The History and Tradition of Protecting Parental Rights in the United States

FAIN: FEJ-309469-25

Mark David Hall
Regent University (Virginia Beach, VA 23464-5037)

In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the United States Supreme Court declared that there is an unenumerated but judicially enforceable constitutional right for parents to “direct the upbringing and education” of their children. The justices asserted that there is a long history of jurists and lawmakers respecting this right in the Anglo-American tradition, but they did not offer much evidence to support this claim. A few scholars have touched on this history of this right in America, but none have done so in a comprehensive manner. I propose to write a 45,000-word law review article providing a great deal of evidence to support these justices’ claim. I’ll pay special attention to the founders’ views on this subject because they created America’s constitutional order, the very order under which we still live.