John Witte, Jr., Foreword

• Citation: Vol. 20 No. 1
• Publication year: 2006

FOREWORD

John Witte, Jr.^*

On October 20-21, 2005, a crowd of some 500 gathered at Emory Law School to debate the question, "What's Wrong with Rights for Children?" A score of leading churchmen and statesmen, litigators and legislators, jurists and ethicists, U.N. officials and NGO advocates took up this question, with ample interaction with each other and the audience. The discussion raised a number of more particular questions:

• Is rights talk the right talk for talking about the special needs and concerns, interests and aspirations, callings and duties of children? If so, how so? If not, why not? What other normative formulations and currencies besides rights are at hand?

• Is the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child the best modern formulation of children's rights? What's missing? What's misinformed? What's been misinterpreted? What other authoritative legal formulations are at hand, and how do they compare to the Convention?

• Should the United States ratify the Convention-especially having worked so hard to shape many of its 54 articles, and especially since all other countries besides Somalia have ratified it? What have been the obstacles and objections to American ratification of the Convention: Misunderstanding? Mere politics? American exceptionalism? Religious concerns about family values and parental authority? Cultural concerns about the best interest of the child standard? Aversion to the many second generation social, cultural, and economic rights that the Convention guarantees to children?

• How have other countries, besides the United States, fared who have ratified the Convention, and what comparative legal and cultural ii EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 20 lessons might they offer us in protecting children who are the most voiceless, voteless, and vulnerable amongst us?

Some of the highlights of this rich two-day discussion are presented in this special issue of the Emory International Law Review. Between opening and closing essays by President Jimmy Carter and Professor Martin E. Marty, the conference proceedings included herein fall into two main parts. The first cluster of articles-by Johan van der Vyver, Martin Guggenheim, Howard Davidson, David Smolin, Jeremy Gunn, Patrick Brennan, and Don Browning-take up some of the main cultural, philosophical, and theological critiques of children's rights, both in general and as specifically formulated in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. These articles focus...