Children and the Law Posts
Parents in Fact
This Essay examines the Restatement of Law, Children and the Law’s full-throated embrace of a de facto parent doctrine in the context of family law’s evolving treatment of functional parents.
The American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law Is Approved
The American Law Institute’s membership voted to approve Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law, the first Restatement to comprehensively examine the legal regulation of children.
Children at Work, Parental Rights– and Rhetoric
This essay focuses on the use of “parental rights” as a rationale that is being used in a number of states to justify the reduction of children’s labor protections.
Adolescents in the Justice System: A Progress Report on the Restatement of Children and the Law
This paper responds to comments from experts on the current draft of the Restatement of the Law, Children and the Law, from the perspectives of adolescent development and racial equity.
In Loco Parentis and the Fourth Amendment Rights of Minors in Public Schools
I contend, here, that to achieve and maintain proper discipline as well as the safety of all schoolchildren, a probable cause standard to Fourth Amendment violations is sufficiently lacking in constitutional tethering.
In Loco Reipublicae
This Article offers a new framework for children in constitutional law, one that elevates children’s rights as developing citizens by recognizing parental duties to respect those citizenship rights.
Tribes, States, and Sovereigns’ Interest in Children
This Article takes opposition to ICWA as an opportunity to scrutinize the nature and permissible scope of political communities’ interests in children. Acknowledging that a community’s and a child’s interests may at times conflict, in turn, makes clear the need to develop tools to identify and manage such conflicts when they occur.
October 2023 Council Meeting Updates
At its meeting on October 19 and 20, 2023, the Council reviewed and discussed Council Drafts of the following projects and approved drafts and portions of drafts as listed.
Are Children’s Rights Enough?
This Article analyzes case law on custody and family separation from a jurisdiction that uses a strong children’s rights approach, the European Court of Human Rights. These cases provide a valuable comparator by which to test whether children’s rights framing changes the way that courts reason about children.
Building Cross-disciplinary Bridges: Advancing Evidence-Based Legal Protections for Children in Cyberspace
The article identifies a systemic policy failure, where lawmakers have fallen behind the private sector in understanding and incorporating scientific findings on children’s unique attributes, needs and vulnerabilities into policies that regulate these technologies.