life in a grossly insufficient enclosure at the Bronx Zoo. Unlike Justice’s case, Happy’s case was not grounded in tort law. Seeking Happy’s transfer to an appropriate sanctuary, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a writ of habeas corpus petition on her behalf. Two lower courts rejected the petition on the ground that the writ could not be used for nonhumans because they are not legal persons, basing their decisions on the jurisdiction’s precedent established in a habeas case involving a chimpanzee. The Nonhuman Rights Project filed an appeal in the New York Court of Appeals, seeking to challenge that precedent and to secure for Happy a writ that would allow justice to be done in the form of moving her to a sanctuary where her needs could be met. However, the New York Court of Appeals ultimately adopted the reasoning and outcome of the lower courts. The courts’ reasoning was much the same as in Justice v. Vercher: Animals cannot be legal persons because they are not humans and cannot be holders of legal duties. It is not clear that social contract theory, with its apparently required linkage of rights and duties, is particularly helpful for understanding the recognition of rights and duties of humans, let alone animals. Nevertheless, as it is currently understood, social contract theory forecloses animals from the community of legal rights-holders, even if they are understood to hold moral rights. 

While the matter was pending, Professor Colb, Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, and Professor Michael Dorf submitted an amicus brief addressing the contention that Happy could not be a legal person because the ability to bear duties is necessary for having rights. They argued that Happy is a legal person for purposes of New York’s common law writ of habeas corpus, “which has a noble tradition of expanding the ranks of rights-holders,” and that it is a matter of justice that the Court recognize it in this case, as it had in previous habeas corpus cases involving enslaved individuals, women, children, and others not recognized at the time as having any type of autonomous legal status.  On a case-by-case basis, the courts had considered as a matter of justice—not rights—whether to provide relief through the “Great Writ.” The writ is designed to promote justice, not simply to validate or reject the status of a petitioner as a legal person. Whether or not Happy meets some standard of rights and duty-holding, it is unjust, the amicus brief authors wrote, for the court to deny the writ petition of Happy, a sentient, social being with complex cognitive capacities forcibly brought to this country and kept in isolation from others of her species in an enclosure with grossly insufficient space for her needs, simply because she is not a human. Noting that the request for relief was as modest as those that led to historical uses of the writ, the authors pointed out that granting the writ in Happy’s case would not result in a change in her legal status in all conceivable contexts; it would result only in her moving from a harmful environment to a sanctuary where she would suffer less and have greater ability to flourish. Nor would it result in a change of the legal status of other animals; a writ corrects injustice only in the limited ways and contexts spelled out in the writ. 

To animal protectionists, legal recognition of animals like Justice and Happy as legal persons is a matter of social justice, whether or not they have legal rights. The Nonhuman Rights Project’s legal representation of Happy resonates most strongly with that position since the writ of habeas corpus had been used previously to promote justice for those who lacked legal rights. But this just raises questions about the nature of “social justice” and the sort of being that can be the focus of social justice claims. Black’s Law Dictionary defines “social justice” as “[a] fair and proper administration of the laws that conform to the natural law that covers all people regardless of gender, origin, possessions or religion” and further points to the definition of “civil rights.” In short, it is a conception of justice that connects legal structures to “natural law,” with humans as its focus. Animals are not humans, and so animal protectionists must make three arguments to support the claim that animals should be protected as a matter of social justice. First, they must argue that animals are sufficiently like humans such that justice requires treating them alike. Second, they must argue that “like treatment” means bearing legal rights. Third, they must argue that justice also requires legal opportunity to enforce the rights they hold. No animal protectionist has ever argued that comparability to humans should result in the same rights that humans hold. For instance, no one has yet argued that animals should have legal voting rights, although Christopher Stone and Robin Wall Kimmerer have come close. 

As to the first matter (sufficient similarity to humans), animal protectionists have argued that animals are similar enough to humans because of sentience or cognitive capacity. Treating sentience (the capacity to suffer) as the standard of comparison results in the inclusion of the most animals in the moral community but limits the reach of legal rights to preventing the infliction of suffering. This is the standard basis of state anticruelty statutes, although any amount of human-inflicted suffering is allowed under those laws if there is “necessity.” “Necessity” sweeps broadly to include any treatment or use of animals that benefits humans. Thus, anticruelty statutes protect only against purely gratuitous, senseless infliction of severe suffering and death. Moreover, as the Vercher case shows, animals lack standing to use the law even in those situations. 

Advocacy for animals based on their similar cognitive capacity to humans covers fewer types of animals, although the types of animals demonstrated to have such capacity has grown to include animals as diverse as whales, elephants, dogs, and bees. As in the case of sentience as a basis, recognition of the human-like cognitive capacity of some animals has resulted in very few legal benefits specific to that ability. For instance, primates can still be used in experiments without restraints on research design that requires their enduring horrific suffering and elephants can still be kept in cramped enclosures, but their housing must include opportunities for intellectual stimulation. Unfortunately, the animals themselves and those who care about them lack standing to enforce even those limited protections. 

This Article identifies a specific capacity—animals’ capacity to make moral decisions and to act morally—to consider whether recognition of that capacity as similar to humans’ moral capacity justifies inclusion in the community of legal rights-holders with the legal opportunity to enforce those rights. At the heart of the argument that animals must be able to bear legal obligations in order to have rights is an argument about moral agency. As Matthew Kramer has written, “[t]o bear a legal obligation is simply to be placed under it,” and meaningful comprehension of the obligation is a “separate matter.” As it is now, billions of animals are placed under the obligation to serve the interests of humans in research, entertainment, and food production. What is meant by “holding duties” then is actually “voluntarily and knowingly holding duties as morally binding obligations.” Even as to humans, this is not particularly convincing, but where animals are concerned, a deeper problem is that animals are not believed to be capable of holding duties as a moral matter at all because they are not understood to have moral agency. Only humans capable of abstract reasoning about moral behavior and members of the archetypal class of humans (such as infants and cognitively impaired humans) are considered to have moral agency sufficient to hold duties and thus hold rights. 

Animal protectionists often accept the characterization of animals as lacking moral agency and use the argument from marginal cases to defend their view that animals should be protected despite their lack of moral agency, just as many humans (children and those with cognitive incapacity) lack moral agency. However, this view should be reconsidered in light of emerging scholarship revealing that the type of moral decision-making by at least some animals is comparable to that of humans. Instead of focusing narrowly on whether animals canhold obligations and duties towards humans who would bear reciprocal duties towards animals, it could prove fruitful and just to consider whether animals have moral consciousness that leads to morally-based behaviors and, if so, whether their ability to make and act on moral decisions makes our failure to protect them as legal persons unconscionable.

