now, why do you need an amendment like that, as proposed by far-right conservatives?
the answer is that there is no law of the sort.
fwiw, i would strongly support any movement in america to ratify the convention on the rights of the child. that''s long, long overdue.
You have a LIBERTY interest in your parental RELATIONSHIP with your children.
You've never been to any American law school.
deathtokoalas
while it is true that non-citizens can claim constitutional rights under certain scenarios where holes in the law appear, the jurisdiction of international law always take precedent in the case of a conflict. it's like state v federal law - they both apply, but one will take precedent depending on the scenario. it's not a rights discourse, it's a jurisdictional question. there's actually a very specialized form of international law that applies to migrants and that is what courts, in context, need to utilize. this is why the un declaration - which the united states has not ratified - is the actual basis of the law, in context - not this imaginary, right-wing fantasy of "parental rights".
regarding that aba post, it's just a baffling thing to see, really. arguing that roe v wade upholds parental rights, for example, is borderline comical. i initially said that every single one of those cases upholds the rights of the children and not the parents (the book is even about the rights of the child, not about parental rights), but roughly half of them don't have anything to do with a meaningful concept of parental rights at all.
it is true that the court will generally choose to avoid interfering as much as possible, but that's not about parents, that's just a basic speech issue. not one of those cases erected any sort of enforceable precedent regarding any kind of coherent concept of parental rights at all.
it doesn't exist; it's a fantasy on the far right.
i have a sociology of law degree from a canadian university, and i've been clear that the feeling is mutual - you clearly don't understand what you're posting or talking about, remotely. you're just regurgitating far right republican talking points. that should be obvious to anybody that can read.
anyways, you can't prove a negative, so i have a hard case to make in proving to you that parental rights don't exist in any concept of the law. that's why i needed you to post the links for me, to see what you're citing; i can debunk something if you post it, but i've made a sweeping statement, and it's almost impossible to demonstrate rigorously. i insist that it's true, though. the articles i posted - where pro parental rights advocates on the far right admit that the law they want doesn't exist - is about as good as i can do. if such a positive rights law existed, they wouldn't insist on their activism, or argue for an amendment. and, if meaningful case law existed, you'd be able to find it for me. you can't because it's not out there...
L.W. Paradis
I did post it. It was apparently shadowed, as links usually are. You can easily find it by using a SEARCH engine, plugging in "ABA," and an excerpt of the verbatim quote I provided.
Oh I get it now.
You are not a lawyer, and you can't even understand case blurbs. Great. STOP spreading misinformation. Enough is enough. If you don't like the right wing, WHY DO YOU IMITATE THEM, to the hilt? That is Trumpian. We're supposed to be rid of all that in a matter of hours, and it won't be soon enough.
Meyer v. Nebraska; Pierce v. Society of Sisters; Troxel v. Granville; Stanley v. Illinois; Lassiter v. Dept. Of Social Services; Santosky v. Kramer -- all six are US Supreme Court cases.
At the federal appellate level:
"Duchesne v. Sugarman, 566 F.2d 817, 825 (2d Cir. 1977). The Second Circuit held '[T]he right of the family to remain together without the coercive interference of the awesome power of the state . . .encompasses the reciprocal rights of both parent and child.” The court explained that children have the constitutional right to avoid dislocat[ion] from the emotional attachments that derive from the intimacy of daily association with the parent.'"
None of this is "obscure" to an actual lawyer. Or even to reasonably knowledgeable lay people. Suppose your teen wants to go live with a millionaire who can send them to art school and give them violin lessons? Can they get a new, rich parent? It is in their "best interests," no? Suppose the unmarried mother of a toddler dies? Will the child be adopted out, with no notice to the father or attempt to reach him? Laughable
What does this say?
Lassiter v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 452 U.S. 18 (1981). The Court held parents have a due process right to a fundamentally fair procedure that may require the appointment of counsel.
Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982). The Court declared unconstitutional a New York statute that authorized termination of parental rights based on a preponderance of the evidence. Santosky is the first Supreme Court case to hold that even after parents are found unfit in a contested court proceeding, they retain constitutionally protected parental rights.
How about this?
"Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000). The Court declared unconstitutional a Washington statute that authorized judges to order parents to permit more visitation between children and their grandparents than the parents desired."
Non-citizens on American soil have constitutional rights wherever the law speaks of "persons," without specifying "citizens." (That's a right-wing talking point?)
