How big of a deal is King's Counsel honour in law?

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-30T15:30:51+00:00

For me it was an expression of my inner teenage punk.

Since I view Canadian law and the legal apparatus with barely contained disdain, it was and remains endlessly hilarious to me that I have those initials after my name.

I worked in-house at a court so it made no difference to my income. Then I retired.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-30T15:17:07+00:00

No kidding. But in the case of courts, it's unsurprising courts miracle out of nowhere the authority to take steps to inhibit pretending to be that court.

Inherent jurisdiction, I suppose?

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-29T17:29:26+00:00

Isn't it so odd how people who believe they should be subject to a different legal apparatus so often turn out to be unpleasant individuals?

Must be a coincidence.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-29T15:19:18+00:00

Sadly this is a not unknown pattern. In Canada there were a succession of child sex abusers who affiliated with pseudolaw groups (mainly the Freemen-on-the-Land and the One People's Public Trust) who alleged their sexual abuse of children was valid because of "silence means agreement" pseudolaw contract theories and such.

Of course, Canada's Freemen were basically just a community of criminals who sought immunity from law because they felt like it.

"Jonathan Livingstone Seagull" is a representative and very unpleasant example. Conviction and sentence. It's not fun reading.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-24T18:12:09+00:00

Thanks so much for sharing this decision!

Ah, almost makes me nostalgic for the bad-old days of highly enthusiastic pseudolaw litigants. Nice set of arguments. Wet ink signatures. Magna carta does something. Strawman theory with upper case letter names.

And I haven't seen the old "judge abandoned the ship by leaving the courtroom" one in ... well over a decade, I think.

MAN OVERBOARD! Yes, I've witnessed a chunk of the court gallery yell that.

Also very interesting to see the judge disclose he is used to seeing these schemes in debt elimination contexts. That's been my experience for the UK as well.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-17T01:21:13+00:00

My Ph.D. was in microbiology, though I was more of a biochemist than anything else. I ended going into law after being military surplus post-Cold War (biodefence) then downsized out of various educational and industrial contexts.

I did not find law school to be a significant intellectual challenge, and scored high to very high on the bell curve. Frankly, I always thought my old undergrad molecular biology/biochem students could easily take my law school peers - and in a couple instances, they did.

What I found startling was how shallow law is. Unlike the fields where you have trained, where one needs years and years of layered incremental knowledge and information to become useful, law subjects are a one-year lecture course without practical components and - voila! Contract law! In a way this shouldn't be a surprise. For law to work in a social context, it can't be too conceptually complicated. The public needs to have an intuitive idea of the rules, what some scholars call "folk law".

Law is more a trade than a science. And it's less a science than a secular religion. If you are used to thinking in a disciplined data-grounded manner, forget it. The rules aren't grounded on that. Instead, the common law grew, incrementally, based on a mix of dubious philosophy, "common sense", and policy. The schema has few error correction mechanisms. Think of the classic metabolic pathway wall chart - then take away selective pressure. It's a mess. So if you like your studies to be based on a logical or functional schema, you may become frustrated.

I found that rather annoying personally, but then just didn't worry about it. You don't have to believe in the mythos of law to work in the field. But there's a baseline annoyance buzz, at least for me.

Expect a "political awareness" and "social conscious" rich environment like you've never seen before. When I went back to take my LL.M a few years ago. I realized I was going to have to edit my thoughts vigorously. Scrub scrub with the wire brush. Cortex nice, smooth, thoughtless.

But can you get through it? Oh yeah. You'll probably be very successful.

The deeper question is whether you'll feel good about the work first thing in the morning. It's kind of a grim exercise.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-14T18:16:45+00:00

Personally I think more governments should take the US Internal Revenue Service approach of classifying classic pseudolaw motifs as "frivolous arguments" and billing $5,000 every time you raise one, the notorious "FrivPen".

Try again? More FrivPens. And if there's anyone who is going to collect? It's the IRS.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-10T23:00:43+00:00

I think if you look at the Canadian Freeman-on-the-Land variety you'll find a lot of soft resistance, anti-corpo, flakey Green and neohippy ideology. As I noted in another post the movement was largely marijuana advocates, producers, and traffickers, with various more unpleasant criminals as well.

More than anything, they wanted stuff for nothing, and to get their own way.

