“If you walk out of that door, you will be held in contempt of court,” he warned her. “You will be held in jail until trial.”

With a security officer and a sheriff’s deputy waiting to take her into custody, Partin turned around and resumed her running argument with the judge. At one point she called Williams “a vessel of commerce” and demanded that the proceedings be conducted in accordance with the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs business transactions.

That approach is one of the hallmarks of the so-called sovereign citizen movement, a loosely organized network of people who insist they are not subject to most U.S. laws. That claim is based in part on the notion that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution created an inferior form of citizenship that subjected most Americans to commercial statutes rather than Constitutional law.

Williams was having none of it.

“This court does not recognize the legal gibberish you are putting forward,” the judge told Partin.

“My advice to you would be to be represented by an attorney. I believe it would be a grievous error for you to try to go forward with these legal theories that have no basis in law.”