NZ Skeptics Articles

Sovereign Citizens: Part Two – Justices of the Peace

Katrina Borthwick - 14 April 2025

In part one I recapped the core beliefs of “Sovcits” (Sovereign Citizens) and where those beliefs come from, as well as some of the havoc being caused for local Councils and the Police. I really do recommend you read that part first if you are curious about the ‘why’ of Sovcits.

In this second part I explore the interactions Sovereign Citizens have with Justices of the Peace. And, if you like this one, then keep your eye out for part three where I will go more into some of the happenings in our Courts.

Justices of the Peace

Justices of the Peace (JPs) are individuals who are held to have unquestionable integrity. They serve a number of functions that bring them into contact with Sovcits. Ministerial duties, which all JPs can perform, include witnessing signatures on documents, certifying copies of documents, taking declarations (including statutory declarations), witnessing affirmations and swearing of affidavits.

A few JPs who have completed additional specific training can perform judicial duties, including hearing summary offences, imposing fines and some driving penalties, hearing bail applications and requests for remand and adjournment, and issuing search warrants and some arrest warrants.

Justices of the Peace are most likely to encounter Sovcits when approached to assist them in creating documents purporting to be affidavits or legal documents that appear to exempt them from laws. JPs are absolutely not supposed to sign such documents… unless you are in Alaska.

Alaska stopped having a JP service some time ago. So the sovereign citizens actually took on the role within the state. They even have a self-proclaimed judge for good measure. Fortunately, this is not the case in New Zealand. I found the following sensible guidance on the NZ Auckland Justices of the Peace Association website:

Please do NOT Endorse Sovereign Citizen /Dual Persona documents

11 September 2023

Frank Rands

_There seems to be an increased number of Sovereign Citizens and dual Persona documents appearing in our courts.

The AJPA council is asking for all Justices to be vigilant with regard to situations where an individual is wanting a document processed for the purpose of ‘expatriation’, or the transfer of induvial names to a trust where the purpose is to support a belief that NZ Courts or Parliament will then have no legal jurisdiction over these ‘entities’. These documents are created by those attempting to escape the rules and the laws of NZ.

Unfortunately they are appearing in Court, signed and stamped by a NZ Justice of the Peace (all of whom have sworn to uphold the laws of NZ). This should not happen.

We would request any documents that are presented to a JP, which appear to support the separation of individuals from their legal name, or avoid the jurisdiction of NZ law, should NOT be processed._

Please refuse to endorse, process, sign, stamp or witness such documents.

So, why is this such a big deal?

Well, when it goes wrong, it can go very wrong. This is embodied in the actions of Kerrie Ann Brogden. Kerrie is part of a group of self-proclaimed ‘sheriffs’ in New Zealand that have issued arrest warrants for public figures. In some respects these had the potential to have been real warrants, if they were signed by the right kind of JP. But I have my doubts.

It turns out these warrants were signed by an Eketāhuna JP who was elderly, and who later said she felt intimidated. Brogden has a habit of using lengthy documents full of pseudolegal words to intimidate people. This history includes trying to get a debt collector to help her get $10M from someone who had never had any financial dealings with her. She has also tried to claim ‘allodial title’ on a public reserve, and this somehow involved burying cabbages and putting up signs. You can read more about her here.

Justices of the Peace do handle a lot of documents, and I imagine not only is it likely that most of them aren’t very interesting, a fair amount will probably contain some fairly technical language. So, how can a JP avoid inadvertently signing or stamping a dodgy Sovcit document? Some red flags are identified in the JP quarterly.

Identity issues

One indication that a document is not an affidavit (despite purporting to be) is identity issues. In part one I explained how important it was to Sovcits to separate their ‘real flesh and blood sovereign citizen self’, from the ‘strawman corporate identity holding federal citizen’. These can show up in documents as them refusing to complete the document correctly - for instance, by refusing to write their legal name or occupation or address when required to by law. They may also refer to themselves as a “natural person”, or include unnecessary punctuation in their name - sometimes even replacing their entire name with a punctuation mark. There may also be red ink, or thumbprints, to indicate their ‘flesh and blood’ status.

A beautiful example of this type of affidavit made its way to Court in Niwa v The Commissioner of IRD 2019. Note that the ‘Niwa’ here is a Mr Niwa, not the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)! Mr Niwa was trying to get out of paying tax. An excerpt from the judgement that directly references the problematic affidavit follows:

[5] For ease of reference I annex a copy of the substantive part of Mr Niwa’s current pleading to this judgment. It will be observed that the ways in which Mr Niwa uses his name is unusual, including in particular:

his variable (but deliberate) use of capitals and small case;

the distinction he apparently seeks to draw between “Donald-James: of the family Niwa” and DONALD NIWA™;

the use of Latin (ens legis)3 and, relatedly, the attempt to suggest that DONALD NIWA™ is not a “natural person”;

the use of the thumb print by Donald-James’ signature;

the allegation in paragraph 2 that the District Court Judge:

… proceeded after the belief I the living Individual Donald-James … was the “Defendant”

the allegation in paragraph 3 that the Judge:

… failed to call the Individual Donald-James to ask if he would accept role as ‘Defendant’, and used “Statutory Power” to proceed.

