The Romeike Case Proves that US Homeschoolers Cannot Trust “RUDs” to Protect our Rights Tomorrow the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to vote on ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Previous efforts to ratify this treaty were defeated, largely due to the opposition of American homeschooling families who were concerned that the CRPD’s “best interest of the child” standard would curtail their right to homeschool their children if their children were identified as having special needs. To counter the opposition of homeschoolers, certain Senators who favor the treaty have crafted Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations [RUDs] which purportedly will “cure” the problems present in the treaty. In a comprehensive 2001 study for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Congressional Research Service described RUDs: Reservations change U.S. obligations without necessarily changing the text, and they require the acceptance of the other party. Understandings are interpretive statements that clarify or elaborate provisions but do not alter them. Declarations are statements expressing the Senate’s position or opinion on matters relating to issues raised by the treaty rather than to specific provisions. A recent law review article from the University of Alabama correctly explained that recognized sources of international law—such as the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and the Restatement of the Law (Foreign Relations)—only recognize the validity of “reservations”. The practice of adding declarations and understandings is based on tradition alone and not on recognized sources of international law. It is undisputed that treaty language is at the pinnacle of human rights law. Treaties make the law. RUDs, at most, may modify the law. The point of this present article is simple. The United States has recently rejected the idea that homeschooling is a protected right under international human rights law despite very clear language in treaties. If treaty language (a superior source of law) isn’t respected to protect the rights of homeschooling parents, then there is no way that RUDs designed to protect our rights (an inferior source of law) will be respected. Article 26(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” The aspirational articles of the UDHR were translated into the binding provisions of the two core human rights treaties of our era—the ICCPR and the ICESCR. Article 18(4) of the ICCPR pledges that State Parties will “have respect for the liberty of parents…to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.” Article 13(3) of the ICESCR both repeats this theme, and expands upon it: “The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, which conform to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or approved by the State and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.” These treaty provisions are about as strongly in favor of parental rights as anyone could reasonably desire. But, the United States government rejected any duty to follow this language in the recent asylum case we pursued on behalf of the Romeike family. The US government—the Justice Department, the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court—all refused to follow these clear statements of human rights law. Instead, the Justice Department and the Sixth Circuit contended that ordinary German truancy statutes were controlling and trumped these broad international standards for protection of human rights. If pro-parent language in an actual treaty is treated with disdain by American courts, why in the world would anyone trust the weak substitute of language found in a RUD? Do we dare to submit our rights to homeschool to a collusion of the US government and the United Nations and be pacified by a second-rate source of legal “protection”? There is only one action that can assuredly stop the threat posed by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities—the treaty must be defeated.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 14:38:20 +0000