CHILDREN AND THE LAW (PRFM9001)
2 credits. Seminar.

This seminar is designed to explore the unique treatment of children under the federal constitution and numerous federal and state statutes. The course will help students to understand the forces that shape family law and child welfare policy, with a special focus on the rights and responsibilities of young people in the juvenile justice context. We will use legal, economic, and sociological tools of analysis to examine such issues as the rights of legal institutionalized minors; the exercise of liberty in the schoolhouse; the challenges of modern child welfare; state sanctioned restrictions on the rights of minors; the constitutionality of the death penalty as applied to minors, and juvenile justice. Student participants will prepare a paper on an unresolved or controversial issue involving the legal treatment of, or government policy towards, children.