ALBERTA JUDGE REBUKES FOLLOWER OF `PSEUDO LAW.'

Group based on Magna Carta like `a virus'

In an unusual ruling three months ago, an Alberta judge made it clear Jacquie Robinson was on thin ice.

If she continued to threaten the courts with her bizarre, “pseudo law” claims about the Magna Carta and treasonous judges and governments, the legal system would not sit idly by, promised Justice Robert Graesser of the Court of Queen's Bench.

As a first step, he banned the woman from continuing to represent a mother embroiled in a bitter child-custody dispute.

It seems Robinson — who likes to go by the pseudonym Jacquie Phoenix — was unmoved. She responded by sending additional hostile letters to court staff, likening them to war criminals and suggesting that they could be tried and face life in prison.

Meanwhile, some of her movement's thousands of followers have been peppering other police and government agencies in Canada and the U. K. with similar oddball claims and threats.

Now Graesser has issued a second ruling, one that's particularly topical as conspiracy theories like Qanon and false claims about the pandemic, vaccines and U.S. election fraud spread widely.

The judge warned generally about the perils of various “fakery” being broadcast over the Internet, where “there are no filters to distinguish between fact and fiction.”

Then he imposed fresh sanctions on Robinson, barring her from representing anyone in the province's legal system or sending correspondence to the courts claiming authority based on her strange Magna Carta theory.

The judge also suggested she may have broken criminal laws against intimidating justice officials, and threatened to cite her for contempt of court if she didn't heed his cautions.

“This may appear to be the use of a sledgehammer to crush an ant,” wrote Graesser. “I would instead use the analogy of an inoculation to stop a virus.”

“These schemes are nothing more than cons, led by people who rely and feed on the oft- quoted statement attributed to P.T. Barnum ( of circus fame): a sucker is born every minute,” the judge added. “(But) the Courts are not suckers. And the Courts will not be intimidated.”

Alberta's legal system, though, is not alone in being targeted.

The Magna Carta group's Facebook page, which claims 34,000 members, includes letters from various British and Canadian government entities responding to members' challenges.

One U. K. municipality says a follower's assertions did not allow the person to avoid paying property tax. Another voices disappointment that “you continue to write in an intemperate manner, specifically threatening to arrest me.”

Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman, who has long fought extremism online, said it's time law enforcement investigated what he called Robinson's “psychotic attacks” on the courts.

The danger is that someone acts on Robinson's rhetoric in a violent way, he said, as happened with a different brand of “sovereign law” proponent who murdered an Ottawa tax judge and two other people in 2007.

“You're threatening a judge with the gallows, and now you're threatening court clerks, arguing they're comparable to Nazi war criminals. And that's not OK,” Warman said. “The police need to step in to defend the integrity of the judicial system.”

Robinson, who's in the U.K. meeting with other followers of the movement, was unrepentant when reached Friday, calling the courts a “criminal corporation.”

“My notices are not threatening,” she told the National Post via text. “They state the Law and the penalty for breaking that Law.”

On her group's Facebook page Robinson warns that her “grand fannaly” (sic) is coming soon. “Greasser are you ready for your arrest?” she wrote about the judge. “We sure are.”

Robinson is a proponent of “Practical Lawful Dissent,” a convoluted theory that the court ruling describes simply as “nonsense.”

It revolves around the Magna Carta — the 13th-century accord between England's King John and noblemen — and specifically its article 61. That provision said a committee of barons could strip John of assets if he violated the agreement.

The section was removed a year later, in 1216, and Canada adopted its own, independent Constitution almost 40 years ago. Even in the U.K., the Magna Carta is a mostly historical document today, a great symbol of democracy whose specific content has been largely replaced over the centuries.

But 28 British lords invoked defunct article 61 in a failed, 2001 attempt to prevent the ratification of a European Union treaty. As a result, the movement claims, all governments and laws throughout the Commonwealth are now invalid.

The concept may sound too absurd to be taken seriously, but the Alberta woman has already done tangible damage, the judge notes. The mother Robinson represented had wanted greater access to her daughter. Now she's charged with abducting the girl to the U.S., and is wanted for failing to appear in court.

“After joining with Ms. Robinson and her group, (the mother) no longer has any access to her daughter,” the judge noted.

The movement has gained little traction elsewhere, either. One of the letters posted on its Facebook page is from the federal Justice Department, responding to a member's missives demanding that the Canadian military be made available to “protect the realm” against a treasonous regime.

The author politely rejects the request, noting that the Magna Carta is of no force or effect in Canada and the letters “reflect no legal process known to Canadian jurisprudence.”