Yick-Wo-v-Hopkins

Movement claim: Yick Wo v. Hopkins establishes that 'sovereignty itself is not subject to law' and that government compulsion is 'the essence of slavery' — the dicta is real but the case is a landmark Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection holding that affirms judicial review of government action against individuals

Sovereign-citizen and tax-protest literature regularly quote Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886), for two famous passages: 'sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law' and 'the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.' The movement reading: SCOTUS acknowledged that sovereignty operates outside law and that statutory compulsion of citizens is slavery — therefore the People retain the only legitimate sovereignty and statutory rule is enslavement. Both quotes exist verbatim in the opinion. They are real and powerful. The dicta is doing real work, but it is doing the opposite of what the movement reading requires. Yick Wo is a landmark Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection case: Chinese-immigrant laundry operator Yick Wo had complied with all fire and health requirements for 22 years; the San Francisco Board of Supervisors denied him and 200+ Chinese applicants the permits the ordinance required, while granting them to non-Chinese applicants on identical facts. The Court reversed Yick Wo's conviction, holding that a facially neutral ordinance applied with a discriminatory hand violates equal protection. The sovereignty/slavery passages are rhetorical scaffolding for an anti-discrimination holding that AFFIRMS judicial review of government action against individual citizens — exactly the structure the movement claims operative law denies. Yick Wo is constitutional foundation for the doctrine that government must answer in court for its treatment of individuals. The movement reading extracts the rhetoric and inverts the operative point. Partially supported: the dicta is real and the passages are not fabricated, but the use the movement makes of them is the opposite of what the case stands for.