In a unanimous decision earlier today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the general welfare clause … Article 1, Section 8 … of the constitution guarantees an adequate national defense. The Supreme Court added that, while “in the first instance it is up to Congress to define the parameters of an adequate national defense, the scope of the duty clearly encompasses defending the Ukraine from Putin.” President Biden, in response, announced the immediate deployment of an unspecified number of troops to the Ukraine.
Oh … I know what you are thinking: You cannot fool me. This is ridiculous. There is no “right to an adequate national defense” in the constitution. Judges have no business interfering in foreign policy.
YUP … but everything in italics applies equally to the New Hew Hampshire Supreme Court’s education funding decisions … yet “the system,” INCLUDING the NHGOP, simply goes along with the court.
And … I know some of you die-hard Red-team’rs are thinking: No comparison. None at all. Our State Constitution says “shall be the duty.” The federal constitution doesn’t say anything about any duty.
Sorry (not really) … but you don’t have any idea what you are talking about. When the phrase “common defense” within Section 1, Article 8 the federal constitution is READ IN CONTEXT … the militia clauses, the Commander-in-Chief clause, AND HISTORY … it is clear that the federal constitution assumes that we would have an army and navy. Likewise the State Constitution assumes that there would be … more accurately continue to be … a system of public schooling. There is NOTHING in either constitution, nor in the historical record, that suggests that either constitution contemplated the judiciary having any role at all in either the national defense or public education.
In other words, claiming that the New Hampshire Constitution contains a judicially enforceable right to a “fully funded” “adequate education” is the equivalent of claiming that the federal constitution contains a judicially enforceable right to an “adequate national defense.”
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This will likely be the last … for a bit … in my series on the ongoing ConVal education funding trial. You can find prior posts here:
HEY PATHETIC NHGOP … CONVAL IS AN ACTUAL ATTACK ON OUR DEMOCRACY … AND YOU ARE AWOL.