Common Law

'Why is there 'but one common law in Australia'?' by Lucas Clover Alcolea in (2025) The Australian Law Journal comments 

The High Court has repeatedly confirmed that "There is but one common law in Australia which is declared by this court as the final court of appeal" so the fact that "Different intermediate appellate courts within that hierarchy may give inconsistent rulings upon questions of common law" does not mean that "there are as many bodies of common law as there are intermediate courts of appeal" rather it merely means "that not all of these courts will have correctly applied or declared the common law." Moreover, that common law exists even before the High Court's declaration of it. However, why is that so? What is the justification for there being only one common law of Australia? And what do we mean when we say that it exists even before the High Court declares it? In order to answer these questions, we analyse two competing theories of the common law, classical common law theory, and positivist common law theory. Ultimately, we suggest that the High Court's approach is firmly entrenched in, and can only be explained by, classical common law theory although a discussion of its general validity, as such, is outwith the scope of this paper. 

Rights of Nature

'Ocean management and rights of Nature: The case of the Galapagos in Ecuador and beyond' by Dorine Eva van Norren and Chris de Blok in (2025) 173 Marine Policy comments 

The expanded protection zone of Galapagos encircling sea territories of Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama (CMAR) could incorporate a rights of Nature approach, whereby prosecution of trespassers becomes more likely to be successful as cross boundary ecology is recognized in the rights of Nature approach and extra territorial application facilitated with positive effects for ocean governance. In the rights of Nature doctrine, anyone can stand up for Nature regardless of personal interest. The Galapagos sharkfin cases of 2015 and 2019 based on constitutional rights of Nature legislation in Ecuador demonstrate the preventative effect. This can be a first step towards recognizing ocean rights (as a substrand of rights of Nature). There are several options for implementation in CMAR. This fits into a wider buen vivir (good living in harmony with Nature) and development approach. Closing of areas for biodiversity protection has wider ecosystem effects (as Palau demonstrated) causing multiplication of species such as sharks outside the protection zones as well. Current levels of (CMAR and general) ocean protection are highly insufficient. The national Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are too small in number. Moreover, the areas covered by MPAs do not always have high protection levels. The majority of areas beyond national jurisdiction are thus not protected. Which countries will ratify the new ocean protection regime (BBNJ) remains to be seen. 

On June 7 2022, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama concluded an agreement for the expansion of the special protection zone of the Galapagos [32], [46]. This article argues that if the entire extended Galapagos protected zone, stretching over Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama, is also given a rights of Nature status, as has been done in Ecuador, better protection can be ensured. This could also give opportunities for species to recover their populations within this extremely important highway in the oceans, the Humboldt Current. The specific case of the Galapagos can be an example of how oceans can be better preserved and managed, and how rights of Nature can strengthen the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG14 on oceans. 

Since 2008 Ecuador has had a constitution based on the philosophy of Buen Vivir, Good Living - derived from the indigenous Sumak Kawsay - which is understood as living in harmony with Nature. Under the leadership of Bolivia - which also adopted a Vivir Bien constitution in 2009 - harmony with Nature also became a formal UN institution. Buen Vivir is based on the indigenous biocentric ways of living and includes participatory democracy, economic solidarity mechanisms and rights of Nature [2]. 

The constitution contains a special protection provision for the Galapagos Islands. As part of the concept of harmony with Nature, rights of Nature are also enshrined in the constitution. On this basis, numerous law cases were conducted, one of which concerns the Galapagos Islands. Due to this regime, illegal shark fishers could be convicted by the court of fishing in or around the territorial waters. Despite the special protection regime for the Galapagos, this had not been possible earlier. Territorial waters delineation was an impediment to criminal conviction. Within the rights of Nature logics, the court found that the ecosystem, and its right to exist and be restored, extends beyond this limitation. This way sharks could be protected. 

Sharks are, as a predator, a keystone species and therefore crucial to the marine ecosystem as a whole [33]. ‘Closing of areas’ for biodiversity conservation, as has been done in the Galapagos, allows local ecosystems to flourish and provide for themselves. This also positively affects the biodiversity of the surrounding areas. This is known as a spillover effect and has been documented in an experiment in Palau that protecting restricted areas has a significant impact on the adjacent regions' fishing, flora, and fauna [37]. This article will first describe Ecuador’s constitution and rights of Nature. It will then explore the sharkfin court case, then it will briefly go into the Galapagos protection schemes, and efforts to give oceans rights. It will then apply this to the extended protection zone. The second half of the article details why Galapagos and the South Pacific matters, what protection zones are in place and how effective these current approaches are. It will then conclude with why new legal and policy approaches are desirable. This article is written from the point of view of postcolonial law and combined with the social science approach of marine ecology management. Postcolonial law emerged as a response to modernist claims of truth based in reason and empirical knowledge, and shaped around neoliberal economic views of society [3], [38], [4]. In this modernist view man is above nature instead of part of it. This anthropocentric view of life is counter to the biocentric indigenous view of life. Indigenous views of life were considered backward, unscientific and stuck in metaphysics. This resulted in epistemological injustice whereby indigenous knowledge systems were dismissed and basic philosophical differences were circumvented. The modernist legal view resulted in positivist approaches (rules-based justice) moving away from (metaphysical) natural law. Postcolonial law (such as Third World Lawyers for International Law) criticized this by deconstructing western views of international law, rooted in (neo)colonial practices. The movement for Good Living, Buen Vivir and rights of Nature, amongst others, attempts to reconstruct the law based on indigenous philosophies. This is rooted in a critical realist view of the world which accepts reality as a social construction and thus accepts possibilities of revised legal and economy theory and hence revised ocean governance. It considers law and economy as a social science (hence not factual hard science), uses interdisciplinary multilayered approaches. It looks at power as interwoven with knowledge systems and considers the epistemic injustice of subordinating indigenous knowledge systems to science. Thus it uses indigenous knowledge in its own right. Knowlton and Di Lorenzo [27] also emphasize why social sciences are increasingly important in ocean conservation, including the role of indigenous and local communities.

Scenarios

'Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons from History' by Madison Condon in (2025) 48 Seattle University Law Review 277 comments 

 As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corpora- tions, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of today’s scenarios in corporate governance. Scenarios are a useful tool, but who makes them matters. 

While it has been used as a corporate planning tool throughout the past five decades, the golden age of scenario analysis was in the 1970s. Royal Dutch Shell famously adopted scenario analysis as a means for navigating geopolitical risk, arguably helping it outperform peers through shocks like the 1973 oil crisis. By the end of the decade, most of the largest U.S. and multinational corporations employed scenario analysis, especially those in capital intensive businesses with long-term horizons, like the extractive industries. The adoption of scenario analysis represented a shift away from quantification—it was a technique for addressing unprecedented events and discontinuities that were challenging to capture with data. Planning through scenarios also represented an acceptance of the contingency of the future. 

In the era of climate change, scenario analysis, as a method for planning, has reemerged with a force, particularly in the financial sector. While initially pushed as a voluntary risk management tool by investors, assessment of climate risk via scenario analysis has now become a standard requirement of financial regulators around the world. In the United States, Treasury regulators ask large banks to undertake climate scenario analysis. The Federal Reserve unveiled its first climate scenario exercise in 2023. Large banks, in turn, have established Climate Scenario Design teams. 

