Thanks for the welcome everyone!
On this side of the globe it's (almost) time for me to head to work, but I thought I'd whip off a quick reply on a few points and answer in more length a little later today.
Spero: I quickly reviewed your "Myth Busting" information page and it looks very good to me. I'll re-read it carefully and see if I have further suggestions.
nomorequotes: On the Canadian experience: we are now on the tail end of 'wave three' of this kind of litigation - but the first two focussed mainly on denial of income tax obligation, so they didn't affect the courts as a whole. The Freeman-on-the-Land anti-government perspective is much broader, and so has been their interaction with the courts.
The initial response from the judges was to evaluate whether or not Freemen are mentally ill. They can seem that way at a glance since they speak in such a strange, formalized way in court, and with their essentially ritualistic use of documentation and 'ceremonies'. Not too long ago a couple Canadian psychiatrists wrote on the result of court-ordered assessments of Freemen litigants: Jennifer Pytyck & Gary A. Chaimowitz, "The Sovereign Citizen Movement and Fitness to Stand Trial", (2013) International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, 12:2.
I think this paper is a very good assessment and observes that Freeman belief mimics psychotic behavior - but it is instead a form of highly marginal political belief re-enforced in small fringe peer groups. I think that conclusion is dead on the mark. Unfortunately I think that paper has 'subscription only' access online, but for anyone with a professional interest in the subject I recommend it.
The second big 'ah-ha' for the courts was to recognize this is a large-scale phenomenon, and not just an 'isolated nut who read something on the Internet'. In fact, a very large number of cases had been heard and tried before a judge took the time to assemble a profile and background of these people. That resulted in the Meads v. Meads decision that was linked above. Meads caused a major shift because it was the first time Freemen and related groups were described in detail, revealed to be a commercial product flogged by 'gurus', and it provided a global response to these schemes. They never did work, but now it's easy for judges and lawyers to categorize these strange ideas and offer a legal answer.
Now the movement was well understood by the courts - the question became how to manage it. Judges are trained to be very careful with self-represented litigants to ensure their submissions are scrutinized for valid arguments and issues. That was a tough project when you have a litigant babbling what kind of sounds like law and what kind of sounds like gibberish. Post-Meads it was became much easier to do that screening process, and there are some wonderfully neat judgments that illustrate this process.
Fans of Lord Denning might enjoy this one:
R. v. Duncan, 2013 ONCJ 160 (canlii.ca/t/fwsm0)
So things are now pretty well in hand in court. Freemen arrive, do their little song and dance, and fail. Security is wise to them and so their in-court disruptions are kept under control. The judges generally know what to expect. I think now, post-Meads, most of the Freemen expect to fail in court. They've watched their peers do that, over and over, their gurus cannot answer the legal arguments against Freeman ideas, and for the holdouts it's as though they have too much invested to let go. This is a land of cognitive dissonance.
One of the most important lessons learned was how valuable it is to provide written court decisions that then form a body of law to refute unusual arguments. The Meads decision doesn't really invent too much - it simply collects and integrates into a single reference well over a decade of written judgments and their principles. All that case law then provided a firm foundation to answer pretty much any Freeman-type scheme. Since Meads there have been a steady stream of detailed, analytical written reasons that examine and pull apart additional variations on Freeman strategies, and then record that failure for the public to review.
A funny thing about Freeman-type litigants is that they are obsessed with law, and so they are some of the very few laypersons who will voluntarily study and scrutinize judgments. Confronting that community and its gurus with clear analysis was devastating. It provided a counter-voice to their own internal peer-group based dialogue - particularly when that was backed up by repeated in-court failure.
Another valuable response has come from the public. In North America there are a number of 'hobbyist groups' who monitor and study these people. (Sadly, to date our legal academics have been all but useless and have added nothing to our understanding or response to these people.) The forum I mentioned previously, Quatloos, is I think now the leading group of that kind. We track gurus, litigation, and try to provide a repository for data to build a history that can be referenced and used to challenge and respond to these strange ideas. Sometimes the gurus themselves venture into the 'heart of darkness' and take us on in debate.
We're watched very closely within the Freemen communities - our function is much like a ideologically opposite media resource. In my own activities I am careful to provide sources and cite case law. This is another difficult challenge for the gurus.
(And we're a kind of snarky source for the type of peer gossip the Freemen themselves find interesting!)
One last note on the progression in Canada - for a very, very long time the Freemen were a total mystery to the general public. No one had heard of them. Then in the last couple years we have had high profile decisions like Meads, and some very interesting incidents that were the subject of significant media reporting. This guy in particular (www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=9463). The Freemen expected they would be welcomed as saviors by the Canadian public - here was the answer to all that government, corporate, bank, and Cabal tyranny!
Instead the Canadian public hated them. The response was overwhelming. No one was sympathetic to these "Freeloaders-on-the-Land". The Freeman community is still trying to come to terms with the sudden realization that they may not be the leading edge of a mass movement. Now, many average Canadians have a general idea of who these people are, what they believe and try to do. The Freemen are viewed with scorn or as a kind of bad joke. I expect this education may help 'immunize' our population against further infections by these parasite memes.
I'll end it there for now but later today I will share data on our experience with Freemen in the family law context.
All the best!
SMS Möwe