LAW - 638A Juvenile Law: Children’s Legal Rights

(3 hrs.)

Examines legal problems faced by children within the family, in foster care, in school, and in the criminal justice system. The class will consider legal issues such as formation of the family relationship, disintegration of the family through separation or divorce, propriety of state intervention in medical decision making affecting the child, authority of the state to remove a child from the home in cases of abuse and neglect, the state’s response to a child’s poverty or homelessness, the school’s control over a student’s freedom of expression, the school’s obligation to offer the child an adequate education, and whether the death penalty should be applied to juveniles.