Recently, the most widely used financial climate scenarios have come under attack for a host of methodological reasons, including their gross underestimation of climate damages. These critiques often focus on the quantification assumptions underlying the scenarios, as well as the influence and predominance of neoclassical economics at the expense of other disciplinary expertise, including climate science. This Essay joins the growing number of voices calling for scenario analysis to go back to its narrative and interdisciplinary roots. Some initial projects in this vein have started to appear, with expert roundtables producing alterative story-lines given snappy titles like “Meltdown” and “Green Phoenix,” resembling those of the 1970s. 

Scenario analysis is useful today for the same reasons it was initially developed: as an approach to planning under deep uncertainty, a way to synthesize expert knowledge across disparate fields, and a means of overcoming the limits of quantification. This Essay agrees that it will be an invaluable tool in the chaotic climate years to come. But the history outlined in this Essay also highlights how the act of predicting the future can work to shape it. Scenarios are political — not just technological or natural — projections of the future. What counts as “expert knowledge” and which experts are invited to participate in scenario building are fundamental first steps that drive scenario outcomes.Further, scenarios are performative in that the act of predicting the future can work to shape it. 

The Essay proceeds as follows. Part I presents a short history of scenario analysis as a corporate planning tool, a story more bizarre than most corporate histories. It then explains how corporate scenarios came to shape, rather than predict, global environmental governance. Part III turns to the proliferation of climate scenarios in the financial world and seeks to offer some lessons from their corporate history. Part IV concludes.

The Aesthetic Turn and the Absurd Turn

'Sovereignty and the Persistence of the Aesthetic' by Illan Wall and Daniel Matthews in (2024) Modern Law Review comments 

British constitutional thought tends to understand sovereignty in legalistic terms, with the concept often equated with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. In the absence of a developed theory of popular sovereignty, sovereignty has become largely synonymous with this rule concerning the legislative competence of parliament. As Loughlin and Tierney have recently argued, this approach obscures the political dimensions of sovereignty which undergird the legal precept. They describe sovereignty as taking shape through the ongoing articulation of both legal and political relations. As Loughlin has argued elsewhere, sovereignty is best understood as having the form of a ‘double helix’ with the legal and the political running as anti-parallel strands. This article seeks to supplement this approach, arguing that instead of a doubled relation between law and politics, we should instead conceptualise a threefold process in which the legal, the political and the aesthetic are the essential elements which constitute sovereign forms. 

The article has two aims. The first is to retrieve, and give prominence to, the aesthetic dimensions of sovereignty within the history of political modernity. In the next section, we introduce the nature of aesthetics – as both a matter of appearances and perceptions – and indicate some of the reasons why this aspect of civil order has often been elided. Following this (in the third section) we engage with some well-known articulations of sovereignty − from the Hobbesian imaging of sovereignty, to early-modern efforts to map sovereign territory; from Rousseau's evocation of national sentiment, to Burke's description of how ‘dignity’ and ‘majesty’ are essential to the claim to sovereignty − before we conclude by examining the habituated feelings and instincts which Bentham understood to be central to the reproduction of sovereign relations. Our reading of this history draws out how the aesthetic persists across these varied approaches, but also aims to give a sense of the diversity of functions the aesthetic fulfils vis-à-vis sovereignty. Our account is obviously incomplete, both in terms of personnel and the range of aesthetic qualities it surveys; we tend to emphasise, for instance, the visual and affective qualities more than the sonic or haptic dimensions of sense perception. Nonetheless, our aim is to give priority to the aesthetic within the tradition of writing on sovereignty, in contrast to dominant approaches within constitutional thought which have either ignored, downplayed or obscured these concerns. 

Our second aim is more speculative. Whilst our reading of the history of political modernity suggests an important corrective, which draws out often underappreciated themes, it tells us nothing of how the aesthetic should be included in a theory of sovereignty. In a final, shorter, fourth section of the article we consider the different ways in which the aesthetic might be incorporated into constitutional theory, identifying three theses on the aesthetics of sovereignty: a totalisation thesis; an inadvertent or ‘weak’ inclusion; and finally, a ‘strong’ inclusion of the aesthetic, which we ultimately endorse. We conclude by suggesting that Loughlin's account of the double helix structure of sovereignty might be amended, contending that sovereignty takes the form of a triple helix in which law, politics and aesthetics are the strands which constitute the basic structure of the concept. Our aim here is speculative in that our approach opens the theorisation of sovereignty to new terrain, by insisting that the concept – particularly in the context of legal studies – needs to embrace not simply political but a range of aesthetic qualities and concerns if its meaning, implications and enduring importance are to be fully appreciated.

Claims in Turnbull v Clarence Valley Council [2023] NSWSC 83 reflect what might be unkindly characterised as pseudolaw as a manifestation of an absurd turn.

The judgment states 

 Mr Turnbull pursues damages in excess of $25 million against the Clarence Valley Council, most of it said to be the result of various claimed unlawfulness and the rest, wrongdoing by the Council specifically towards him. 

The proceedings are the result of events which began in February 2019 when Mr Turnbull was erecting a building on a property at Pillar Valley, owned by the grandparents of his children, without having sought prior Council approval. He claims that after he returned from an overseas trip, he found a stop work order issued by the Council, which amounted to his eviction from the property. ... Mr Turnbull claimed that as a result, he was wrongly left homeless, sleeping on the streets where he was subjected to ongoing harassment by employees of the Council, when he was fined for parking his motor home contrary to parking signs Council had erected. 

Mr Turnbull’s amended statement of claim pleads many events and his resulting beliefs and opinions about the illegality of the Council and its actions, as well as:

(1) numerous claimed breaches of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) allegedly committed by the Council, including when Council rangers issued him with three fines for parking and sleeping in a public car park where a no parking between the hours of 12 am and 5 am had been erected. Other alleged offences included treachery by intending to overthrow the Commonwealth Constitution; obtaining a financial advantage by deception; dishonestly causing a loss; and conspiracy to defraud; 

(2) numerous claimed breaches of the Commonwealth Constitution, referenda to amend it to refer to local government having failed; 

(3) racketeering by Council, in various alleged ways; 

(4) that the Council is a corporation with a CAN number; (5) that the Council had denied his right to exist, injecting themselves into his life as a “Mafia crime syndicate” would do, setting up a rule book of unlawful laws, acts, permits and certificates, in order to steal from and control people and all the land; 

(6) that the Council is responsible for land use regulations as directed by the State and thus also responsible for increased land valuations which preclude people from land ownership; result in the enforcement of unlawful laws; and the unlawful restriction of privately owned land; and 

(7) the Council wrongfully outlawing camping in various areas where homeless people sleep in cars during sleeping hours.

The claims are defended by the Council.

The Court states 

... Mr Turnbull relied on affidavits and other documents and a USB which he had served before the hearing, as well as written and oral submissions in which he explained his case. That included his various beliefs and opinions and why he resisted the orders which the Council pursued. In the circumstances, I am satisfied both that he did have a reasonable opportunity to advance his case and that he took advantage of it, given all that he relied on. 

