David Wynn Miller (1948/1949–2018), also styled :David-Wynn: Miller, was an American pseudolegal theorist, self-proclaimed judge and leader of a tax protester group within the sovereign citizen movement.Kevin Murphy, "La Crosse dentist goes on trial for tax fraud". La Crosse Tribune (La Crosse, Wisconsin), August 14, 2007. Originally a tool and die welder, Miller is best known as the creator of "Quantum Grammar", a version of the English language to be used by people involved in judicial proceedings. He asserted that this constructed language, which is purportedly based on mathematics and includes unorthodox grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax, constitutes the only "correct" form of communication in legal processes. People seeking remedy with Miller's syntax in court have been unsuccessful. His language is incomprehensible to most, and the filings that use it are routinely rejected by courts as gibberish. Since Miller's death, "Quantum Grammar" has seen continued usage by other people within the sovereign citizen movement.
Claimed background
Miller lived in Ohio before moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He claimed that at the age of 25, he died for half an hour when an inept surgeon removed both his kidneys and adrenal glands. His heart restarted spontaneously while outside his body during autopsy. Following this, he said his IQ became 200, his endorphin levels were six times normal, and he stopped aging.
Miller's activism stemmed from his own frustrating experience with the legal system. During the 1980s, he went through a divorce proceeding and appeared pro se in numerous child custody hearings (67, according to his website), losing every time. Having become convinced that the judiciary was rigged and governed by linguistic maneuvering and that the English language had been deliberately modified to enslave the people, he decided to override the system by developing his own theory of language to be used as a form of legalese.
Work and views Constructed language and linguistic theories Miller claimed to have created his language in 1988 by discovering "the mathematical interface in the truth that certifies all 5,000 languages, frontwards and backwards." According to Miller, the use of his language guaranteed success in court cases and it could also be used to eliminate taxes and disbar judges. In the following years, he promoted it through various seminars, books and videos.
Miller's constructed language, known in full as "CORRECT-SENTENCE-STRUCTURE-COMMUNICATION-PARSE-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR" (shortened as "C.-S.-S.-C.-P.-S.-G."), has also been variously called, with or without capital letters, "PARSE-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR", "CORRECT-LANGUAGE", "QUANTUM-LANGUAGE-PARSE-SYNTAX-GRAMMAR", "Quantum language", "Truth Language" "Syntax Language", "In the Truth", "Syntax sentencing" or "QUANTUM-MATH-COMMUNICATIONS". The name "Quantum Grammar" eventually stuck and became commonly used in the sovereign citizen movement.
Miller's design involves sentences that begin with prepositional phrases, using the word For. It is easily recognizable, among other traits, by the constant and repetitive use of the phrases "for the" and "with the" and by the absence of action verbs, except in gerund form. Users of the dialect reject the use of adjectives, adverbs and pronouns. The language also has an abundance of punctuation. For example:
Miller's ideas about language are notably rooted in the idea that only nouns have legal meaning and that their meanings are static and absolute. This had led Miller to arbitrarily recast words' definitions and roles according to his own understanding and convenience. Among the idiosyncratic rules of the language he created, sentences must contain at least 13 words and use more nouns than verbs, sentences used in court filings must start with prepositional phrases, a preposition is needed to certify a noun, and a word that starts with a vowel followed by two consonants means "no contract" and will therefore void any document.
Although the language he pioneered is incomprehensible to most people, Miller asserted that it can end all forms of misunderstanding and conflict and called mainstream English language a "fiction". Miller has also been described as leading a "linguistic cult".
After creating his language, Miller styled his name as "David-Wynn: Miller" or ":David-Wynn: Miller", claiming that the punctuation marks are hieroglyphs that make him "life" and that without them his name is two adjectives and a pronoun. He verbally said his name "David hyphen Wynn full colon Miller".
In a variation of the strawman theory, Miller claimed that the addition of hyphens and colons to a person's name makes the person a "prepositional phrase". The person is thus identified as a "fact" existing in the "now-time-dimension"; the names as written in this way are distinguished from the names listed at birth and in "all-caps" (as on a birth certificate), which identify the legal estate and not the living being in fact. Signing up to get a "birth certificate" allegedly creates a taxable Person (Corporation) (e.g., DAVID WYNN MILLER as opposed to :David-Wynn: Miller.). Therefore, Miller asserted that, by adding punctuation to their names and by using his language in their tax return forms, people could avoid paying taxes. No judge has ever accepted this argument, and in fact many individuals who have attempted to use it have ended up in jail.
