 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 of a personal relationship than a matter of law. Somewhat like marriage, the relationship of parental agency and spousal agency are more realities recognized and honored by government than the result of legal activities. The heart of the common law agency is trust by the one who establishes the agency and the one who accepts the agency. There is trust that the one who acts as an agent will 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 that soldier delivers the message that was entrusted to him, the other officer receives it as if that original officer were 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 members of the family. It does not take an act of law to establish that relationship. The law accepts the trust relationship that 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 are all agencies based on trust alone. When it comes to agents who are not personally trusted, it takes 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 act in place of another or to do what the other citizen would do as if they were there 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, the other 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. Agency is a 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 an agent of another. Darrell buys a stamp and puts it on a letter. He drops it into a mailbox. He hasn't trusted the U.S. mail to finish the delivery of that letter to its address. 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 it to the address is Darrell's agent. And the one who receives that letter receives it as if Darrell had put 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 character and she picks them up carrying them in her hand. While her mother is checking out and paying for purchases, Betty lags behind looking at the pictures on magazine covers. And as her mother takes her hand, not really paying attention to what she carries, intent on getting her groceries to the car, she is stopped by the store manager who points out that her 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 item 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 be children and the agency of the mother would assure correction. Even if the mother only found the bags on helping her daughter into the car, it is likely that 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 and trusts that attorney with authority to act in his or her best legal interests in a matter for which the attorney is hired. The citizen family that purchases a home and trusts to a broker, a management of 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 he 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. Terry and John Baskham, a young couple, decide to attend the parents' group meeting at their church. They hire a babysitter to seat at the welfare of their two children. Caring for children is a parental task but they pay 16-year-old Debbie to take on 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 the children are safe and continue normal routine. Debbie is their personal agent in the home paid to do as Terry and John would do 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 the pay is dependent upon the one who acts as agent performing the task or handling the situation to the satisfaction of the one who pays. Yes, this is one foot into the business concept of contracts for there is an element of agency in any contract for services. It is one person doing what another person would do if they wanted to do it themselves. These are agents. The simple trust relationships are also the foundation for a large part of business law, personal and family agents can be purchased. And then we must deal with the anomaly of legislated 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 to 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 or whatever 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 is certainly not something that would happen all the time 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 the services by sovereignty of government. The judge is doing all that he can in this environment to give Greg a fighting chance against the one to 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 an 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 given its own name in loco parentis. The teacher stands in the place of and are given authority of and to act as the agents of the parents 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 all 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 the children over whom they assume authority granted for legislation? The answer is obvious. That 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 drop their studies and assemble in the auditorium to protest an unfair administrative decision will the teachers be there to represent the children who are in their charge or will they represent the administration that pays them? This is the answer to the question of agency. Educators are agents when it suits their purpose to be agents and are public employees when it suits their purpose to be public employees. They are human and understand the responsibility of parents but are hired to be public servants with others selecting them instead of the parents of students who are under their authority. This is the act of a government that accepts its own sovereignty not the sovereignty of its citizens. We have a public systems that is not well conceived to provide what sovereign citizens would value.