Why did you assert you had a law degree? You have a sociology degree. That doesn't let you practice law.
deathtokoalas
ok, i signed in and out and realized my links aren't appearing. i asked you to tell me if you could see my links or not and the fact that you didn't indicates that you're really not interested in learning why you're wrong, here. but, before this continues, i need to find a way to get my sources posted and correct the discourse as it exists, so people reading this understand why you're wrong. what i did worked previously, but it got filtered this time. so, let me experiment with ways to get this out, first. i'm going to try to post a link in the next comment, sign out, etc, until it works. and, we'll get back to this when i can figure out how to post sources.
(...)
wow, the filters have really become very thick. it won't even let you post DOT instead of. ok. ummm...
the first site was the "Parental Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution" wikipedia site. can i even post this post or will it filter out the word "wikipedia"? this is why i stopped posting to youtube, the censorship is just outrageous. you can't have a discourse here anymore, it's a waste of time.
(...)
so, i was able to add a reference to the first link. the second link i tried to post was an article written in the 90s from a right-wing perspective, lamenting the fact that parental rights do not exist in law and arguing for legislation to remedy the problem. they point to "natural law" as the source for parental rights, a vague concept that i'd reject on it's face as a backdoor for ecclesiastical law. and, that's really what they've got, here - ecclesiastical law. my takeaway from the article is that they're admitting that parents have no rights under the law...
you can find that link by searching for ""why parental rights laws are necessary"" and going to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ascd) link. i'll try to edit that in place, as well.
(...)
ok, i was able to update the second link as well. the discourse is now readable. i'll have to go back and fix other threads, too, now that i know that trick doesn't work anymore. please take the time to read those two articles. now, i will need to address your points, but i'll start by pointing out that a sociology of law degree is considered an undergraduate law degree. further, i didn't tell you i was a practicing lawyer, or that i went to law school, what i told you was that i have a law degree - and that is true. i also have undergraduate degrees in mathematics and computer science. but, i'll go back to debunking you, now.
so, i read what you posted and, again, nothing you've posted says anything about the rights of parents. what every single thing that you've posted talks about is the rights of children. now, if you're sneaky, you can spin a ruling about the rights of children around to be about the rights of parents, but it doesn't make it enforceable precedent - and there is no enforceable precedent about the rights of parents in anything you've posted at all, despite your claims that there is.
and, yes, your teen has the right to go live with a millionaire if it wants, and you have no legal say in the matter.
let's take a step back, here...
what are the rights of children? they're listed in the declaration, which is the correct body of law to cite for migrants, not american legal jurisprudence. it's not a question of whether the kids are "covered" under the constitution like it's an insurance plan (americans love their insurance, i guess) but a question of a conflict of law, and what the right law to apply in context is. and, you're just flat out wrong. but, let's put that aside because the rights of children should be universal, anyways. so, is it in the child's interests to be separated from their parents? usually not, no. insisting that the legal question is strictly related to the interests of the child - and it is - doesn't give the state a freehand to arbitrarily do what it wants. this is the point you're not understanding - when the court decides that families shouldn't be broken up arbitrarily, it's doing so with the intent to uphold the rights of the child, not the rights of the parent, even if it uses right-wing language that stems from ecclesiastical/natural law about families and whatnot. one of those rights of the child is the idea that they shouldn't be taken away from their parents, unless some other right overpowers it.
not opposing family separation a priori doesn't mean supporting it as a general rule, it means realizing that it's a necessary useful tool to uphold the rights of the child, when required to do so - and that parents have little, if any, legal say in the matter.
so, that's what you're seeing in these cases you've posted:
1) some of them are just about free speech or free association. the idea that the state can't mandate your kids to spend time with their grandparents goes well beyond some imaginary idea of parental rights. you can't force people to hang out with each other, that's a freedom of association type concern, not a parental rights concern.
2) some of them are about the rights of the child to not be separated from their family. that is the only legal issue at hand, here.