That included, for example, claims such as

• that it was treachery for the State to enforce a stop work order using laws that contravened the Commonwealth Constitution; 

• that there had been alleged intentional frauds and conspiracies pursued, including one that had been uncovered in the 1960s and involved secret IMF banking policies to control the global financial system and all governments under a world government; 

• that other conspiracies had been pursued by Australian prime ministers, to remove the people from the Commonwealth of Australia; 

• his understanding of God’s laws; and 

• that before the 1993 enactment of the Local Government Act 1993 (NSW), everyone who owned land had specified rights, including the right to build any dwelling or structure there, or any number of buildings and since then, the system had gone mad at the expense of peace, welfare and good government. 

Mr Turnbull also advanced explanations for his conduct and events which had unfolded. They included, for example: 

a statement and declaration of truth affidavit, where Mr Turnbull states that his purpose (occupation) is “Galactic Emissary”; explains that he is the living man incarnated into Christopher Luke of the tribe/family/house/clan Turnbull; explains his various beliefs about matters such as the soul, the living man and competence; as well as various assertions, including about his own Universal sovereignty; deficiencies in his birth registration; that he is not lost at sea; claimed fictions; personage flowing from the Creator; and claimed violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on which he relies, despite his rejection of the United Nations. It, he says is a false authority and fictitious entity of identified claimed governments, including of this State. He also explains the reclaimed rights of his living body; private property; privacy data; as well as presumptions of claimed law on which he relied, including as to contracts, legal liability and the consequences of claimed responses, including silence. This statement was said to be given in order to: “i. establish, signify, proclaim, and verify the status of this living being; and ii. to eliminate/deny any and all presumptions by any and all fictitious, corporate or private entities; and iii. to rebut any and all alleged claimed authority and/or jurisdiction of any and all fictitious, corporate or private entities, over the deponent, those entities being without standing upon the land”; 

photographs of the building before and after Mr Turnbull began to erect it on the property, in addition to those taken by the Council on its inspection; 

a USB containing other documents and links to videos on which Mr Turnbull relies. They include videos which he has taken on occasions when he spoke and at times shouted at a Council ranger and another Council employee and others where someone is riding a motorbike around a campground, filming what is there to be seen; photographs of vehicles; as well as a link to a YouTube video, First Nation Mandamus. There people explain their call for an International Human Rights Abuse Tribunal to be conducted in relation to the genocide of Indigenous Australians, the oldest living culture on the planet and their reasons for that call. They include their sovereignty over the land which they have retaken; their need to protect their children, who they consider have been stolen from them and their call for a meeting with King Charles, for reasons which they explain; a notice issued to Council by the Velvet Revolution, which Mr Turnbull claims evidences service of a Moratorium on all Local Council members, charging them with misprision of treason, which rested on the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth), UK legislation, the Nuremburg Code, Helsinki Code and Magna Carta, as well as claimed inalienable rights; and a statement by Ms Lascelles, a Council Ranger, about parking infringement notices issued to Mr Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull claimed in his extensive submissions, that what he relies on, including late served documents to which objection was taken based on relevance and in one case, disputed authenticity, establishes the illegality and wrongfulness of the Council’s actions, which he would be able to prove at trial. 

The disputed documents were received on the motion on the basis that the weight which they could be given would have to be determined, given their contents and the cases which the parties advanced. 

In the case of the document claimed to be a copy of a letter written by the former Chief Justice Sir Harry Gibbs, said to have been published in May 2021 by “TrueBlue Observer”, I am satisfied, having considered it, that it can be given no real weight. That is because the document does not take the form of a letter; is headed “Explanatory Statement”; contains a photograph of Sir Harry; is not printed on letterhead; and is neither dated nor signed. That it is a copy of the letter which Mr Turnbull understands it to be, is thus not apparent. 

Shortly before the hearing Mr Turnbull had also served what he claimed to be an interlocutory application brought to this people’s Court under the common law, which serves the interest of this land, Terra Australis, which he considered had to be determined before the motion. What he thereby sought to pursue was allegations that the Council had not served evidence about matters such as its authority to conduct business on this land; ownership of buildings, caravan parks and reserves; and authority over him as a living man. 

I am satisfied that what is sought to be pursued by this application does not require consideration before the motion is heard and determined, the motion having been listed for hearing as it was, and the parties having complied as they had with the Court’s orders as to the service of their evidence and submissions. But I have taken into account what Mr Turnbull thereby sought to advance, the document being in evidence, in coming to a conclusion about the matters over which the parties joined issue. ... x ... 

 The Council’s case is that Mr Turnbull advances baseless claims against it which are frivolous and vexatious; have no conceivable prospects of success and so should be struck out. Further, that the proceedings should be dismissed, constituting as they do an abuse of the Court’s process which has a tendency to cause prejudice and embarrassment, given various scandalous and irrelevant claims advanced by Mr Turnbull in his affidavits and submissions. ...

The relevant law, which I will come to, is also well settled. Contrary to Mr Turnbull’s case, binding authority is contrary to the claims which he seeks to litigate. In the result, for reasons which I will explain, I am satisfied that the orders sought by the Council must be made, having approached what lies in issue between the parties in accordance with the authorities earlier referred to. On the evidence the Council has established, as it must, that the claims Mr Turnbull seeks to advance are untenable. 

The existence and authority of the Council 

Mr Turnbull has provided answers to particulars which the Council sought, on which it relied in its case. For his part Mr Turnbull also relied on those particulars, expanding them by his written and oral submissions. In essence he contends that there is no legal basis for the Council’s existence, claims which it contends are misconceived. 

Mr Turnbull advanced his arguments as to the claimed illegality which he seeks to pursue in various ways. This includes that the Local Government Act involves a conspiracy to overthrow the Commonwealth Constitution at the instigation of international bankers. As well as claims such as that all Prime Ministers have been paedophiles, without morals or ethics and susceptible to corruption and blackmail; that since 1923 there has been treason pursued in government to overthrow the Constitution; and that there is an ongoing campaign to overthrow the country’s political system, Constitution and money system. He also referred to an alleged conspiracy in relation to COVID-19. 

The case so advanced and the evidence Mr Turnbull relies on, all explain the Council’s submission that Mr Turnbull’s claims are frivolous and vexatious and without prospects of success. 

Some of what Mr Turnbull advances is unknown to the law and substantial aspects of the case he seeks to pursue have already been unsuccessfully pursued by others. Authorities by which the Court, as presently constituted, is bound, rejecting the kinds of case and arguments which he seeks to pursue, thus cannot be ignored. 

Mr Turnbull relies on ss 5 and 51 of the Constitution Act 1902 (NSW). His case is that the Local Government Act is not lawful, given the failure in 1974 and 1988 of referenda which sought to amend the Commonwealth Constitution. In the result he contends that municipal institutions and local government such as the Council are a department of a State government. Further, he said in oral submissions the Council is itself a corporation and he relies on s 109 of the Constitution, which provides for Commonwealth laws to prevail over State laws in the event of inconsistency, to support his case as to the illegality of the Council and the actions which it pursued, which resulted in his departure from the property. 

