AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
A positive right to protection for children.
Concepts that are useful in other areas of human rights break down in the context of children. Because children are dependent on adults for their development, they are an anomaly in the liberal legal order, which views negative rights as implying fully rational, autonomous individuals that can exercise free choice. This Article argues for a positive right to protection for children, rooted in dignity, by probing the problematic nature of the positive/negative rights duality and exploring alternate legal approaches to protecting children's rights in both international and comparative law. The adoption of positive rights for children would help assure adequate protection, which the current American legal regime, as typified by the case DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, fails to do.
I. INTRODUCTION
Children are an anomaly in the liberal legal order. Conceptualizations that work in other areas of human rights break down in the context of children. Children defy the conventional view of rights as implying fully rational, autonomous individuals who can exercise free choice and require freedom from governmental interference. Lacking fully developed rational capabilities, children are dependent "incompetents" by definition. Furthermore, unlike the term "individual," the term "child" does not stand alone from all others, but necessarily implies a relationship.
The founders of liberal rights theory perceived children to be outside the scope of their philosophies. John Stuart Mill (1) excluded children from his conception of liberty. He wrote:
It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are not speaking of children ... Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury ... Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. (2)
- Human cloning and the right to reproduce.
- Magazine article from: Albany Law Review Foley, Elizabeth Price March 22, 2002 700+ words
...right to produce a child using cloning...I. IS THERE A POSITIVE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE...acknowledges that a positive right to reproduce may...cases from which a positive right of reproduction...than English to children prior to the eighth...
- Justified limits on refusing intervention. (treatment of patients by physicians)
- Magazine article from: The Hastings Center Report Chervenak, Frank A. McCullough, Laurence B. March 1, 1991 700+ words
...negative right to noninterference and a positive right to alternative treatment. Because a positive right is involved, the issue of ethically...negative right not to have surgery and a positive right to medical management of the only other...
- Libertarianism and the possibility of the legitimate state.(Critical essay)
- Magazine article from: Libertarian Papers Maloberti, Nicolas January 1, 2009 700+ words
...Section II, it is argued that acknowledging a minimal form of positive right might overcome such an objection. Section III shows that...might think, the acknowledgment of this particular type of positive right would seem to provide an adequate normative ground for making...
- My conscience, your money. (using expensive therapy to cure Jehova's Witness...
- Magazine article from: The Hastings Center Report Post, Stephen G. Fleck, Leonard September 1, 1995 700+ words
...The negative right to be left alone contrasts with the "positive" right to requisite resources. No ordinary managed care system...explicit that respect for a negative right does not entail a positive right to save life at all costs. The hospital should only have...
- Fox Selling Out on World Series Ad Spots; Even Before Teams Are Set, Inventory...
- Magazine article from: TelevisionWeek October 22, 2007 700+ words
...Sports. "But this year, sales have been so robust, and the marketplace has been hot, so our sales group is feeling very positive right now that there are so few spots left.'' Fox and TBS are finishing the first year of a seven-year deal with MLB worth...
- Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor?(Book...
- Magazine article from: Ethics & International Affairs Sterba, James P. June 22, 2008 700+ words
...poverty. Thomas Pogge adopts just such a view in the first essay of the volume. The other way is to ground the right in a positive right; that is, a right to receive from others the basic resources that one needs for a decent human life. Tom Campbell defends...
- Packers to add linebacker as a means to an end Club sees Johnson, tight end...
- Newspaper article from: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel BOB MCGINN July 10, 1996 700+ words
...we'll wrap it up," Sharbaugh said late Tuesday. "You never know until it's all signed and OK, but it looks real positive right now." The Eagles could offer Johnson opportunity at middle linebacker, where former Packer James Willis is their nominal...
- Macmillan pushes image revamp. (News).(Macmillan Cancer Relief's ad campaign)
- Magazine article from: Precision Marketing Frankel, Hannah October 4, 2002 700+ words
...approaches of past campaigns, which depicted cancer patients, nurses or doctors. "The new campaign is about remaining positive right from the point of diagnosis," says a Macmillan spokeswoman. "Macmillan is well-known for its nurses and terminal care...
