The Rights of Children

At what point do we as individuals procure our respective rights? Such questions are crucial to the everpresent debate and discussion over competing theories of legal and moral rights and their respective duties. A nuanced deliberation within said dialogue is that of children, who simultaneously maintain fundamental claims to moral standing, yet are inhibited by their naivety and immaturity. Thus posing a peculiar consideration: Do children have the same rights as adults? In this essay, I will first define the central terms and outline the necessary claims of rights theory to lay the foundation for the more specified discussion at hand. Second, I will explicate the grounds for which children maintain equal rights concerning adults through Joseph Raz’s (1984) interest theory. Third, I will dispute the claims regarding the aforementioned equality of rights through analysis of both Brennan and Noggle's (1997) role-dependent argument as well as Feinberg’s (1980) classification of children’s and adults' rights. Finally, I will conclude that children maintain equal rights in relation to adults only to the extent that such rights do not depend on the contingent nature of children’s vulnerability and inability to contribute to society.