What this page is for
Clerks see the paper first. The job on a first pass is to notice whether a filing is ordinary pro se paper or a packet that uses the same scripts courts have already named: dual-entity names, UCC stamps, homemade bills of exchange, fee schedules, or liens aimed at court officers. UNC School of Government, Quick Guide to Sovereign Citizens (2013), was written for that audience.
This is not a determination that any filer “is” a sovereign citizen. Filers often deny the label. Courts look at the document. United States v. Benabe, 654 F.3d 753, 767 (7th Cir. 2011).
What to notice on intake
- Caption or signature using colons, thumbprints, “autograph,” red ink, or ALL-CAPS as a claimed separate entity. See phrases.
- “Without prejudice,” UCC 1-308, “accepted for value,” or “sui juris” on every page.
- A UCC-1, “common-law lien,” or fee schedule naming a judge, clerk, sheriff, or prosecutor as debtor. That is a different problem than a dense brief. See UCC liens.
- Thumb-drive, oversized binder, or serial re-filing of the same packet under new titles.
What not to do
- Do not debate the theory at the counter. Jurisdiction is not an offer.
- Do not treat a reservation stamp as a refusal to file if the document is otherwise acceptable under local rules.
- Do not assume a long pro se civil-rights complaint is the same pattern. Isolated phrases happen. Density and combination matter.
- Do not read a “None” score as clearance when the report shows an extraction warning.
When to escalate
Threats of liens against named officers, homemade “bills” tendered as payment, and packets that purport to create a parallel court are the items chambers usually wants flagged. Federal law addresses knowing false liens against certain officers. 18 U.S.C. § 1521. Local security and contempt practice is a judicial decision, not a clerk conclusion.
SovGuardAI is a document triage report: tactics, phrases, and court-rejection language from a fixed library. It is not a filing, not a certification, and not something to stamp on the docket. What the report contains.
How much weight the score carries
The score is an alert, not a measurement. It says a packet is worth a closer read; it does not grade how sovereign-citizen a filing is. The same document analyzed twice can land several points apart, which is why the report gives a tier rather than a precise figure. Treat High as “read this one carefully.” Do not quote the number in a docket entry or a referral.
Scanned and photographed filings
Counter scans and phone photographs go through OCR, and OCR sometimes captures only the header stamps and none of the body. When the report carries an extraction warning, the score describes only what could be read. A clean score on a document that did not extract is not a clean document. Re-scan and resubmit before relying on the result.