Burke v. Broadlands Dept of Education

Appellant

Pax Americana

Filed

July 17, 2021

Decided

Oct. 5, 2021

The case

The appellant's argument, then every party's submission, oldest first. Submissions are advisory: the justices read them, they do not count as votes.

1. Progressive Reform Support · 15 Aug 2026, 4:19 p.m.

   Progressive Reform supports the appeal in Burke v. Broadlands Department of Education because the current law raises serious concerns under Article XIV of the Constitution of Broadlands. Article XIV states, “No person under the jurisdiction of Broadlands shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” This article establishes fundamental rights that the government must respect when creating and enforcing laws. In our view, compulsory higher education combined with mandatory tuition places an unreasonable burden on the liberty and property of Broadlands' citizens and therefore conflicts with the protections guaranteed by Article XIV.
   
   The right to liberty is particularly important in this case. Liberty means that citizens should have the ability to make important decisions about their own lives without unnecessary government interference. The current law removes that choice by requiring every citizen to attend higher education until the age of 25. Citizens are not simply being encouraged to pursue education; they are legally required to dedicate years of their lives to it. While the government may have legitimate reasons for promoting education, those goals should not automatically override the individual liberty protected by Article XIV. The government must have a sufficient justification for imposing such a significant restriction on the freedom of its citizens.
   
   The right to property under Article XIV is also directly affected by the current law. Tuition requires citizens to surrender a portion of their personal financial resources in order to comply with a government requirement. Citizens who choose to attend university voluntarily may reasonably be expected to accept the financial costs associated with that choice. However, the circumstances are fundamentally different when the government itself makes attendance compulsory. A citizen should not be forced to give up their property simply because the government has decided that they must participate in higher education. Requiring citizens to attend while also requiring them to pay tuition effectively places a financial condition on their ability to exercise their rights and comply with the law.
   
   Due process is another essential part of Article XIV. The government cannot deprive a person of liberty or property without due process of law. Progressive Reform believes that this protection must mean more than simply passing a law through the proper legislative process. The government must also respect the fundamental rights of the people when enforcing that law. A law that significantly restricts liberty and imposes substantial financial burdens should be carefully examined to ensure that it does not unjustifiably interfere with the rights protected by the Constitution.
   
   Article XIII also supports the broader principle of equal citizenship in Broadlands. It guarantees every citizen an equal vote regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion, or background. Although Article XIII specifically protects voting rights, it demonstrates that the Constitution recognizes citizens as possessing fundamental rights that the government must respect equally. This principle is important when considering compulsory education because a citizen's ability to comply with the law should not depend upon their financial circumstances.
   
   Progressive Reform therefore believes that the government must choose between protecting the liberty of citizens and maintaining compulsory higher education. If Broadlands wishes to require citizens to attend higher education until the age of 25, then the government must ensure that doing so does not require citizens to surrender their property merely to comply with the law. Providing free higher education would be the most appropriate solution because it would allow the government to maintain its educational policy while reducing the direct infringement upon citizens' property rights.
   
   Ultimately, Progressive Reform believes that Article XIV must be interpreted as a meaningful protection of individual rights. The government should not have unlimited authority to restrict the liberty of its citizens or take their property simply because it has enacted a law requiring them to do something. Compulsory higher education combined with mandatory tuition places both liberty and property at issue. For these reasons, Progressive Reform supports the appeal and urges the Court to require the government to provide free higher education to citizens who are legally required to attend. This remedy would better protect the fundamental rights guaranteed by Article XIV while allowing Broadlands to continue pursuing its educational goals.

2. Liberal Freedom Support · 16 Aug 2026, 6:53 a.m.

   This is indeed a deeply illiberal and over-reaching law which contradicts the right to liberty. It should be overthrown.

3. Homeland Union Support · 16 Aug 2026, 9:55 a.m.

   Even though we are actually against free higher education, it must be clearly stated that the obligation to pursue higher education until the age of 25 goes far beyond the age of majority and also goes against the individual's freedom of choice. For that reason we support the appeal.

4. Free People Liberals Oppose · 17 Aug 2026, 9:10 a.m.

   It would place an excessive burden on the economy. While we can support education labeled "free"—a peculiar leftist stance—at certain intervals as prosperity rises, enshrining it as a permanent fixture would be a grave mistake.

The bench

Each justice's vote and reasoning, published under their seat number. The court never reveals who sits on it.

