Hale v. Everett (1868)

The inalienable right of "the several towns, parishes, bodies corporate, or religious societies" to elect their own public teachers was the issue in Hale v. Everett in 1868. The court was asked to settle a dispute between various members of the First Unitarian Society of Christians in Dover. The disgruntled minority was opposing the decision of the majority to elect a particular teacher. The Court remarked:

And the constitution guarantees the political independence of towns no more explicitly or fully than it guarantees the ecclesiastical independence of parishes. This illustration is peculiarly satisfactory, because the towns of New Hampshire were parishes nearly two hundred years, and the independence of the parochial capacity, as it was in provincial custom and law, and as delineated in the constitution of the state, is the same, whether exercised by "towns, parishes, bodies corporate, or religious societies." Hale v. Everett (1868) 53 NH 9, pg. 250

Electing one's teachers and contracting with them is constitutionally recognized as an inalienable right. It is not something in which the State has authority to interfere.

In 1784 the understanding was that public teachers taught that which they saw fit to teach, also based upon their conscience. If the parents in the town or parish didn't like what a teacher taught, they could elect a new one. The State government had no right to interfere in this contractual arrangement. Art. 6 was written for the explicit purpose of guaranteeing the political independence of towns and parishes from State interference.

The rights of conscience are not only natural, essential, and inherent rights but are also unalienable, and not capable of being surrendered voluntarily or taken away or abridged by the government, because no equivalent can be given or received for them. Hale v. Everett

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