Law Commons^™

Modernizing Capacity Doctrine, Lisa V. Martin

Faculty Publications

Federal capacity doctrine—or the rules establishing whether and how children’s civil litigation proceeds—has largely remained the same for more than a century. It continues to presume that all children are incapable of directing their own cases, and that adults must litigate on children’s behalf. But since that time, our understanding of children, and of adolescents in particular, has significantly evolved. This Article contends that it is well beyond time to modernize the capacity doctrine to better account for the capabilities of adolescents and support their transition to adulthood.

A Review Of What's Wrong With Children's Rights: Still A "Slogan In Search Of A Definition", Justine A. Dunlap

Faculty Publications

The negative side of government intervention on behalf of children is a primary focus of New York University Law Professor Martin Guggenheim's book What's Wrong with Children's Rights. In this interesting book, Professor Guggenheim is always instructive and often provocative. As a consequence, he has written a book worth reading.

This book review essay will begin by offering an overall assessment of the book. It will then analyze two separate components of Guggenheim's book. First, it will evaluate Guggenheim's assertion that, absent a demonstration of parental unfitness, parental decision-making regarding their children is "virtually immune from state oversight." Second, …

Child Care Enterprise, Community Development, And Work, Peter R. Pitegoff

Faculty Publications

Child care enterprise can be a vehicle for community-based economic development. Beyond the critical goal of child care service, day care as an enterprise can help build capacity for job creation and entrepreneurship in the inner city and in disadvantaged communities. Stable child care institutions with quality jobs can sound a counterpoint to the feminization of poverty. The demand for child care services is substantial and growing. In single parent families and in households with two working parents, day care is essential to enable parents to work or go to school. Further, high quality early childhood programs can have a …

How Are You Going To Keep Them Down On The (Collective) Farm After They’Ve Seen Chicago?: A Minor’S Right To Political Asylum Against His Parents’ Wishes, Michael G. Hillinger

Faculty Publications

“Children’s rights” is a nebulous phrase subsuming two very different issues: the extent to which children can assert the same rights against the state as adults, and the extent to which the state can limit a parent’s power over his child. In cases involving the issue of children’s rights , the Supreme Court has defined those rights in a relatively restrictive fashion. On the one hand, the Supreme Court has recognized that children have constitutional rights independent of those enjoyed by their parents. On the other hand, it has frequently held those rights to be either less than those afforded …