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- Title
CHILDREN'S RIGHTS TO A LIVABLE FUTURE.
- Authors
Delgado, Richard
- Abstract
Are persuasion and advocacy as valuable for young people asserting their rights as they are for their elders? This Article suggests that, in many cases, they are not. With disputes over global warming, for example, schoolchildren and young adults will confront futures in a world wracked by climate change for a considerably longer period than adults who are middle-aged or older. Adults thus may find it easy to compromise in search of a quick return, while young people will confront decades of living with a rapidly warming world. Young people may also experience difficulty being taken seriously for reasons that have little to do with traditional cost-benefit analysis or even such obstacles as lack of standing. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students' campaign for gun control, the various Julianatype lawsuits to hold the older generation responsible for global warming, and the new genre of "kid lit" authors who write about resistance show that a new wave is rising in which the young assert advocacy rights that are new, forceful, and difficult to accommodate within the existing paradigm. In the following Chronicle, part of a long-running series, my alter ego Rodrigo, himself the father of a precocious teenager, puts forward the case for the world's youth activists. As in previous encounters, "the Professor" presses him, pointing out that youth may be self-centered, lacking in judgment, and prone to fads. The two conclude by agreeing that society needs both the kind of future-oriented thinking that the young excel at and the seasoned wisdom of their seniors, with social conditions and needs determining the optimal balance of each.
- Subjects
UNITED States; CHILDREN'S rights; GLOBAL warming; CLIMATE change; GUN control in the United States; EGOISM
- Publication
Alabama Law Review, 2019, Vol 71, Issue 1, p261
- ISSN
0002-4279
- Publication type
Article