Individual versus Public Rights?

The N.H. Supreme Court claims that a child has a "fundamental right" to an adequate education. By way of explanation the court claims: "The right to an adequate education mandated by the constitution is not based on the exclusive needs of a particular individual, but rather is a right held by the public to enforce the State's duty." [Claremont I, 138 N.H. at 192, 635 A.2d at 1381]

The court is not talking about an individual right, which the child may choose to exercise or not. Rather the court is claiming it is a "right held by the public" to enforce its "duty."

The difference between individual and "public" rights is significant. By way of illustration, let us pretend that the court were to claim there existed a "public" right to keep and bear arms. One might expect adequate training and a weapon to be provided by the State with the understanding that no choice is involved: individuals may not choose whether or not to keep and bear arms. They must: it is their duty to do so.

Whereas, with a individual right to keep and bear arms - individuals choose whether or not to keep and bear arms - at their own expense.

Individual rights are the only natural rights of man. There is no such thing as a "public right," separate from individual rights. There is no such entity as "the public." The term "the public" is vague and indefinite applied at random to a greater or lesser number of individuals, each of whom have their separate, individual rights, and none others. One can only protect individual rights, as the "public" has no rights.

Whatever could the court mean by a "fundamental right" which is "held by the public?" It is a mockery of our rights to suggest that the Supreme Court's claim is anything but fraudulent. The court is mandating duties with respect to education under the guise of fundamental rights.

Before 1950 there was no recognition of "fundamental rights." The 1951 edition of Black's Law dictionary carried no entry for "fundamental rights." However, their 1990 edition defines "fundamental rights" as "those rights which have their source, and are explicitly or implicitly guaranteed, in the Federal Constitution." This doesn't explain how the NH Court intuited the existence of such a right to be contained within the New Hampshire constitution. Perhaps a still later edition of Black's Law dictionary will explain this most recent invention of the courts. But that still won't explain how the NH Court "found" such a fundamental right in hidden in a constitutional article drafted in 1784.

The Claremont decision is a fabrication based on the personal biases of the court. Not only is there no support whatsoever in the NH Constitution or the historical records of our state to substantiate the people's consent to a State duty funding education, adequate or otherwise, but the evidence which exists indicates the exact opposite.

New Hampshire Politics

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