3) some of them (like roe v wade) aren't relevant in context at all.
the aba should take that page down, it's misleading.
i'm not going to question this person's credentials, but i will point to them as an example of why credentials are less important than some people claim they are. this person is not a good lawyer and has likely lost most of the cases they've represented. and, there's lots of fully credentialed lawyers out there that couldn't win a case in clown court. as a self-represented litigant with an undergraduate degree in law, i've defeated practicing lawyers on more than one occasion. be careful with these people - they're professional liars.
and, i'd suggest googling the santosky case, which is about the state's burden of proof in child separation cases, not about parental rights. what evidence does the state need to show before it places a child in custody? that's an important legal question, certainly, if you're concerned about the wellbeing of the child. but, it says nothing at all about the rights of parents.
if you want me to continue responding, what i need you to do is point me to the source of positive, manmade law that you're deriving these imaginary parental rights from. case law doesn't erect rights, even if judges use politicized language from time to time, so case law cannot be the source of a right. and natural law is make believe nonsense. so, are you citing a united nations declaration? a specific clause in the constitution? the bible? what is the source of your claimed right, here? until you can point me to this, you haven't proven your point, you've just posted confused nonsense.
if you google "The Origin of Parental Rights - Penn State Law eLibrary" (
https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/fac_works/215/) you should find an article by d. purvis at the penn state law elibrary that is quite illuminating and gets to the point about the natural law conception of parental rights being derived from concepts of property rights, and even explains how this imaginary conception of parental rights has changed along with how we understand property. can you present me with an argument that frames the situation differently, and presents some other source of parental rights as a manmade concept?
but, let's have a moment of reflection, here - what you're calling "parental rights", when separated from the property rights genealogy, are really better called "parental responsibilities", aren't they? and, so, in addition to being fundamentally rooted in the rights of the child, and/or clarifying the proper role of evidence in child custody proceedings, the thing that these cases you're citing is really upholding is the obligations of parents, isn't it?
L.W. Paradis
OKAY, FOLKS. This is the result of a modern "education." Friends don't let friends think twisted.
This one thinks a UN charter is the law in the US, and the formindable Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution (the third section of which can be used to prevent anyone fomenting insurrection from ever holding federal office again) is not. And that Wikipedia, not the Supreme Court and the federal courts is American law.
Only a very special person can think this.
So -- you're going to quote some moron who is trying to rile up a mob as your "proof?" No. You need SUPREME COURT precedent. Supreme Court precedent IS constitutional law.
People lie about the Constitution all the time. They make money doing it, too. I've heard the Bill of Rights blamed for our "inability" to jail pedophiles. This was in the previous century, long before Orange Caligula came on the political scene.
What does this say?
Lassiter v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 452 U.S. 18 (1981). The Court held parents have a due process right to a fundamentally fair procedure that may require the appointment of counsel.
Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982). The Court declared unconstitutional a New York statute that authorized termination of parental rights based on a preponderance of the evidence. Santosky is the first Supreme Court case to hold that even after parents are found unfit in a contested court proceeding, they retain constitutionally protected parental rights.
deathtokoalas
well, everybody has the right to due process and the right to counsel, too. that has nothing to do with parental rights. but, i see you're trying to change the topic, because you can't answer the question. i'll wait. again - what i want is the source of your imaginary parental rights in positive legislative law, not some politicized judicial rulings.
again, though - i'd advise googling and actually reading lassiter. the case is about a woman that was on trial for murdering one of her other children via neglect, and whether or not the state provided due process in taking away the one she didn't kill. not only is due process a procedural question that everybody needs access to, but the precise case at hand is....just read it. and, it demonstrates the point - this is the best that conservative activists can do, on this point.
there's really no meaningful canon of applicable law, here. you'd do well to ratify the convention and put it in force.
i'll have to refresh to see if there are recent posts, but, as an aside, my confidence that i'm right here stems not from any specific understanding of american case law (in application, i studied mostly canadian constitutional and legislative law, with a focus on indigenous law, and some dabbling in international law), but because i took a broader approach to these kind of foundational questions. i mean, your critique is that i'm not a lawyer, but what are we debating, here? we're arguing whether an unwritten constitutional principle actually exists or not. you claim it's in the case law, and i claim it's just only in the minds of conservatives - like a lot of things are, legally. so, this is a debate that requires a deeper grounding in the historical basis of the law, which makes a degree in the sociology of law arguably a more appropriate academic background than a certification from the bar.
i studied the intersection of philosophy & law, which is what we need here. you just studied precedent, without the context required to really understand it. and, that's exactly what we're seeing in the discourse.
L.W. Paradis
Does the fact that the Equal Rights Amendment was never adopted mean women lack rights under the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 14th Amendments?
