A Child's Voice vs. a Parent's Control: Resolving a Tension between the Convention on the Rights of the Child and U.S. Law
![handle is hein.journals/clr117 and id is 721 raw text is: NOTES
A CHILD'S VOICE VS. A PARENT'S CONTROL:
RESOLVING A TENSION BETWEEN THE CONVENTION ON
THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD AND U.S. LAW
Soo jee Lee*
The United States is the single remaining United Nations (UN)
member state that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of
the Child (CRC), the most important international human rights treaty
governing children's rights. This Note focuses on a key objection to U.S.
ratification of the CRC: the fear that its emphasis on children's rights
threatens parents' rights under U.S. law. This Note uses Article 12 of
the CRC, which recognizes the right of children to be heard in decisions
involving their lives, as a proxy to examine how much of an actual
threat the CRC poses to the constitutional right of parents to raise their
children. In so doing, this Note compares Article 12 with three of the
areas of U.S. law in which the rights of parents to control their children
arguably most conflict with their children's right to be heard: family law
proceedings, medical decisionmaking, and psychiatric commitment. The
Note concludes that the conflict between parental rights and children's
rights is ultimately reconcilable, and that in fact the CRC presents not a
threat but an opportunity for fresh reexamination and reconciliation.
INTRODUCTION
Children are vulnerable members of society. That children are vul-
nerable and therefore deserve special protection makes intuitive sense;
but that children are members of society-that is, individuals with rights of
their own-comes as an afterthought, if at all. The United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)1 is an ambitious interna-
tional human rights treaty that strives to balance the two contrasting
points of view by giving fresh attention to the latter.2 Shifting away from a
traditionalist conception of children as purely passive objects of the
authority of parents and governments, the CRC paints a modern, com-
* J.D. Candidate 2017, Columbia Law School.
1. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, opened for signature Nov.
20, 1989, 1577 U.N.T.S. 3 (entered into force Sept. 2, 1990) [hereinafter CRC].
2. See, e.g., Cynthia Price Cohen, The Developing Jurisprudence of the Rights of
the Child, 6 St. Thomas L. Rev. 1, 18-20 (1993) (explaining why and how the CRC is
comprehensive).
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A Child's Voice vs. a Parent's Control: Resolving a Tension between the Convention on the Rights of the Child and U.S. Law
A Child's Voice vs. a Parent's Control: Resolving a Tension between the Convention on the Rights of the Child and U.S. Law