Parents, Government, and Children: Authority over Education in a Pluralist Liberal Democracy

The relationship between private and state power in a pluralist liberal democracy raises complex issues that this article explores, focusing on control over children’s education. While rights are the default vocabulary of liberal theory and practice, they do not suffice to characterize either the claims of children or the responsibilities of adults. While many theorists have followed Joel Feinberg in proposing that children have the right to an “open future,” there are good reasons to doubt that they do. Within limits, parents’ convictions appropriately enter into the content of their children’s education and instruction, and the integrity of civil associations supplements (without supplanting) the discourse of individual rights. John Stuart Mill points toward a triadic understanding of educational authority that coordinates three sets of interests—the developmental interests of children, the civil interests of the state, and the expressive interests of parents. To explicate expressive interests, the Article lays out a theory of “expressive liberty”—the value of being able to live in a manner consistent with our deepest understanding of what gives meaning and value to our lives. While raising children is an important aspect of parents’ expressive liberty, it is limited by the separateness of each child’s existence, the fact of human diversity, and the requisites of civil order. Nonetheless, in societies characterized by a deep diversity of moral and religious views, the requirements of both practicality and legitimacy point toward a social order that offers maximum feasible scope for different ways of life to find expression in the choices of parents and civil associations. The Article explores this thesis with particular reference to U.S. history and law.