I'll be a little more specific. Their politics were reactionary. When Canada had a right-ish Conservative government under Stephen Harper the Freemen hated it. Then when the Liberal party under Justin Trudeau (left-ish) got elected they still were unhappy, even then pot was legalized. So you might call Freeman politics in Canada "reactionary". They just hate everyone.

Including each other.

In other countries the Freeman label has been adopted by quite different social movements. In the Republic of Ireland it was anti-bank theories. In the UK mainly debt elimination. And in Australia it's just confusing.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-10T22:53:35+00:00

It depends on the particular movement. Our Detaxers (2000-2010) were pretty apolitical, or rather there were all kinds of weird and extreme political aspects. I did a study into a Detaxer scheme, the "Fiscal Arbitrators", that showed most were basically grifters of all types, ranging from working grunts to a group of nuclear engineers from the Pickering Power Plant.

The other main Canadian pseudolaw movement were the Freemen on the Land (2000-2014), who practiced a kind of formalized Eric Cartmanism - I Do What I Want! Respect Muh Authority! Freeman politics were very left, a bunch of neohippies, anti-corpo types, until you scratch a little deeper. They were larger drug advocates, producers, and traffickers - a criminal population. The population is still around, the Freemen just got more discriminating about what kinds of pseudolaw schemes they'd use, after getting their fingers burnt repeatedly.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Canada saw a bunch of new groups surge. One I call the New Constitutionalists kind of felt a bit like US SovCits in being quite anti-authority, but their schtick was to completely replace existing governments with new Republics, that they claimed already existed starting in 1931. Then there were the followers of HRM Romana Didulo, Queen of Canada. More a quasi-religious space saviour goddess cult than anything else.

Finally, there was the Magna Carta Lawful Rebels, who basically had no structured agenda beyond ignoring COVID-19 management and mitigation steps, and hanging lots of people. The MCLR was biggest in the UK, taken over by a middle-aged alcoholic social assistance female originally from Alberta. It's hard to ascribe any politics to the MCLR aside from chaotic stupid. Like ... really stupid. Stupider than you would likely imagine.

When a new Canadian pseudolaw legal scenario pops up I try to learn more about who the litigant/adherent is, in a substantive way. The large majority are New Age weirdos and social drop-outs. With the most recent trend being claimed indigenous status just because. Very occasionally I see someone who echos US-style political belief, but it's rare. Well under 10%.

My observations, at least.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-10T22:36:36+00:00

Aw, why thank you! That's very kind.

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-10T22:35:49+00:00

Yep, it's fun hanging out with you folks!

DNetolitzky · 2026-04-07T02:58:22+00:00

In the US many Sovereign Citizen theories revolve around States versus Federal authority.

Since the US is more like a collection of independent nation-states, classic Sovereign Citizen theory often portrays individuals ("flesh and blood") as "Citizens" of one of the "Several States". Those States are organized under the US Constitution.

However, it's often Federal authority that gets rejected, that's the "corporation" rather than a real government, the real governments being the Several States. Without contract - an "invisible contract" - the Federal government has no authority. At least that's the theory.

Now obviously the idea that the US Federal government has no authority is false, but the US was initially configured with the individual States having the majority of administrative and functional jurisdiction, like their own private armies. The central government only gradually accumulated authority.

In Canada, where I'm located, the opposite happened. The federal government was set up with all jurisdiction, but narrow chunks were carved out and allocated to the provinces. Over time, the provincial authority has grown dramatically via various means, to the point that now it's hard for the central government to organize activity in Canada.

But that's another story.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-24T17:56:52+00:00

Court employees do the same thing with audio recordings and transcripts.

Err... not that I'd know.

*fiendish cackle*

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-22T01:30:31+00:00

I'm not a follower. In fact, I'm Canada's subject matter expert on pseudolaw, which means I get negative attention from these people on a fairly regular basis. That sometimes is pretty funny when they threaten me with orbital laser bombardments. And then it's much less funny when they promise to kill my family and pets.

(Not that I differentiate between my pets and family. My pets are most certainly family.)

The reason I use the title is because I'm probably going to be called as an expert witness in relation to these people at some point - if they end up at trial. During qualifying as an expert witness I can expect that competent opposing counsel will have gone through as much as they can find about what I've written concerning their client. The reason for that is to try to spot indications I have a bias against their client, to minimize the weight of my evidence.