The claimed illegality on which Mr Turnbull relies underpins and is intertwined in the various ways he explained, in all aspects of the case which he seeks to pursue, including in respect of his agreements with the landowners. 

Mr Turnbull thus does not accept that his departure having been the result of the written agreement which he entered with the landowners, he must pursue any resulting grievance which he has with them. He considers that they had been coerced by Council to seek the approval which they obtained unnecessarily, with the result his eviction, for which the Council is responsible. 

I am satisfied that despite the way in which Mr Turnbull’s arguments were variously advanced, there is no reasonably available argument that the Local Government Act is inconsistent with the Commonwealth Constitution, or that it or the Council suffer from any illegality. The Constitution makes no reference to local government. That referenda which sought to insert such references in the Constitution failed is irrelevant to the laws made by the NSW Parliament, as its Constitution Act permits. 

Mr Turnbull does not rely on any Commonwealth legislation to advance his notions, on which his argument under s 109 of the Commonwealth Constitution depends. That the Local Government Act is not a legislative scheme which the NSW Parliament was empowered by the Constitution Act to make, is thus not a tenable argument. 

Further, what was decided in R v Vorhauer [2002] NSWCCA 483, where a number of similar claims were advanced, is binding and contrary to Mr Turnbull’s claims. 

There it was also contended that local Councils “are unconstitutional by reason of the failure of the constitutional referendum which would have included a reference in the Australian Constitution to local government”: at [14]. This was rejected, Spigelman CJ observing “There is no logic in this. Local governments are created by State legislation under the respective State Constitutions. The absence of any reference to local government in the Australian Constitution is just irrelevant”: at [14]. This conclusion was confirmed in Vorhauer v R [2007] NSWCCA 125 at [41]. 

The enactment of the Local Government Act has also been found to fall within the plenary power given the State Parliament by s 5 of the NSW Constitution: Hoxton Park Residents Action Group Inc v Liverpool City Council (No 2) [2011] NSWCA 363. There it was explained that “State laws may be invalid to the extent of any inconsistency with a valid law of the Commonwealth (Constitution, s 109) but a constraint on state legislative power must otherwise derive either from a specific provision of the Constitution or from an implication as to its operation, which necessarily impinges on state legislative power”: at [40]. Mr Turnbull also claims the Council is a corporation, but in Hoxton Park it was also observed at [44] that before the commencement of the Local Government Amendment (Legal Status) Act 2008 (NSW) on 20 November 2008, a council was said to be a body corporate. But that this was altered by these 2008 amendments, which introduced a new s 220. It still provides:

220 Legal status of a council (1) A council is a body politic of the State with perpetual succession and the legal capacity and powers of an individual, both in and outside the State. (2) A council is not a body corporate (including a corporation). (3) A council does not have the status, privileges and immunities of the Crown (including the State and the Government of the State). (4) A law of the State applies to and in respect of a council in the same way as it applies to and in respect of a body corporate (including a corporation).

It was also observed at [48] of Hoxton Park: that the power to enact this provision came from s 5 of the Constitution Act, which provides for the making of laws “for the peace, welfare and good government of New South Wales in all cases whatsoever”, subject to the provisions of the Commonwealth Constitution. While Mr Turnbull contends that the Council’s conduct has been contrary to the peace, welfare, and good government there envisaged, such opinions provide no basis for the conclusion that the Local Government Act is infected by illegality. The Constitution Act also provides in s 51: 51 Local government

(1) There shall continue to be a system of local government for the State under which duly elected or duly appointed local government bodies are constituted with responsibilities for acting for the better government of those parts of the State that are from time to time subject to that system of local government. (2) The manner in which local government bodies are constituted and the nature and extent of their powers, authorities, duties and functions shall be as determined by or in accordance with laws of the Legislature. (3) The reference in subsection (2) to laws of the Legislature shall be read as a reference to laws that have been enacted by the Legislature, whether before or after the commencement of this section, and that are for the time being in force.

Thus it was concluded in Hoxton Park that “While there may remain real questions as to the legal status of a council for different purposes, it is not possible to contend that s 220 [of the Local Government Act] fails to establish a collective body capable of exercising statutory functions, and particularly the consideration of the development applications in respect of land within geographically defined boundaries”: at [57]. 

In the result I am satisfied that it must be accepted that Mr Turnbull’s claims, resting as they do on his understanding of the meaning and operation of the Australian Constitution and Constitution Act, the illegality of the Local Government Act and the non-existence and lack of relevant authority of the Council under that legislative scheme, which has been rejected in these cases, do not disclose that he has any legally tenable cause of action for the claims which he seeks to advance. 

That includes his complaints about the Council’s operation of its campgrounds and reserves and its regulation of parking there and the claims he advances about the three fines imposed upon him as the result of actions taken by its rangers. 

Racketeering and other alleged offending 

The claims advanced in respect of alleged racketeering, conspiracy and other alleged Commonwealth offences similarly disclose no tenable cause of action, advanced as they are by way of Mr Turnbull’s opinions about the illegality of various laws and the conspiracies to which he referred. 

These claims relate to Mr Turnbull’s views about land usage; what can be built on real property; parking laws and fines imposed for breach of them; the regulation of camping grounds; claims advanced in relation to Councils’ claimed responsibility for increases in land value over time, which Mr Turnbull believes has impoverished people and wrongly precluded them from land ownership; as well as the claimed wrongful issue of the stop work order. 

Contrary to Mr Turnbull’s understanding, what he seeks to pursue also does not depend on the prior authorisation by first nations people of steps which the Council pursued, about which Mr Turnbull complains. They are simply not given such powers, by either the Commonwealth or State Constitutions nor any laws made under them to which he referred, even if the Council has recognised such peoples to be traditional landowners of the land falling within its local council area.  

Nor are the laws of God, as Mr Turnbull claims them to be, relevant to his claims. Australia’s legal system is the product of the common law and the legislative actions of British, Commonwealth and State parliaments. All are the result of steps which human beings, not the divine, have taken over the course of centuries, no matter what opinions Mr Turnbull has about them. 

In the result it must be accepted that these claims also have no tenable prospects of success. 

Claimed breaches of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

Mr Turnbull also particularised his reliance on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its claimed breaches by the Council, to advance his claims. But what Mr Turnbull so claimed and what he submitted about the Declaration was somewhat contradictory. 

But in so far as he relies on claimed breaches of the Declaration, I agree with the observations of Garling J in Rahman v Dubs [2012] NSWSC 1065 at [55]-[56]. 

Contrary to Mr Turnbull’s case, I consider that his Honour was correct in observing that causes of action based on breaches of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not justiciable in this Court. There being no domestic Commonwealth or State legislation which makes it part of the law of NSW, a claimed breach of the Declaration is not justiciable, applying Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs v Ah Hin Teoh (1995) 183 CLR 273; [1995] HCA 20.

