Any rights theory excluding children also excludes sleeping adults and impaired persons

Evidence

MacCormick, then Professor of Public Law at the University of Edinburgh, argued that Hart’s will theory conflated two distinct questions: the conditions for holding a right and the conditions for exercising it. Interests, not choices, ground rights; children have interests that are morally significant regardless of their capacity to exercise, waive, or assert claims. MacCormick’s methodology was particularly precise: he showed that any theory of rights that excludes children is committed to also excluding sleeping adults, severely cognitively impaired persons, and future generations — beings that the will theory’s own proponents would not want to exclude — making children a genuine test case that exposed the theory’s limits. — , The Rod and the Child, 7732

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hart’s will theory as the dominant rights framework for three decades; the reductio links to earlier passages in the book on how children’s exclusion was scaffolded. — connects to: Will theory cannot exclude infants without also excluding sleeping adults — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 7679; Children’s rights rest on present humanity rather than future adult status. — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 8848; Arguing a fetus lacks rights because it is not born is circular reasoning — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 1180 (+2 more)

Related

• Will theory cannot exclude infants without also excluding sleeping adults (similarity 0.88)
• Grounding children’s rights in present humanity makes them full rather than conditional. (similarity 0.83)
• Children’s rights rest on present humanity rather than future adult status. (similarity 0.79)
• Arguing a fetus lacks rights because it is not born is circular reasoning (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Children’s rights rest on present humanity rather than future adult status. #expands (0.60) — , The Rod and the Child, 8848
• Arguing a fetus lacks rights because it is not born is circular reasoning #corroborates (0.45) — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 1180
• Childhood conviction can collide with adult authority over a factual impossibility #exemplifies (0.40) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1666