***********
And the people may be sovereign, but only over their own lives and their own property. If we do not protect the rights of minority groups, we do not really have “liberty and justice for all,” we have liberty and justice for the majority.

***********

Individual people are sovereign over individual lives and property. AND “we the people” as a self-governing population are the ones who decide everything including whether or not there would be equal rights for minority groups, and liberty and justice for all, and what that will mean from generation to generation.

I know it seems we’ve strayed from framing homeschool politics for the public but if you think about it, it’s the same thing as not agreeing on what the word “homeschooling” or “education” or Christian” means. When Dana says “rule by public opinion” she seems to mean an undesirable capitulation to pure mob rule, constant polling with no constitutional compass. When I say it, I mean all of our civic and governmental life — including media and education — does in fact represent what we the people have wrought. Like it or not.

this is so important for each of us to think about as individuals, and then for us to discuss and resolve as “homeschooling.”

The Constitution can adapt over time, but it isn’t meant to change with the tides, either. I’m with Jefferson on that one.

Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. – Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

That isn’t to say it cannot adapt over time. We can amend it. And Jefferson was actually for holding a Constitutional Convention once every generation. Which I’m not sure we need, but simply adapting how we read it does not protect the rights that the Constitution was designed to protect.

“I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” –Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791.

If we kept to that, we would not have the issues with education that we do right now. And government would likely be more responsive to the people, because it would be more local and closer to the people.

The fact that some will agree and some will disagree is not the same as the opinion of the court reflecting a certain group’s opinion. Not unless the court is actively polling, like politicians do. But we have a system in effect which tries to limit the immediate effect of popular opinion to try to maintain justice, even when the public is highly interested in a case. It isn’t mob rule.

If we went purely by public opinion, abortion likely never would have become legal, nor gay marriage/civil union in any state.

And I wanted to add this:

On the question of how closely her votes actually reflected American public opinion, we find that during her quarter-century on the Supreme Court, Justice O’Connor’s votes were consistent with public opinion 64 percent of the time, and inconsistent the remaining 36 percent of the time.

As Figure 1 shows, compared to the fourteen other justices who served during her Court tenure, O’Connor ranked near the top in terms of representing public attitudes. Only Justices White and Rehnquist more often agreed with poll majorities—at 77 percent and 67 percent, respectively.

Biskupic portrays O’Connor as socially astute, intellectually muscular and entirely deliberate in leading the court toward centrist positions: on abortion, permit but discourage; on church and state, acknowledge but do not endorse religion; on affirmative action, use race as a factor in admissions but not racial quotas.

Such centrist positions overwhelmingly track public opinion while infuriating the far-right factions who have thought the Supreme Court should be their prize since Reagan won in 1980. Biskupic shows, however, that such positions were not just political compromises but expressions of a kind of constitutional common law.

Other conservative justices before O’Connor had also adapted the Constitution’s original principles to new circumstances by articulating similar tests. O’Connor, as Biskupic portrays her, was not just a swing vote operating case by case but the author of constitutional standards that would govern future cases. . .

And on a related note, here’s something about civics education coming in 2009, that might interest some here:
“Our Courts”

**

You wrote: “CPS is supposed to respect removal as an absolute last option to protect a child from immediate danger because removal itself is an act of abuse.”

This is a fine example of the way one reading of the law can collide with another interpretation — in real life or in a courtroom.

I see an immediate and continuing threat to the children in the LDS compound and applaud their removal — knowing full well that will be traumatic, at least in the short term.

Others, including a TX court, disagree.

And now the TX Supreme Court will have its say.

The opinion of some part of the public will be reflected, no matter which way the court rules.

Nance