Michael Farris:
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is a threat that longtime homeschoolers know well. If ratified by the United States Senate, it would ban spanking in our country. Homeschooling would no longer be governed by state law, but by a 10-member committee of child welfare “experts” in Geneva.

Aware of this threat, homeschoolers and other parental rights advocates have been ready for battle for some time. In fact, the reason that the treaty was never sent from the State Department to the Senate after President Bill Clinton signed it in 1995 was that it faced certain defeat. As a friend of traditional families, President George W. Bush has simply not moved it at all.

However, a new challenge both to American families and to our constitutional republic has been launched by the federal judiciary. Under a legal doctrine sanctioned by the United States Supreme Court, the federal courts have begun to treat unratified treaties such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as binding on the United States. The legal doctrine is called “customary international law,” and its advocates claim that it is derived from the law of nations, a legal concept that the Founders recognized and mention in the Constitution.

This week on Home School Heartbeat, we’re going to look at the Supreme Court and how it’s attempting to use customary international law to subvert constitutional principle, and how the application of the unratified Convention on the Rights of the Child would impact American law. I’m Mike Farris.