On appeal in Turnbull v Clarence Valley Council [2023] NSWCA 295 Court stated 

 The applicant (who identifies himself as “‘Christopher Luke’ of the family ‘Turnbull’ for the appellant ‘Christopher Turnbull’”) seeks leave to appeal against orders made on 14 February 2023 in the Common Law Division of the Supreme Court dismissing with costs proceedings commenced by him by Statement of Claim filed on 15 March 2022: Turnbull v Clarence Valley Council [2023] NSWSC 83. The applicant filed an amended Statement of Claim on 1 August 2022. He named the Clarence Valley Council (the respondent) as the sole defendant. On 17 August 2022 the respondent filed a notice of motion seeking, in the alternative: (1) an order pursuant to Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 2005 (NSW), r 13.4(1)(b) (“UCPR”) that the proceedings be dismissed on the basis that no reasonable cause of action is disclosed; (2) an order pursuant to UCPR 13.4(1)(c) that the proceedings be dismissed as disclosing no cause of action for personal injury or wrong against the second defendant (it may be that “second defendant” is a typographical error – as noted above, only one defendant is named in the Statement of Claim and the Amended Statement of Claim); or on the basis that the proceedings are an abuse of process; (3) an order pursuant to UCPR r 14.28 that the proceedings (the Amended Statement of Claim) be struck out on the basis that the Amended Statement of Claim – (a) discloses no cause of action appropriate to the nature of the pleading or (b) has a tendency to cause prejudice, embarrassment or delay in the proceedings; or (c) is otherwise an abuse of process of the court. On 8 November 2022 the respondent’s notice of motion was fixed for hearing on 6 February 2023. On 30 January 2023 the applicant served on the solicitors for the respondent (but did not file) a document entitled “Interlocutory Application” and an affidavit sworn on 27 January 2023. In para 1 of the “Interlocutory Application” the applicant sought orders that the respondent “under Discovery ... provide written evidence” of: “(i) [the respondent’s] claim of Authority to conduct business on the land known as ‘Terra Australis’, and local areas known as ‘Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yaegl’[;] (ii) [the respondent’s] claim of Authority over ‘the claimant’, so as to make its claim over ‘the claimant’[;] (iii) [the respondent’s] claim of ownership of all its listed caravan camping grounds and parks, reserves and buildings.” In para 2 the applicant sought an injunction “to restrain or prevent the matter proceeding” until the documents sought were supplied and “a judge has ruled on each of the matters raised in 1. above”. In para 3 he claimed “and if such written evidence cannot be produced within 14 days, that the matter be ruled in favour of ‘the claimant’ and awarded in full including court costs”. As directed, the respondent’s notice of motion came on for hearing before the primary judge on 6 February 2023. The primary judge rejected the applicant’s request that his 30 January 2023 notice of motion be determined prior to the respondent’s 17 August 2022 notice of motion. As indicated above, after a contested hearing the primary judge made an order, pursuant to UCPR r 13.4(1)(b) that the proceedings be dismissed (on the basis that the Amended Statement of Claim disclosed no reasonable cause of action). 

The proceedings in the Supreme Court 

Having regard to the reasoning of the primary judge and the application for leave to appeal, it is necessary to begin by reference to the Amended Statement of Claim. 

The origin of the proceedings brought by the applicant appears to be his construction of a building, on land owned by “the grandparents of [the applicant’s] children” in the local government area controlled by the respondent. The Amended Statement of Claim begins with a narrative, recounted over more than two pages of typescript, of events said to have taken place in the early part of 2019. Put shortly, the applicant pleaded that, with the permission of the owners of the land, he had commenced the erection of a “shed” on the land, the purpose of which was to provide a workshop in which he could construct motor homes for sale. The applicant pleaded that, while he was out of the country on a short vacation, employees of the respondent had issued a “stop work” order on the construction on the basis that it was not a shed, but a dwelling, for which no development approval had been granted. The applicant recorded in the Amended Statement of Claim some confrontations with employees of the respondent. ... He pleaded that the so-called unlawful order constituted breaches of several provisions of the Local Government Act 1993 (NSW) as well as criminal offences under various provisions of the Criminal Code (Cth), including “Treatchory” (having been done with the intention of overthrowing the Commonwealth Government); conspiracy to defraud, and numerous others. The applicant also pleaded that the conduct constituted breaches (apparently of Articles 3, 8, 17 and 30) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ... 

The applicant pleaded that this conduct was unlawful, that the respondent had “no legal law to exist with their self-entitled powers called Local Government Act 1993”. This, he pleaded, was because local government is not mentioned in the Australian Constitution, and because, in a referendum in 1988, Australian electors had declined to insert recognition of local government into the Constitution. The applicant then pleaded that the respondent had: “...made itself into a corporation with an ACN number, and pretended to represent the people of the commonwealth, but in fact, was not legitimate, and has been operating unlawfully ever since.” (WB 84 [58]). The applicant pleaded that the respondent had: “...made themselves the owners of all camping and caravan parks in the entire shire and made rules and regulations to keep the people under their power unlawfully when they have no right or power to empower themselves.” WB 84[59] He pleaded that, in doing so, the respondent had committed the same criminal offences as he had previously identified, and breaches of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The applicant next pleaded that the respondent’s conduct was “a classic case of racketeering”. He again pleaded that the respondent had committed the same criminal offences and breaches of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The applicant claimed “personal compensation” of $25,000,000, compensation for loss of income of $735,000, damages for loss of a stable place “for my lifestyle, workshop and place to park my life” of $128,700, personal compensation for harassment by the respondent of $100,000, and loss of tools and belongings of $15,000. (WB 87) 

On 22 November 2023 the applicant served on the respondent a “Statement and Declaration of Truth Affidavit”, which covered 43 pages of typescript. This was summarised by the primary judge as follows at [11]: “... [the applicant] states that his purpose (occupation) is ‘Galactic Emissary’; explains that he is the living man incarnated into Christopher Luke of the tribe/family/house/clan Turnbull; explains his various beliefs about matters such as the soul, the living man and competence; as well as various assertions, including about his own Universal sovereignty; deficiencies in his birth registration; that he is not lost at sea; claimed fictions; personage flowing from the Creator; and claimed violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on which he relies, despite his rejection of the United Nations. It, he says is a false authority and fictitious entity of identified claimed governments, including of this State. He also explains the reclaimed rights of his living body; private property; privacy data; as well as presumptions of claimed law on which he relied, including as to contracts, legal liability and the consequences of claimed responses, including silence.” 

