Relationship Rights of Children

Professor James Dwyer (Wm & Mary) has a new book out, called "The Relationship Rights of Children." According to Cambridge Press, the book:

presents the first sustained theoretical analysis of what rights children should possess in connection with state decision making about their personal relationships, including legislative and judicial decisions in the areas of paternity, adoption, custody and visitation, termination of parental rights, and grandparent visitation. It examines the nature and normative foundation of adults’ rights in connection with relationships among themselves and then assesses the extent to which the moral principles underlying adults’ rights apply also to children. It concludes that the law should ascribe to children rights equivalent (though not identical) to those adults enjoy, and this would require substantial changes in the way the legal system treats children, including a reformation of the rules for establishing legal parent–child relationships at birth and of the rules for deciding whether to end a parent–child relationship.

From the sound of it, this book continues and develops arguments that Professor Dwyer has made elsewhere, including in an earlier book, "Religious Schools v. Children’s Rights," where he contended (among other things) that many religious schools damage, and violate the rights of, children by imposing upon them certain religious beliefs and religiously grounded constraints on their development and critically examined the idea (see, e.g., Pierce v. Society of Sisters) that, in a free society, parents have the right and duty to supervise and control the education and upbringing of their children.

I’ve tried elsewhere (for example, in "Taking Pierce Seriously: The Family, Religious Education, and Harm to Children") to engage, and indicate my disagreements with, Professor Dwyer’s approach and with some of his claims.  It strikes me, though – and this touches on matters raised in Brooks' post from a few days ago, and perhaps also to Dan, Ethan, and Jennifer's "Family Ties" paper – that a parents’ relationships with their children are morally and otherwise prior to the obligations and powers of the state, and that we should not regard the state so much as assigning rights to parents or as constructing the parent-child and other family relationships, but instead as standing outside those relationships, authorized -- of course -- to intrude in order to prevent harm (properly understood) to vulnerable persons.  (I recommend Steve Gilles' article, from a decade ago, "On Educating Children:  A Parentalist Manifesto."  And, of course, our own Michael Scaperlanda's review of Dwyer.).  In any event, and notwithstanding my very strong disagreements, I have found Dwyer’s work challenging and instructive.