Child, Family, and the State

Catalog description

This course examines the legal relationships among children, families, and the state. Areas of law to be examined include child welfare, education, and juvenile justice. The course will explore Supreme Court jurisprudence on the issue of parental rights and family privacy as well as the doctrine of children's rights. Attention will be paid to the role of race, gender, and class and their intersection in shaping the ways in which children and families interface with governmental systems. Students in the course will be asked to grapple with critiques of governmental systems impacting children and families, explore calls to reconstruct and reconstitute these systems, and examine the role of lawyers working from within and outside these systems.