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Family Law

SelectedWorks

2015

Human Rights

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

A Child’S Right To A Family Versus A State’S Discretion To Institutionalize The Child, Richard R. Carlson Aug 2015

A Child’S Right To A Family Versus A State’S Discretion To Institutionalize The Child, Richard R. Carlson

Richard R Carlson

International law, represented particularly by the U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), declares that a child has the right to be raised in a "family environment." Nevertheless, the CRC grants states the discretion to institutionalize children who are without functioning families. States have this discretion because the CRC does not require states to arrange, facilitate, or even allow for child placement in a permanent, substitute family. In this article, I describe this contradiction in international law--a child's right a family environment versus the state's discretion to institutionalize the child--and I explore the possible reasons for the contradiction. …


Surrogacy As The Sale Of Children: Applying Lessons Learned From Adoption To The Regulation Of The Surrogacy Industry's Global Marketing Of Children, David M. Smolin Jan 2015

Surrogacy As The Sale Of Children: Applying Lessons Learned From Adoption To The Regulation Of The Surrogacy Industry's Global Marketing Of Children, David M. Smolin

David M. Smolin

This article will argue that most surrogacy arrangements as currently practiced do constitute the “sale of children” under international law, and hence should not be legally legitimated. Hence, maintaining the core legal norm against the sale of children requires rejecting currently constituted claims of a right to procreate through surrogacy. Given the underlying purpose of all human rights law in maintaining the inherent human dignity of all human beings, a claimed legal right built upon the sale of human beings must be rejected.