3L Paper Progress Update

This semester has been moving along very quickly -- and it has been very busy. I'm going to outline a brief description of my graduation requirement paper ("3L paper") in order to garner reactions and words of wisdom -- so if you have comments, please pass them along.

I'm curious about the interaction of chilren's status and their legal rights and responsibilities: I wonder how the law reacts to children acting as adults. I plan to explore this idea by studying a number of areas and comparing the legal implications. At this point, my list includes abortion (for minor girls), sex (between minors and between minors and adults), the internet, criminal implications for children, emancipation, child marriage, and adoption (of children and of the children of minors).

I think this is an important field of study because things that happen to children when they are children can have grave impacts on their adult lives. I am interested to see if when the impacts will carry over into adulthood we tend to give children more “rights” to act like adults. This concept has a long history – it was even expressed by ancient traditional Islamic scholars as a defense against forced child marriage.

I'll keep the blog updated with progress on this project -- and I promise some non-paper posts will come along soon.