[6] The distinction apparently sought to be drawn here was also reflected in Mr Niwa’s appearance in the District Court where Judge Hinton recorded that he wished to be referred to as “Donald James”.

In response the Judge extensively quotes a Canadian judgment, Meads v Meads 2012, which refers to ‘Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument litigants’ or ‘OPCA litigants’ in relation to the name issue. One glorious quote from Meads follows – but the whole IRD case is well worth a read if you are a bit nerdy.

[75] These claims are, of course, pseudolegal nonsense. A judge who encounters and reviews OPCA concepts will find their errors are obvious and manifest, once one strips away the layers of peculiar language, irrelevant references, and deciphers the often bizarre documentation which accompanies an OPCA scheme. When reduced to their conceptual core, most OPCA concepts are contemptibly stupid. Mr. Meads, for example, has presented the Court with documents that appear to be a contract between himself, and himself. One Mr. Meads promises to pay for any liability of the other Mr. Meads. One owns all property, the other all debts. What is the difference between these entities? One spells his name with upper case letters. The other adds spurious and meaningless punctuation to his name. Mr. Meads (with punctuation) is the Mr. Meads who appeared in court. He says the Mr. Meads (all capitals) is the one who should pay child and spousal support.

That’s right, he presented a contract between himself and himself, and conveniently decided that the other one is the one who has all the debts and should pay tax and child support, while he gets the property. And, yes, the judge uses the words ‘bizarre documentation’ and ‘contemptibly stupid’.

The judge found that the filing was an abuse of the Court process, and the judgement was issued without hearing from Mr Niwa.

Format

Another giveaway is often that the format of the affidavit might not look right. Real affidavits have a particular format, including a standard statement at the opening and something called a statement of jurat. The statement of jurat is the verification of oath/affirmation taken before a notary public (like a JP or Judge), to confirm the truthfulness of the contents of a document. If you want to check whether an affidavit is in the proper format, you can look at an example on the NZ Law Society website.

So, if the document contains a space for the client or Justice to sign to “verify” the document, then that’s not quite right either. This is a trick. A JP will usually just watch you sign and initial, and then do the same to show they witnessed you take your oath/affirmation. They aren’t actually a party to an affidavit, and can’t say if it is true or not. They can only say that you took an oath or affirmation that it was true. Big difference.

Related to this, SovCits may misunderstand a JP’s role, and try to get them to endorse a document that nullifies the law. JPs are not trusted independent witnesses when it comes to overriding matters of law. They derive their jurisdiction from legislation, and are obliged to undertake their duties according to the laws.

Another tell is if the affidavit is addressed to an organisation that is not a court or tribunal. Affidavits are only used in support of court or tribunal proceedings. They serve no purpose elsewhere.

And a sneaky trick to be wary of is page numbering or other formatting that enables parts of the document to be removed without whoever receives it knowing it is incomplete. For example, numbering the pages starting at -3, so the first four pages can be removed. Or variants like 1, 1a, 2, 2b, allowing every page with a letter to be removed.

Content

If the document contains threats towards others, or even the JP, that’s a major sign something is not right. Examples of this might be threats of ‘dire legal consequences’, or that the intended recipients must assume liability for any wrongdoing they allegedly committed if they fail to respond to the client by a certain deadline. SovCits may also say that a JP could be liable should they refuse to complete their document in the way they ask.

Normal legal documents, including affidavits, are pretty boring statements of facts, and are kept that way for a reason. Judgements are left to the, well… .judges.

And, of course, there’s the pseudolegal language and references to outdated laws, overseas laws, and archaic legal documents such as the Magna Carta, Allodial title and the Roman Civil Codes; this is not a good sign. And it’s the same with the use of irrelevant laws, such as trying to use commercial law to defend a criminal charge.

Apparently, another sign is the client wanting to make multiple copies of the same document to send to a particular person. In other words – document bombing them. There is no reason to provide a single person with more than one copy. This can feel like harassment.

What can JPs do if asked to sign such documents?

Some strategies are suggested in the JP Quarterly. They boil down to:

My jaw kind of dropped at the recording thing. I never would have thought of that, but it seems an obvious thing to watch out for in hindsight.

Arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon… No matter how good you are, the bird is going to shit on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

Conclusion

If you are a JP, then I really would like to thank you for your service and patience. I am sure JPs get involved at very difficult times in many people’s lives, and it cannot be an easy job to do. If you are dealing with Sovcits, then I’m really sorry!

Well, that’s all we have space for this time. The next part in my series will go into the Court side of things. Stay tuned.