The “affidavit” opened with a statement of what were said to be “internationally accepted Maxims and Principles of Law”, and, in para 2, stated: “This ‘Statement and Declaration of Truth’/‘Affidavit’ is given to all in order to; i establish, signify, proclaim, and verify the status of this living being; and ii to eliminate/deny any and all presumption by any and all fictitious, corporate or private entities; and iii to rebut any and all alleged claimed authority and/or jurisdiction of any and all fictitious, corporate or private entities, over the deponent, those entities being without standing upon the land ... .” (WB 257) 

There was a great deal more in the Affidavit. For example, the applicant asserted:

4 We are a cosmic consciousness, also referred to as a ‘soul’; and 

5 We are a vibrational awareness; ... 

9 We are an aspect/creation of All That Is the Supreme Consciousness, also known as the Collective Consciousness, Allah, Yahweh, Source, and/or God Almighty, hereafter referred to as ‘The Creator’ ... 

17 Our ‘soul’ has had many incarnations in this ‘Earthly’ realm.” 

There were many more pages of similar assertions. Some can be related to the claims made in the Amended Statement of Claim. The applicant gave his “purpose (occupation)” as “Galactic Emissary”. 

The proceedings in the Supreme Court 

As mentioned above, the primary judge rejected the applicant’s request that his “Interlocutory application” of 30 January 2023 be addressed before the respondent’s earlier filed notice of motion. By reference to the “Statement and Declaration of Truth”, as well as to the Amended Statement of Claim, and other evidence provided by both the applicant and the respondent, the primary judge concluded that all the applicant’s claims are untenable. Her Honour dealt with the applicant’s claims under five headings, as follows: existence and authority of the respondent; allegations of racketeering; claimed breaches of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; alleged breaches of the Local Government Act; and damages claimed. 

Her Honour concluded, in each case, that the applicant’s claims were untenable. 

With respect to the applicant’s argument concerning “the existence and authority of [the applicant]”, her Honour concluded at [44]: “I am satisfied that despite the way in which [the applicant’s] arguments were variously advanced, there is no reasonably available argument that the Local Government Act is inconsistent with the Commonwealth Constitution, or that it or the [respondent] suffer from any illegality. The Constitution makes no reference to local government. That referenda which sought to insert such references in the Constitution failed is irrelevant to the laws made by the NSW Parliament, as its Constitution Act [1902 (NSW)] permits.” 

With respect to the applicant’s claims of “racketeering and other alleged offending”, her Honour recounted, in summary form, the applicant’s contentions, which included contentions concerning the respondent’s powers concerning land usage, the absence of prior authorisation by First Nation’s people and “the laws of God”. Her Honour considered (at [55]-[59]) that these claims also were untenable. 

Her Honour considered that the applicant’s claims of breaches of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not justiciable in the Supreme Court, there being no domestic, Commonwealth or state legislation making the provisions of the Declaration part of domestic law: at [60-[62]. Her Honour devoted several paragraphs to the applicant’s claim of breaches of the Local Government Act, but found that these, too, were untenable: at [63]-[76]. Her Honour then recorded the applicant’s claims for damages and concluded that there was no conceivable basis for the award of the claimed damages, noting that the applicant’s breaches of parking regulations were not disputed and that there was no basis for the applicant’s claims of illegality of the regulations. 

Her Honour considered that the “real question” was whether the applicant should be given leave to replead. At [32] she acknowledged that proceedings should not be dismissed if there may be a real question to be tried, but also recognised that, if there is a high degree of certainty about the ultimate outcome if the proceedings were allowed to go to trial and it appears that there is no legally tenable cause of action, summary dismissal is the appropriate course. Her Honour cited authority to that effect. 

The application for leave to appeal 

The applicant purported to file a notice of appeal on 25 May 2023 which he served on the respondent on 5 June 2023. At a directions hearing on 21 June 2023 the applicant was advised by the Registrar that, as the orders against which he sought to appeal were interlocutory, his proposed appeal required leave: Supreme Court Act 1970 (NSW), s 101(2)(e). On 14 July 2023 the applicant filed a Summons Seeking Leave to Appeal. The grounds of appeal are stated (in the purported Notice of Appeal, which I will treat as a Draft Notice of Appeal) as:

“1. Conflict of interest of Judge ‘Schmidt AJ’ as she did not declare that she is a member of the ‘BAR’, and did not declare that she works for ‘SUPREME COURT’ no authority. 2. Lack of due process, as the interlocutory Application was not dealt with. 3. Not given the right to be heard by a Jury. 4. No one living man can sit in Judgment of another living man. ‘MAXIM OF LAW’ 5. Unchallenged Statement and Declaration of Truth Affidavit has been breached [with reference to paragraph numbers].”

The applicant sought orders that the appeal be allowed, “the [unspecified] allegations be dismissed”, that his notice of motion “be completed”, trial by a jury, and that the matter be “reheard de novo” (WB 26). The applicant provided a Summary of Argument in support of his summons seeking leave to appeal. This document consisted of 76 short paragraphs, all except two of which state a different proposition. The propositions bear little, if any, relation to the grounds stated in the purported Notice of Appeal. I set out below samples of the applicant’s propositions, with comments. The applicant’s sixth proposition was as follows: “6. I seek leave on the basis that due process was not followed.” There was no further explanation of the failure to follow due process. It may be taken that this was a reference to the rejection by the primary judge of the applicant’s request that his “Interlocutory application” be dealt with before the respondent’s notice of motion. The determination of the primary judge to deal with the respondent’s notice of motion was both open to her as a matter of discretion, and logical. Acceptance of the respondent’s contentions could have resulted (and did result) in the termination of the proceedings. The respondent was entitled to have its notice of motion disposed of before being required to respond to the applicant’s belated “Interlocutory application”. 

The applicant’s tenth proposition was: “10. The Judge has not addressed Constitutional issues involving its validity.” This is incorrect: the primary judge, at [44] rejected the applicant’s contentions of Constitutional invalidity. The applicant’s twelfth proposition was: “12. The Judge has not addressed the Separation of Powers.” No issue of separation of powers was raised by the applicant, and his contention in the Summary of Argument is not further explained. 

The applicant subsequently submitted that:

“24. The Judge has not addressed the issue of First Nations People and their calls for Justice. ... 34. The Judge has not addressed my title of Galactic Emissary and Diplomat. ... 37. The Judge has exhibited a deliberate bias in characterising and referring to me as a ‘citizen’ or a ‘person’ and calling me ‘Mr Turnbull’ so as to bring it under a jurisdiction of her choice and not of the matter.”

The applicant has not explained the relevance of his claim to the title of Galactic Emissary. No issue was raised before the primary judge as to his status in this respect. Nor was any issue raised in the Amended Statement of Claim about First Nations people; a contention that the powers of the respondent depend on the consent of First Nations peoples was dealt with, correctly, by the primary judge at [57]: “[First Nations people] are simply not given such powers, by either the Commonwealth or State Constitutions nor any laws made under them to which he referred, even if the Council has recognised such peoples to be traditional landowners of the land falling within its local council area.” His complaints about being referred to as a “citizen”, or “person”, or as “Mr Turnbull” are not explained. 

Further propositions were as follows:

“38. The Judge has consented to the press-ganging of our land and financial assets and those of our ancestors. ... 