A "parental rights amendment" is a stunt. In the US, parents can even homeschool and refuse vaccination for their kids, and raise them in pretty much any religion. I suppose snake handlers might have to watch out, but Amish certainly don't, despite their horrendous record in raising happy, thriving children.
I don't have a right to due process if a private employer lays me off due to the pandemic. That's a business decision. I don't have a due process right to counsel in a civil case. I have a right to HIRE a lawyer if I can pay for one.
The cases I cited explain the SCOPE of these rights in light of the fact that parents have a constitutionally protected LIBERTY interest in parenting their children, the latter having been articulated in cases that are a century old. And no, your teenager cannot go get adopted by a millionaire without parental consent. Idiocy.
deathtokoalas
but, if you look at the precedents for homeschooling and vaccination, they explicitly reject the argument that parents have rights over their children, and instead uphold the separation of church and state. when secularists have tried to make the same argument, they've failed. again - the court might use the language of the right in it's rulings, but if you look at them carefully and compare them to other rulings, it's clear that these cases are not about the rights of parents, but rather about the rights of people to adhere to their religions without state intervention. and, i might dissent somewhat, but i'll at least accept the point, especially in the united states.
the era issue is actually relevant in context, because if you actually read the anthony case, the ruling is that there was never any law erected to deny women from voting - it was merely a cultural convention that came from ecclesiastical law. so, the amendments to the constitution that followed were technically unnecessary, but added to remind people that women always had the right to vote, in the first place. what followed later was a general liberalization of voting rights that was again mostly about property (and taxation). the precedent here aligns with my argument, not yours; the ecclesiastical conventions, both patriarchal in source, have little worth in the actual legal system, whether brought in to uphold the dominance of parents or the submission of women.
there was a post there where i acknowledged that americans, unlike everybody else in the developed world, don't have the absolute right to counsel in a criminal case, which is what the case you cited was. canadians certainly have the absolute right to state-appointed counsel (if they're deemed unable to afford it) in a criminal case. it seems to have been removed, likely due to the tone, but is likely in your email. this is why i don't post to youtube anymore. i apologized for that mistake. i also suggested that you would really do yourself some good, as a country, if you were to ratify and implement the declaration on the rights of the child.
now, you claim a teenager can't go get adopted without consent, but you're wrong.
1) the millionaire can petition the court for custody, and it's up to the court to make the choice.
2) the child has agency in context.
3) ultimately, a teenager will do what it wants, not what it's told.
ultimately, what do you suggest the court does if a teenager runs away and refuses to go home? do you think they should be arrested and put under house arrest? no court will do that.
L.W. Paradis
"Due process" exists for one reason only: to protect a person from being deprived of their SUBSTANTIVE rights. As it turns out, any notion that parents "need" a constitutional amendment to enshrine their (otherwise-nonexistent) rights is an ULTRA RIGHT WING talking point! The notion that the Constitution is to be treated like code law or something (or that the UN controls us) are likewise ultra right wing notions. Oh the irony. You will now be blocked.
Not terribly sorry to see empire breaking down. Because that's what you are a symptom of. These conversations never take place in my other languages, only in English. Figures. Keep it up.
deathtokoalas
lol. i seem to have broke his brain. these responses are just incoherent...
listen, it's clear enough what the truth is - he can't cite a source of positive law for "parental rights" because there isn't one, it's just a part of this package of make believe legal ideas that conservatives like to float around to uphold religious & patriarchal institutions like the family. you'd might as well cite the 5th commandment, 'cause that's all you've really got.
the leftwing position here is that children are autonomous individuals that have inalienable rights and parents do not, they only have responsibilities to uphold the rights of their children. this may or may not extend to ratifying the convention and implementing it, something i support as long overdue. the role of the courts is strictly to uphold the rights of the child.
the rightwing position is that parents have rights that stem from ecclesiastical law (although they might cite natural law via some dodgy mechanism of case law that doesn't add up) and feudal concepts of property rights. the rights of children, insofar as they exist, are only to be interpreted relative to the rights of their parents, within the religious/patriarchal framework of the family and the religious community around it. the role of the courts is strictly to enforce the rights of the parents.
in practice, the former position exists more or less uniquely in the law, even if the language of the latter position is sometimes adopted to uphold the substance of the former. so, we may sometimes speak of the rights of parents in ways that really reduce to their responsibilities. you'd have to ask the judges why they do that - i think they shouldn't.