Children's Rights and the Children's Act 1989

This volume considers the relationship between children and the law and provides a novel approach to the issue of children's rights. The author argues from the perspective that law and morality are inseparable and presents a theory of rights drawn from the philosophy of liberal existentialism. It is posited that children, like all human beings, are the holders of strong ontological rights which it is the duty of the superior courts to uphold. It is argued, however, that attitudes to children in law are presently predicated on welfare concerns that are underpinned by the philosophy of paternalism, which sits in contradistinction to the proposition that children should be treated as autonomous holders of rights. This is true both in various mainstream theoretical analyses of how the law should look at children, and in past and current practice of how the law has and is looking at children. The book is a challenge to this orthodoxy.