The Child's Right to an Open Future

Abstract

Many whole classes of rights are common to adults and children; many are exclusive possessions of adults; perhaps none at all are necessarily peculiar to children. When a stranger has interfered wrongfully with the child's bodily and property interests and violated his or her rights just as surely as if the aggressor had punched an adult and forcibly helped him to her purse. Rights that are common to adults and children in this way we can call "A-C-rights". Children are not legally capable of defending their own future interests against present infringement by their parents, so that task must be performed for them, usually by the state in its role of 'parens patriae' . American courts have long held that the state has a "sovereign power of guardianship" over minors and other legally incompetent persons that confers upon it the right, or perhaps even the duty, to look after the interests of those who are incapable of protecting themselves.

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