On Aug 3, 2009, at 9:50 AM, Vance R. Koven wrote:
[snip]
After all, a parent's glowering is useless without at least the
implied credible threat of direct action if diplomacy fails.
This is a highly contestable statement at least to the extent it
implies the necessity of corporal punishment with respect to many if
not most children. It may well be true that with some children if you
spare the rod you spoil the child (even if you aren't an old testament
adherent the principle may be sound), but with some if you use the rod
you teach violence, and with others you never ever need corporal
punishment. Some restraint of the child's freedom may be necessary at
times, but even that is not needed with at least some children. And
for others corporal punishment will not ever do any good.
As to my prior point -- even if parental control was premised on
religious teachings (and is for many people still), that hardly makes
the case that the constitutional right of parents to control their
children's upbringing is based in freedom of religion. Again, do you
mean to suggest that atheists have no rights to control their kids?
That statutes relating to age of emancipation are constitutionally
valid only as to religious adherents? That Jewish kids are
emancipated at age 14?
Or are the statutes not unconstitutional for another reason? Surely
parental rights derive at least in part from IXth Amendment, even if
you don't like the right of privacy as a basis. (I submit that that
is a terminology problem here -- the parental rights existed and exist
under every theory of constitutional interpretation since the adoption
of it, even if the term "privacy" is of "recent" vintage.
Steve
--
Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017
Associate Director, Institute of Intellectual Property and Social
Justice http://iipsj.org
Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567
http://iipsj.com/SDJ/
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the
certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
-- Vaclav Havel.
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