Canadian judge John D. Rooke, who compiled various examples of pseudolaw in his 2012 Meads v. Meads decision, commented that Miller's "bizarre form of 'legal grammar is "not merely incomprehensible in Canada, but equally so in any other jurisdiction" and that reading documents written in Miller's language may give the impression that their author is "suffering from mental or cognitive disturbance".
Donald J. Netolitzky, writing for the Alberta Law Review, commented that "Documents written in Millerese are a challenge to interpret" and that "video recordings of Miller's seminars defy both description and credulity". David J. Peterson, a language creator, observed that Miller's ideas demonstrate "confusion about the nature of language in general... and of the English language specifically", notably because there is no such thing as "context-independent meaning — in life or in language".
Other views
Miller has used and may have originated a scheme found in Organised Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments that cites the Universal Postal Union as supranational authority. The argument is that affixing a stamp to a piece of paper changes the authority under which it is governed. He assumed the title "postmaster" and called his followers the adherents of the "Universal Postal System".
Miller claimed that he had a billion followers and that Bill Clinton and the entire Supreme Court of the United States were his students.Allen, Nick (January 10, 2011). Gabrielle Giffords shooting: Jared Loughner may have been influenced by occult. The Telegraph He also claimed to have "turned Hawaii into a verb", thus becoming "King of Hawaii". Like many sovereign citizens, Miller asserted that the world is secretly governed by maritime law; his own explanation for this situation was that "Earth is a vessel in a sea of space".
Besides his pseudolegal ideas, Miller was a proponent of the 2012 phenomenon and also adhered to a wide variety of conspiracy theories, some related to 9/11. He claimed that Mastercard gained control of the US economy on September 17, 1999 and that the steel beams and all the plastic items in the World Trade Center buildings were plastic explosives which created an electromagnetic pulse as a coverup for a $12 trillion electronic heist committed during 9/11. Through his website, Miller advocated the use of alternative "health products" and promoted theories regarding chemtrails or UFOs, as well as vaccine misinformation.
Activism
Besides promoting his language, Miller was active as the leader of a group of tax protesters. He and his followers espoused the views that income taxes were illegitimate and that the United States' federal courts did not have jurisdiction over them because they were sovereign unto themselves. While their views were not distinguishable from those of other sovereign citizen groups, the use of Miller's language made them stand apart.
The Los Angeles Times called Miller a "far-right activist".Quinones, Sam and Scott Kraft (January 10, 2011). Jared Loughner charged in Tucson shooting rampage. Los Angeles Times The Anti-Defamation League described Miller as "one of the most unusual of the 'common law gurus' who travel the country holding seminars and offering legal advice. Miller has created his own unique version of English grammar, one that even many sovereign citizens find hard to understand or accept."Anti-Defamation League (2005). Sovereign Citizen Movement. via adl.com
Despite the unusual nature of his theories, Miller became popular as a "guru" within the sovereign citizen movement, which he helped expand to other English-speaking countries. Besides the United States, Miller was active in Canada, and later in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where he would disrupt court proceedings, file unintelligible documents, and host paid seminars to explain his theories and advertise the use of his language. He also called himself a "Plenipotentiary-Judge" of the "Unity States of the World".
Various defendants attempted to use Miller's language or ideas in courts. Not being a licensed lawyer, Miller would file complaints on behalf of his clients with himself as a co-plaintiff, or appear in court as an "agent" or as a McKenzie friend. There is no evidence that the use of his language has ever been helpful in legal proceedings. In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Miller was one of the few sovereign citizen "gurus" who had "clients in four different countries currently serving prison sentences". Courts would typically dismiss Miller's documents as "completely unintelligible" or "incomprehensible" and sometimes declare him a vexatious litigant.
In 2001 he was banned from entry into Canada for two years after a number of judges had jailed people for contempt of court after they had attempted to use his "truth language" to defend against tax evasion charges. In 2011, an Australian barrister, who had been paid by his clients to attend one of Miller's seminars, described Miller's teachings as "the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life."
On December 21, 2012 (the predicted end of the world according to the Mayan prophecy), Miller and some of his associates created a "Federal Postal court" (styled "US :FEDERAL-POSTALCOURT"), with Miller as Judge, and used it to release default "judgements". Miller claimed that his "court" (which is unrelated to the civil court operated by the United States Postal Service) had been originally opened in 1775 by Benjamin Franklin, but closed a year later with the onset of the Revolutionary War. Miller therefore purported that he had reopened Franklin's court. This "court" had no courthouse or fixed location, but Miller claimed that it had transitory jurisdiction with a presence wherever the federal postal eagle symbol may be.