42. The Judge has failed to mention her oath or membership with the ‘Private Bar Guild’. ... 

44. The Judge has failed to address my agreement with the Creator and its authority over all other earth based agreements and authority. 

The meaning of “press-ganging of our land” is obscure, as is the complaint about the primary judge’s oath or membership of “the Private Bar Guild”. Neither was raised during the proceedings. No issue was raised about the applicant’s agreement with the Creator. 

This is only a small sample of the applicant’s propositions contained in the Summary of Argument. I have read and considered each of the propositions. Nothing in those propositions establishes any error on the part of the primary judge. In my opinion the primary judge correctly disposed of all contentions made by the applicant in the proceedings before her. 

At the commencement of the hearing of the application for leave to appeal the applicant provided a document setting out his “Arguments for appeal”, under 11 headings. 

The first heading was “Procedure”. The applicant referred to the decision of this Court in Goktas v Government Insurance Office (NSW) (1993) 31 NSWLR 684, which is a decision concerned with apprehended bias by a judicial officer. Apart from his complaint about being referred to as a “citizen”, “a person” or “Mr Turnbull”, the applicant identified no factual basis for any apprehended bias on the part of the primary judge. The argument may relate to the ground of appeal that complains that the primary judge failed to declare her membership of “the BAR”, and that she “works for ‘SUPREME COURT’”. If the applicant’s complaint is reference to the primary judge’s asserted membership of the NSW Bar Association, there is no evidence of any such membership, and if, indeed, her Honour is a member (or associate member) of that organisation, it provides no basis for an assertion of apprehended bias. That the primary judge “works for the Supreme Court” must be obvious; the proceedings would not have been before her Honour had she not held a commission as an acting judge of the Supreme Court. The ninth heading in the applicant’s argument was “apprehended bias”. The argument made under that heading was that the primary judge did not admit the applicant’s affidavit into evidence. That assertion is incorrect. Her Honour did admit the affidavit and referred to parts of it in her judgment. 

The second heading in the applicant’s argument was “Circumstances arising during the hearing”. The applicant complained that the primary judge made “adverse observations” during the course of the hearing. The bulk of the applicant’s submissions under this heading concerned her Honour’s decision not to deal with his “Interlocutory application” before dealing with the respondent’s notice of motion. I have addressed this argument at [29] above. Under this heading the applicant also made reference to authorities concerning “undue interference by a judge”. Apart from, again, making reference to the primary judge’s determination to deal with the respondent’s notice of motion first, the applicant did not identify any instance of undue interference by the primary judge. 

The third heading in the applicant’s argument was “the opinion rule”, with reference to s 76 of the Evidence Act 1995 (NSW) and to the decision of the High Court in Dasreef Pty Ltd v Hawchar (2011) 243 CLR 588; [2011] HCA 21. The applicant did not identify any instance in the proceedings before the primary judge in which opinion evidence was tendered and either admitted or rejected. This contention was that his affidavit: “...has to [be] accepted as it is, with all its relevance to the case, and it’s unrebutted authority, [sic] and, as the Council has failed to provide evidence requested in email of ownership and authority ... that brings the Interlocutory application into relevance as a priority, and has been requested of the court to make orders for ... [the sentence is incomplete].” The opinion rule was not invoked in the proceedings before the primary judge and has no bearing on the present application for leave to appeal. 

The fourth, fifth and sixth headings in the applicant’s argument were, respectively, “Discovery and inspection during proceedings”, “Discovery generally”, and “Relevant documents”. The applicant referred to UCPR r 21.2(1). He asserted that his “Interlocutory application” was a “document of discovery and is in alignment with rule for, order for discovery, of documents during proceedings”. That assertion is plainly incorrect. I have dealt with the primary judge’s treatment of the “Interlocutory application” at [29], above. No formal application for an order for discovery has been made and no order has been made. Discovery was immaterial in the proceedings before the primary judge, which were concerned with whether the Amended Statement of Claim disclosed any reasonable cause of action, had a tendency to cause prejudice, embarrassment or delay in the proceedings or was otherwise an abuse of the process of the court. The applicant also made reference to an Equity Division Practice Note concerning discovery. This is plainly immaterial to the present proceedings. 

The seventh heading in the applicant’s argument is “Jurisdiction”. The applicant referred to s 66(1) of the Supreme Court Act, which empowers the Supreme Court to grant orders restraining any threatened breach of contract or other injury. The applicant contended that the respondent had “breached a contract that [he] had in place”. Presumably, this was a reference to the arrangement he had with the owners of the land on which building the subject of the respondent’s “stop work” order was being constructed, which (the applicant asserts) was terminated as a result of the stop work order issued by the respondent. 

Again, the applicant’s argument was that his Interlocutory application should have been dealt with before the respondent’s notice of motion. I have disposed of this argument above. 

The eighth heading in the applicant’s argument was “Relevant evidence”, with a reference to s 55 of the Evidence Act. The applicant referred to Papakosmas v The Queen (1999) 196 CLR 297; [1999] HCA 37 and BBH v The Queen (2012) 245 CLR 499; [2012] HCA 9 to the effect that evidence that is relevant is admissible so long as it has probative value. His complainant in this respect is difficult to identify, as the primary judge admitted, and had regard to, all of the evidence he put before her. 

As mentioned above, the ninth heading in the argument was “Apprehended bias”. I have dealt with that in conjunction with the first heading. The tenth heading in the argument is “Fraud”. The applicant cited a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and contended that “there is no place in Law for Fraud as outlined in the various points of Law presented to the Judge near the conclusion of the hearing, as Points of Fraud”. 

The primary judge comprehensively and correctly dealt with the applicant’s allegations in the Amended Statement of Claim that the respondent’s conduct constituted, inter alia, conspiracy to defraud and racketeering. The applicant has not identified any error in the approach taken by her Honour. 

The eleventh and final heading in the applicant’s argument was “Principals” (sic). The applicant complained that “breaches of Principles” were not dealt with (although the “principles” were not identified). 

Under this heading the applicant contended: 

“It seams [sic] that the entire last 100 years of recorded history that outlines the evidence of a global conspiracy is too much for the judge to fathom, despite the facts and science of the Covid-19 scam, and the calls of the W.E.F for a global control system of health, money, property, and genetics, by a private club that dictates to all governments, as outlined in the evidence, Yes this case can seam [sic] to be very complicated, as the councils are making deals with these private clubs, or the case can be seen very simply, as in the charges against the council of Racketeering and Fraud charges that have not been addressed by the judge, as she dismisses the Affidavit of Truth like it’s a fiction story, instead of the claimed authority as a living man, over the fiction name of the C.Q.V Trust accounts that the council uses in its course of business, as seen in the harassment and fines that the council rangers issued, once again the authority of the council to make contracts with living people is in question, as they only deal with the trust accounts and in fraud.” 

In the lengthy text that appears under this heading I can discern no identifiable error asserted to infect the reasoning of the primary judge.