• Justice #1 Recused
• Justice #2 Uphold

  I would uphold the appeal.
  The policy requiring all citizens to remain in compulsory higher education until the age of 25 constitutes a substantial interference with individual liberty. Once a person has reached adulthood, the State cannot presume that continued compulsory education is constitutionally permissible merely because education serves a legitimate public interest.
  Higher education may undoubtedly be encouraged, subsidized, or made freely accessible by the State. But there is a fundamental constitutional distinction between providing an opportunity and compelling an adult to participate.
  The Government may have legitimate interests in improving educational attainment, developing human capital and strengthening the national economy. Those objectives, however, do not automatically justify removing an adult citizen's ability to determine whether to pursue university education, enter employment, undertake vocational training, establish a business, or pursue another lawful occupation.
  The breadth of the policy is particularly significant. It does not merely require young adults to obtain a minimum level of education. It requires every citizen, regardless of individual circumstances, aptitude, employment, vocational pathway or educational needs, to remain in higher education until 25.
  Such a blanket mandate places the burden of the State's educational objectives directly upon individual liberty. Less restrictive alternatives are plainly available: free higher education, scholarships, vocational programmes, financial incentives and voluntary educational opportunities can advance the same objectives without compelling every adult citizen to remain in academic education.
  I therefore find that the compulsory nature of the policy is incompatible with the liberty protected by Article XIV. The fact that the policy may produce socially desirable outcomes cannot by itself rescue a measure that imposes such a substantial restriction upon adult autonomy.
  I would therefore declare the policy of compulsory higher education until age 25 unconstitutional and void.
  As to the requested revival of the previous law providing free higher education for all, I would treat that as a separate remedial question. Striking down the unconstitutional mandate does not automatically establish that the previous legislation must be revived unless the Constitution or applicable law permits such revival.
  Accordingly, I uphold the constitutional appeal and invalidate the compulsory higher-education mandate.

• Justice #3 Uphold

  After considering the arguments of both sides, the provided evidence, as well as the Constitution, I have come to a conclusion:
  
  The Constitution clearly states in Article XIV: “No person under the jurisdiction of Broadlands shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” The current law deprives the entire population of liberty, directly violating Article XIV of the Broadlands Constitution.
  
  Therefore, the current law is unconstitutional and I vote in favour of the appellant.

• Justice #4 Uphold

  The Appellant argues that the University Tuition law would be unconstitutional due to Article XIV, which states that "No person under the jurisdiction of Broadlands shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law". In particular the claim is about how the compulsory higher education would infringe on the aspect of liberty. Upon further analysis of the Broadlander Constitution, and upon reading the arguments presented by other parties during the pleading, I believe this law does infringe on the liberty aspect of the article, as it forces adults into education without their consent, depriving them of the liberty that is constitutionally guaranteed. Though it must be prefaced that this must be taken to a reasonable degree - although the fact that 'no person' would insinuate that all compulsory education would be unconstitutional, it is of my interpretation that the 'person' mentioned here in this case would purely be adults so we will view the personage as adults. Why does this infringe on liberty? As one of the Supporters of the Appellant state: "Liberty means that citizens should have the ability to make important decisions about their own lives without unnecessary government interference.". It is of my interpretation that compulsion to spend 7 years of adulthood to education by the State would be 'unnecessary government interference' as by the age of 18, adults would have the personal responsibility and autonomy to make their own decisions and live their own lives. This not only infringes on their liberty to continue education, but also infringes on their liberty to go through alternatives to education and develop their own lives, which would be stifled if they spend the first 7 years of their lives doing education. This is especially harmful for adults who do not perform well in the education system, as they would do poorly and have that negatively affect their future prospects (restricting their liberty to attain employment that would best suite them), or the implications of having to redo certain courses if they have performed extremely poorly further restricting their liberty. As such I uphold the appeal, with the belief that if the State wishes to help improve education of their citizens, it should seek alternatives such as making higher education free or campaign for more enrolment into higher education, as that would help citizens make the choice to do higher education of their own volition (as well as restrict the impediment of liberty - wealth background) rather than make higher education compulsory and unnecessarily infringing on the Constitutional rights they should protect and adhere to.

• Justice #5 Did not vote
• Justice #6 Deny

  The appellant bases the entirety of its appeal on Article XIV, which reads as follows: "No person under the jurisdiction of Broadlands shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law". From this, it deduces the existence of a doctrine of substantive due process that would allow this Court to assess whether the constraint imposed on citizens, namely the obligation to pursue higher education until the age of twenty-five, is or is not justified by a sufficient state interest. Progressive Reform extends this reasoning to the right of property, arguing that the obligation to pay tuition fees deprives citizens of their assets without sufficient justification, and invokes Article XIII as proof that the Constitution broadly recognizes fundamental rights for citizens.
  