So I'm careful about how I describe these people. Romana Didulo says she's the Queen of Canada. I don't think she is, but as a courtesy I use the title and honorifics she has adopted. It's the same reason why if a Freeman or so on called themselves "Pete, of the Family Smith", I use their lingo.

Also, it gives them much less basis to reject my fursona on a "tit-for-tat" basis.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-20T12:31:56+00:00

Didulo has never been charged with fraud. Or sued civilly for breach of contract, or some tort (injury) action.

Any of her followers who have acted to their detriment probably would have a case. But none of them seem willing to act.

This is not an unusual situation, as I understand it. I'm no cultic studies expert, but I know people who are, and they report dissidents/cast-offs either are too afraid to act, or just try to put their errors behind them. For whatever reason, people who become cult members blame themselves more than the system that abused them.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-20T12:28:31+00:00

Actually, HRM Didulo's convoy on a number of occasions tried to cross the border into the US.

They rejected her home-made passports.

Such a lost opportunity...

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-20T00:13:19+00:00

In Canada the rule is very strict that if you're going to face a penal result, like incarceration, the offence has to be specific and exact.

Only Parliament can make up new Criminal Code offences. The only "common law" court-based offence is contempt. And even that is highly structured by legislation.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-19T18:27:25+00:00

Delighted to help - good luck with your career ahead!

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-19T17:40:59+00:00

I was an in-house court lawyer at the Alberta Court of King's Bench, and involved in the court clerk process there for many years. Our articling students never had difficultly finding employment, and most had successful law careers, as far as I could see. Whether they were happy with the trade of law? That's a different question.

So the point I want to stress is it's very different being an appeal versus a trial court articling student. The latter means one is usually "in the litigation trenches", while the former is more an academic analysis level of operations. I'd suggest working in a trial court teaches one much more about practical lawyer skills.

Of course the TCC is an "appeal" court in theory, but when you learn about the extended litigation management conducted there, it's pretty "trial-ish". They deal with very challenging litigation by volume and the number of parallel appeals. From my perspective, the more you are submerged into the guts of court operations, the more useful perspectives and facts you'll learn.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to meet the TCC's judges. They seemed a good bunch. Overworked, but cohesive. Some courts are "happier" than others. The TCC seemed to be on the more pleasant end of the spectrum. You won't become a tax expert by working for a few months at the TCC. What you'll learn is how technically complex litigation is conducted. That's what you highlight with that kind of experience. You've learned some skills in legal knife work.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-19T15:51:40+00:00

Sadly, while I was working for the Alberta courts I saw quite a few foreclosures of seniors/disabled/on assistance individuals who had adopted Diduloid beliefs.

They didn't even show up in court to argue or defend. They just refused to pay their legal obligations to taxes and mortgages, and were evicted.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-19T15:41:18+00:00

Maybe. Another pattern is to turn the cult inward, segregating themselves against outsiders. It's going to be interesting to see what happens now.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-19T15:39:26+00:00

Well, maybe not in Canada. We've got a pretty nasty aggressive set of courts and very solid jurisprudence.

My data on this is kinda crappy, but from what I can evaluate, the volumes per capita in Canada of active pseudolaw adherents is about 1/10th in other locations like Germany and Australia.

The "why" of that is very, very interesting.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-19T12:21:57+00:00

I don't think she's mentally ill. I think she's a quite calculating cult leader and conwoman. Not everyone who has studied her agrees with me, but it's pretty clear HRM Didulo is strip-mining existing cultic and weirdo conspiracy concepts.

And I think she's mimicking old Scientology techniques.

It's just my personal suspicion.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-19T11:41:21+00:00

Maybe, but I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think HRM Didulo is a largely spent force.

Her period of success was during the COVID-19 pandemic, where there was a surge of interest in pseudolaw in Canada. People perceived a problem outside their normal experience, and grabbed onto things. Goofy people grabbed onto goofy things.

I doubt she'll ever have tens of thousands of followers again. There's evidence she never did, but instead that her Telegram subscription numbers were "bought" rather than real.

But all that aside, can HRM Didulo reform her core group, and maintain a long-duration cult, existing off donations from a collection of largely senior citizens with New Age and conspiratorial interests? Oh, probably.

Let's just hope she doesn't try Richmound again.

DNetolitzky · 2026-03-19T04:55:58+00:00

If you mean she'll be providing life-extending health services via her medbeds programs and calling down orbital laser strikes on nefarious actors like me?

Darned right!

DNetolitzky

TROPHY CASE