Intergenerational Justice Review

IntergenerationalJustice Review

Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations

Volu

me

9 · I

ssue

4/2

009

ISSN

161

7-17

99

Issue Topic: Children's and Young

People's Rights – with a Focus on

the Right to Vote

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e reviewers for this issue were as follows (in alphabetical order):

Prof. Dr. Bruce Auerbach:is an associate professor of poli-tical science at Albright Collegein Reading, Pennsylvania(USA).

Samantha Dimmock:is the head of policy and publicaffairs at Children's Rights Alli-

ance for England since April2007.

Prof. Dr. Peter Häberle: Executive Director of the Bei-rut Research Center for Euro-pean Constitutional Law.

Prof. Dr. Huey-li Li: is a professor of educationalphilosophy at the University ofAkron, Akron, Ohio (USA).

Nira Lamay-Rachlevsky:is a lawyer and works for theKnesset (the Israeli parliament)legislative committees as a legaladvisor. Before, she was a de-puty commissioner for futuregenerations in the Knesset.

Prof. Dr. Jane Spinak:is a professor of law at the Columbia Law School and co-founder of the Child Advo-cacy Clinic. She is also a mem-

ber of the NY State PermanentJudicial Commission on Justicefor Children.

Prof. Dr. Janna ompson:is an associate professor of phi-losophy at La Trobe University.

Dr. Gotlind Ulshöfer:is a program director for econo-mics, business ethics and genderissues at the Evangelische Aka-demie Arnoldshain, Germany.

Table of Contents

Issue topic: Children's and Young People's Rights –with a Focus on the Right to Vote

Editorial 127

What Does it Mean to Have a Right? 128by Prof. Dr. Dieter Birnbacher

Should Democracy Grow up? Children and Voting Rights 133by Prof. Dr. Steven Lecce

Improving Public Policy for Children: A Vote for Each Child 139by Prof. Dr. Robert H. Pantell and Prof. Dr. Maureen T. Shannon

On Behalf of Children? e Plural Voting System in Belgium – from 1893 to 1919 144by Prof. Dr. Laurent de Briey, Aurélie Héraut and Elise Ottaviani

Book Reviews

Priscilla Alderson (2008): Young Children’s Rights. Exploring Beliefs, Principles and Practice. 145

David Archard / Colin M.Macleod (eds.) (2002): e Moral and Political Status of Children. 149

Announcements and Interna

What Would Happen if Citizens Under 18 Years Old Had the Legal Right to Vote? e German U18 Project Experience 152

e 20th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child 153

Voting Rights and Age Restrictions - e Position of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations 154

Motion for a resolution presented to the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly: Expansion of Democracy by Lowering the Voting Age to 16 155

Barring Adults from Voting –Disenfranchisement of Felons and Mentally Disabled People Around the World 156

Call for Papers: Intergenerational Justice and the Scourge of War 158

Possibilities and Limits of Party Cooperation in Democracies

159Ways Towards a Legal Implementation of Intergenerational Justice 159

New Editorial Staff 159

Imprint 159

Become a supporter of FRFG! 160

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he rights of children and youngpeople present an interesting ethicaland legal case. Given the existence

of universal human rights, why formulateextra rights for a special group? Are childrenand young people not human beings? Whatare the main differences between the Univer-sal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted in1948) and the Convention on the Rights ofthe Child (adopted in 1989)? Is there a needto adapt human rights in order to make themage-dependent, thus moving away from theidea of ‘one right for all’? In order to under-stand the complexity surrounding the issue ofchildren’s and young people’s rights, two arguments are key:First, there is an alleged conflict between therights of parents and those of the child. Forthousands of years, children were regarded asthe property of their parents. In Roman law,the father even had the right to abandon new-born children. In the Old Testament, childrenare mentioned in the same breath as slaves –both were at the complete disposal of thehead of the family. omas Hobbes writes onchildren that parents may “alienatethem…pawn them for hostages, kill them forrebellion, or sacrifice them for peace”.1

Although this view has been weakened in theWestern world in recent centuries, the idea ofchildren as the subject of rights does not havemany friends among authoritarian parents.Second, and more important nowadays, thereis a potential conflict between children’s rightsand the protection of children. is can beexemplified by the ‘right to work’. While noone questions the necessity of adults to workin order to make a living, a child’s right towork needs to strike a balance between exercising personal freedoms and protectingthem from work which restricts their oppor-tunities to play and go to school. For adults,employment is highly valued because of its financial and identity granting dimensions. Ifchildren are (or feel) obliged to help their ownpoverty-stricken families, or simply just wantto imitate the behaviour of their parents, theycould have a subjective interest in gaining em-ployment at a very young age (like 6 or 7).But this could conflict with the ‘best interestsof the child’ - i.e. their objective need to beeducated.

