As far as modern day youth rights gospels go, you can’t get much better than Bob Franklin’s introduction to the “Handbook of Children’s Rights” I’ve seen no better succinct and cogent explanation of the assumptions that drive our work, the key logical arguments that support our work, and a complete undressing of those who disagree. Pound for pound its definitely one of the top 18 pages yet written on youth rights. I present to you 5.

Note also that Franklin’s use of the term “children” is a departure from the distinction NYRA typically makes between “children” and “youth”. So for the purposes of this excerpt, just think “youth” so you don’t read this with images of toddlers in your mind. He also uses “libertarian” only in a social context, so it’d be more like “civil libertarian”, as economics don’t seem to factor into his use of the term at all.

Anyways, this excerpt is outstanding, enjoy:

Children in all societies are denied the right to make decisions about their affairs which as adults we take for granted. This denial of rights occurs both in the public realm of children’s involvement in education and the care arrangements of the state and the private realm of the family. Children’s lack of decision-making rights includes relatively unimportant matters such as decisions about which clothes to wear or what time to go to bed, to more significant concerns about the right to help structure the educational curriculum at school and the right to vote. But any society wishing to deny children, or any other group, rights which are common property of other groups, should be able to offer clear and sustainable reasons for doing so. The burden of proof always rests with those who wish to exclude others from participation; children should not be obliged to argue their case for possessing the same rights as everyone else.

The argument for denying participation rights to children has two interrelated strands. First, it is alleged that children are not rational or capable of making reasoned and informed decisions. Rights to autonomy in decision-making grow with majority. Locked stated the matter unequivocally. ‘We are born free as we are born rational he claimed, ‘not that we have actually the exercise of either; age that brings one brings with it the other too’

Second, children lack the wisdom born of experience and consequently they are prone to make mistakes. By denying them the right to participate and make decisions for themselves, society is attempting nothing more heinous than protecting children from their own incompetence. These two strands were cogently interwoven into a classic statement and defense of paternalism by the Master of the Rolles in Re S [1993], where he claimed ‘…a child is, after all, a child.’:

The reason why the law is particularly solicitous in protecting the interests of children is because they are liable to be vulnerable and impressionable, lacking the maturity to weigh the longer term against the shorter, lacking the insight to know how they will react and the imagination to know how others will react in certain situations, lacking the experience to measure the probable against he possible.

Both objections to children’s rights claims can be met either positively or negatively; i.e., by asserting that children do possess the qualities which critics allege that they do not, or by conceding that if children do lack the skills and qualities necessary for participating in decision-making, they lack them in no greater degree than adults who are not, on this ground, disqualified from participation. Libertarians offer a number of arguments.
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