Public servants serve the private sovereigns who founded constitutional, unincorporated government for the benefit of the People and are governed by consent.
Government is a public institution with public-servant employees in public capacity. The people who form governments are private people living in private capacity. All elected officials and employees of the public State are public servants—including peace officers.
Founding representative government automatically forms a Common Law trust: the People as beneficiaries, public servants as trustees with fiduciary duty. Private people must oversee that trust for the common good.
A sovereign nation’s government is an unincorporated body politic. With delegated power it may create subordinate governmental and non-governmental corporations for commerce. Living sovereign people stand in Common Law (Law of the Land); artificial persons stand in Admiralty/Maritime/commercial jurisdiction (Law of the Sea). Common Law mirrors Natural Law: protection of life is paramount. Legal-fiction commerce is an imaginary construct using artificial persons as transmitting utilities. Legality is not reality.
When a man or woman acts in the role of an artificial person, they become subservient to the State that registered it. The State grants revocable privileges and benefits to its persons; private men and women hold unalienable rights and property. Artificial persons and corporations are debtors by default—without creative human energy they can be bankrupted. That is why governments are incorporated and why debt-money replaces sovereign money issued debt-free.
When a nation surrenders power to create money without debt or interest, a toxic debt economy follows. Interest not created in the money supply compounds; new debt services old debt until collapse. Debt’s growth is unlimited; nature is not. Servicing debt extracts production past planetary limits.
Private people are seldom taught to uphold living Common Law jurisdiction and rights already existing before the State. They have a duty to oversee public servants; power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. To exercise authority over public servants—unincorporated or incorporated—requires Common Law standing.
Every man, woman, and community may uphold Common Law, decline consent to avoid harm, and protect community and Earth. A private man or woman can rebut presentments and hold servants to account through conditional acceptance.
Related: Your Public Trust, Community Powers.