 The deeper challenge of agency is not in the legalities that are recognized. It is in that wonderful human capacity to trust another sovereign citizen. Agency is in common law more like a personal relationship than like a matter of law. Somewhat like marriage, the relationship of parental agency and spousal agency are more realities recognized and honored by government than any creation of law. The heart of common law agency is trust by the one who establishes the agency in the one who accepts the agency. There is a trust that the one who acts as agent will truly act in place of the one they represent. The officer who gives a verbal message to a soldier to carry to another officer has entrusted the task to the soldier. When the soldier delivers the message that was entrusted to him, the other officer receives it as if the first officer was standing there. The family that has a community meeting attended by only one adult member of the family has entrusted that member to act on behalf of all the members of the family. It does not take an act of law to establish that relationship. The law accepts that the trust relationship is part of the family. The hospital who accepts one party of a marriage to be a guardian over the other during a time of incapacity does so in general trust that the marital relationship has the one seeing to the wants and needs of the other. Parents are presumed to act for the benefit of their own children. These all are agencies based on trust alone. When it comes to agents who are not personally trusted, it takes a writing signed by a client or an order signed by a sitting judge to establish the legal relationship where one sovereign citizen is able to place another where they will do what that citizen will do as if they're in person. At a parent-teacher gathering at the local school, Billy's mother rises and speaks concerning discipline issues. Others, both teachers and parents, accept that she speaks on behalf of her child and also speaks on behalf of her family. She speaks as a parent as well. It takes no law to establish this. It is something recognized by being human and having the common experience of living in a human family. Parents speak for their young children and it is an anomaly when one parent would deny what was spoken by the other in public. The agency is part of our lives. Common law does not create agency. It just gives it a name. What common law has accomplished is to widen the definition to include business dealings where one person can be trusted to act as the agent of another. Darrell buys a stamp and puts it on a letter he drops in a mailbox. He has entrusted the U.S. mail to finish the delivery of that letter to the address on the envelope as if he were able to deliver it himself. The mail worker who receives and sorts the mail sending it on to the right center for delivery is his agent. The mailman who delivers the mail to the address is Darrell's agent and the one who receives that letter receives it as if Darrell had left it in his mailbox by his own hand. Legal agency is based on trust that the agent will do as the client would do. Seven-year-old Betty is shopping for groceries with her mother. As her mother selects the light bulb they need Betty sees a small set of gift bags sporting her favorite cartoon characters and she picks them up carrying them in her hand. When her mother is checking out and paying for purchases Betty lies behind looking at the pictures on the magazine covers and as her mother takes her hand not really paying attention to what she carries intent on taking the groceries to the car she is stopped by the store manager who points out that the child has attempted to steal the gift bags. Her mother is responsible but will she be prosecuted or simply embarrassed by what her child has done? There is of course no criminal intent and the mother would either return the items or pay for them and that would be the end of it. The parent is the agent to set things right. She would accept personal responsibility for her child. The store manager would not find this particularly disturbing as children will always meet children and the agency of the mother would assure correction even if the mother had only found out about the bags on helping her daughter into the car it is likely she would carry them back or otherwise find a way to square it with the store. She is the child's agent in dealing with the world. Other agencies are generally purchased and are accordingly business relations. A citizen who hires an attorney entrusts that attorney with authority to act in his or her best legal interest in a matter for which the attorney is hired. The citizen family that purchases a home entrusts a broker to manage the transaction and the broker is paid for services rendered. Len, a plumber, gets a call to clear a clogged drain. The homeowner would clear it himself but does not have the tools so he calls a plumber to do what he would do if he could. Len arrives and does as the homeowner would do if he could. He is the agent for restoring the sink and drain to useful condition and he can be trusted to do the job in order to gain the price of his services. Mary and John Baskam, a young couple, decide to attend a parent's group meeting at their church. They hire a babysitter to see the welfare of their two children, caring for the children as the parental task but they pay a 16-year-old Debbie to take on the responsibility for normal care during the time that they are away. They trust Debbie to act as they would when it comes to assuring that their children are safe and continue their normal routine. Debbie is their personal agent in the hall paid to do as Terry and John would do as if they were there. It is a trust relationship that is secured by payment. These are common business agencies where one person pays another to take actions and they pay as dependent upon the one who acts as agent performing their task or handling the situation to the satisfaction of the one who pays. Yes, this has one foot in the business concept of contracts where there is an element of agency in any contract for services. It is one person doing what another would do if they could or wanted to do it themselves. These are paid agents. The simple trust relations are also the foundation for a large part of business law. Personal or family agents can be purchased. And then we must deal with the anomaly of legislative agency. Agency created by passing laws. The first reason that these are addressed as anomalies instead of simply accepting them is that one citizen cannot assign an agent that his or her neighbor must accept. That is a violation of the very principles of agency. Agency is almost by definition a trust-based relationship. It is a serious breach of personal sovereignty whenever and wherever the government attempts to establish personal or family agency by law, removing the choice of the sovereign citizen or family to select their own agent as someone they trust. You might say that this certainly could not happen but it is actually quite common. Greg, a man facing serious financial difficulties, is accused of burglary, of stealing something. On being brought before a judge unaccused, he finds himself being assigned a public defender. How could a judge tell him who he has to trust? The judge is not there to dispense justice but to maintain the arena in which the attorneys, the knights of the legal system fight for their clients. Law courts are part of a government system based on a service by sovereignty of government. The judge is doing all that he can in this environment to give Greg a fighting chance against the ones who accuse him. The judge has no power to change the law that is designed to serve attorney combat. The courts are told what services they are allowed to give. They are not empowered to deliver justice to sovereign citizens outside of their prescribed operation. This does not make the court system into good government. It does not make it right in what it does. All it accomplishes is like a band-aid applied to hide a wound. But there is even more common anomaly seen in the operation of public schools. It is legislation that a parent must accept whoever the system would put in authority over their children. It is such a common anomaly in personal agency that it is even given its own name in loco parentis. The teacher stands in place of and are given by law the authority to act as the agents of the parent in whatever they are directed to accomplish as public employees. It is only humanity that keeps this from becoming a monstrous abuse of citizen sovereignty. It is only the fact that these public employees are part of the same public and understand parental purpose that they can act to the benefit of children in spite of the challenge of their employment answering to other authorities. Will teachers and administrators represent parents for the pay they receive? Will they represent the families of children over whom they assume authority granted through legislation? The answer is obvious. The trust is personal, not public. If a child steals a book from the school library, will the teacher have responsibility to pay for it or to see that it gets back? If the senior class of a school dropped their studies and assembled in the auditorium to protest unfair administration decisions, will the teachers be there to represent the children who are in their charge or will they represent their administration that pays them? This is the answer to the question of agency. Educators are agents when it suits their purposes to be agents and they are public employees when it suits their purpose to be employees. They are paid agents but are not paid to be parental agents. They are human and understand the responsibility of parents but are hired to be public servants with others selecting them instead of parents of students who are set under their authority. This is an act of government that accepts its own sovereignty, not the sovereignty of its citizens. We have a public system that is not well conceived to provide what sovereign citizens would value. Is the one you elect into public office an agent? Can you trust them to do what you would do? Are they responsible to you for what they do in your name? If they represent a sovereign government, they answer to nobody. If they represent citizens, the government is not sovereign.