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Constitutional Birthright: The State, Parentage, And The Rights Of Newborn Persons, James G. Dwyer
Constitutional Birthright: The State, Parentage, And The Rights Of Newborn Persons, James G. Dwyer
Faculty Publications
State parentage laws, dictating who a newborn child's first legal parents will be, have been the subject of constitutional challenges in several U.S. Supreme Court and many lower court decisions. All of those decisions, however, have focused on constitutional rights of adults (especially unwed biological fathers) who wish to become, or to avoid becoming, legal parents. Neither courts nor legal scholars have considered whether the children have any constitutional rights that constrain legislatures and courts in deciding which adults will be their legal parents. If a state enacted a parentage law that said, for example, that any child born to …