  Our reading of the text cannot accommodate this construction. The expression "due process of law" does not protect, in its ordinary meaning as it must have been understood at the time of the Constitution's adoption, against any law deemed a posteriori excessive or ill advised by a constitutional judge. It guarantees that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property other than through the course of law, meaning through a law validly adopted according to the constitutional procedures in force and applied in a general, regular, and non-arbitrary manner. This is a guarantee of procedural regularity and subjection to law, not an invitation made to this Court to substitute its own judgment of proportionality for that of the legislature regarding the appropriateness of a public policy.
  
  This reading is consistent with the steady line followed by this Court. In Liberal Union v. Costavela, the Court refused to invent a standard of proportionality or a right to individual liberty that the constitutional text did not expressly enshrine, recalling that its office is to state the law as it is written and not as one would wish it to be. The same applies here: Article XIV uses the terms "due process of law", and not terms such as "reasonable" or "proportionate" which can be found, for example, in Article XVI, Section 2 of the Constitution of Rheinland to frame infringements on economic freedoms. The framer of Broadlands, when it wished to subordinate a power to an explicit proportionality review, knew how to do so elsewhere in comparable texts; the fact that it did not do so in Article XIV prohibits this Court from reading such a review into it by way of extensive interpretation.
  
  The argument drawn from Article XIII does not withstand scrutiny either. This provision guarantees an equal right to vote, without distinction of race, gender, sexuality, religion, or origin. By its very object, it is circumscribed to the electoral domain. By virtue of the canon generalia specialibus non derogant, already applied by this Court in Homeland Alliance v. Saxenheim, a specific provision cannot be dissolved by the mobilization of a general principle alleged to be drawn from it. But the reverse is equally true: a specific provision, here relating solely to the right to vote, cannot be erected as the source of a general principle of fundamental rights applicable to matters, such as compulsory education, that it mentions neither directly nor indirectly.
  
  It remains to be determined whether the contested law respects, as described in the file, the requirement of regularity posed by Article XIV. Nothing indicates that it was adopted outside the applicable constitutional procedures, nor that it applies in a discriminatory, individualized, or arbitrary manner against certain citizens rather than others. This is a general law, applicable uniformly to all citizens of Broadlands up to a determined age. Such a law, voted by the competent body according to the required forms, satisfies the requirement of "due process of law" in the sense understood by the framer, even if it imposes a significant constraint on the individual choice of whether or not to pursue studies, or on the financial resources of citizens subjected to the payment of tuition fees. The severity, appropriateness, or wisdom of such a policy remain questions of legislative choice, not questions of procedural regularity.
  
  This Court wishes to clarify the limits of the present decision. Nothing in this judgment means that Article XIV would be devoid of all scope. A law that would deprive a citizen of liberty or property outside of any legal framework, by the sole arbitrary decision of an executive authority, or that would apply in a discriminatory manner to certain individuals without a general legal foundation, would remain subject to review by this Court under Article XIV. But this is not the case presented here.
  
  Held:
  
  1. The appeal is dismissed insofar as it requests that the law establishing compulsory higher education until the age of twenty-five be declared unconstitutional.
  
  2. Article XIV guarantees procedural regularity, namely that no deprivation of life, liberty, or property may occur outside the framework of a law validly adopted and applied in a general and non-arbitrary manner. It does not enshrine a substantive proportionality review over the appropriateness of public policies adopted by the competent bodies.
  
  3. Article XIII, limited by its object to the equal right to vote, cannot be invoked to establish a general principle of fundamental rights extraneous to its scope of application.
  
  4. The request tending to the application of the doctrine of revivification and the reinstatement of the prior law on free higher education becomes moot, as the declaration of unconstitutionality upon which it was conditioned is not pronounced.
  
  5. Nothing in the present decision prejudges the appropriateness of the current policy regarding compulsory higher education, a question that remains entrusted to the ordinary political process and, where applicable, to the amendment procedure of Article II.

• Justice #7 Deny

  BACKGROUND
  The present act obliges citizens of Broadlands to attend education until the age of 25. It was passed by the legislature in accordance with constitutional provision. The objections to the law are generally focused on Article XIV of the Constitution, which prohibits the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process.
  
  The issues at hand are:
  
  ISSUES
  1. If the obligation of educational enrollment until the age of 25 is a deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process.
  
  HOLDING On Issue 1.
  The legislative process enshrined in the Constitution is by definition, due process, and the Court must consider the legislative process as valid. The wording of Article XIV specifically exempts "deprivations" through due process, and whether or not the mandate of education is a "deprivation," it was passed legally and without irregularity -- rendering it without of the scope of the amendment at hand.
  
  JUDGMENT
  The holding of NO on Issue 1 is extrapolated to the case as whole, and thus I vote to DENY the appeal.