e right to vote is not mentioned in theConvention on the Rights of the Child at all.Article 12, however, states: “States Partiesshall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affect -ing the child, the views of the child beinggiven due weight in accordance with the ageand maturity of the child.” e struggle for acompromise resounds in this formulation.ere are 2.2 billion youngsters under 18years of age living worldwide. But votingrights are only granted to a very small mino-rity of them, namely from 16 years on if theylive in Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Indonesia or Nicaragua. Children and adolescents are thusexcluded from key political decision-makingprocesses which have an impact on their lives.Without access to these processes which areintegral to the exercise of democratic rights,children are comparatively invisible as citizensor subjects. ‘Young people own the future’ isa prominent saying. But they are already here,now. It is correct that youth participation must beunderstood in broader terms than just voting.It is participation in civil society which cantake several forms, for instance youth parlia-ments, youth entitlements to speak or submitrequests to political bodies or parliaments inall matters affecting young people. Neverthe-less, in this issue of Intergenerational Justice Re-view, we focus on the voting rights of childrenand adolescents because they are the most im-portant step for increasing youth influence inpolitics and to make children’s interests morevisible. ere are three possibilities: engage-ment for young people, engagement withyoung people and also participation fromyoung people. I believe that the last optionshould be given more importance in general.e first article of IGJR 4/2009 deals withthe nature of rights in general. Dieter Birn-bacher (University of Düsseldorf, Germany)offers an introduction into the language ofrights and the role rights play in ethics andlaw. His contribution explores whether theconcept of rights can be replaced without lossby the concept of obligations, that is whetherrights should be seen as social constructs de-rived from obligations.

e following article by Steven Lecce (Uni-versity of Manitoba, Canada) addresses the question of whether or not children’s continued electoral exclusion is morally defensible. According to Lecce there is a fundamental tension between the egalitarianpresuppositions of democracy and our refusalto grant voting rights to children and youngpeople.e third peer-reviewed article by Robert H.Pantell (University of California, San Francisco,USA) and Maureen T. Shannon, Universityof Hawai`i at Mãnoa, USA) explores currentthinking about enfranchisement of children,from the fields of ethics, law and social welfare. It proposes a proxy voting right forparents.

is issue also contains a lot of interestingbackground readings including a historicaloverview of examples of plural voting systems, a summary of the Convention ofthe Rights of the Child as well as an outlineof voting age and voting restrictions for fe-lons in prison and mentally disabled peoplein more than a dozen countries. Moreover,this issue features book reviews of Priscilla Alderson’s Young Children’s Rights. ExploringBeliefs, Principles and Practice and the anthology e Moral and Political Status ofChildren, edited by David Archard andColin M. Macleod.

I hope you will enjoy reading our currentissue.

Joerg Chet TremmelEditor-in-ChiefLondon School of Economics and Political Science

Notes:1. Hobbes, omas (1994): e Elements of Law,Natural and Politic, edited with an introductionby J.C.A. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press(first published in 1650), 23.8

Editorial

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What Does it Mean to Have a Right?by Prof. Dr. Dieter Birnbacher

bstract: is contribution offers anintroduction into the language ofrights and the role rights play in et-

hics and law, with special reference to the rightsof children. It emerges that there are a numberof very different functions characteristic of‘rights talk’, both in ethics and law, and thatmany of them offer opportunities for strengthe-ning appeals to moral and legal principleswhile others involve pitfalls that should beavoided. In conclusion, two of the theoreticalquestions raised by rights are addressed: whet-her the concept of rights can be replaced wit-hout loss by the concept of obligation, andwhether rights should be seen as social con-structs derived from obligations, or whether itis more plausible to reverse the order of prio-rity.

e language of rights – a powerful ethi-cal and political devicee language of rights is a particularly forceful device in moral and political debate.No other term is better suited to expressstrong moral emotions and political convic-tions. ‘Rights talk’ always carries a conside-rable emphasis, and this seems due to thefact that the language of rights from its verynature focuses on the perspective of thosewho have something to gain from a givenmoral or legal relationship. ough it is widely agreed that rights, at least in their primary sense, are correlated with duties orobligations, and that to ascribe a right to someone implies ascribing a correspondingduty or obligation to someone else, thelanguage of rights brings the recipient ofthese obligations sharply in view and remains silent on those who are expected toaccept these obligations and to act in accor-dance with them. is focus explains, atleast in part, the greater power of thelanguage of rights over the moral emotions.In general, it will be much easier to bringpeople to fight for the rights of A than forthe fulfillment of their or others' duties towards A.e focus on the perspective of the right-holder is only one aspect of the centralfunction of the language of rights (which isparticularly relevant in the context of chil-

dren's rights), its advocacy function. Who -ever claims that a person A has (or shouldhave) a certain right makes himself an advo-cate of A. He takes the side of A and makesit clear that he is prepared to defend A'sright against anyone who fails to respect it,either in practice, by not observing it, or intheory, by calling into question A's legiti-mate possession of the right. In many cases,the advocacy function goes further and in-cludes, beyond appealing to relevant personsexpected to fulfill A's right, an appeal to awider community. In these cases, the advo-cacy is not only directed to those identifiedindividuals immediately concerned with A,but at an unidentified, anonymous and in-definite totality such as the community ofpoliticians, society, or even, as in the case ofhuman rights, mankind.Within the advocacy function typical of‘rights talk’ a division can be made betweenthe kind of norms or principles to which theascription of rights appeal. One use is to appeal to the norms and principles that arepart of a system of moral or legal norms widely recognized in a moral or legal com-munity. is use might be termed the enforcing use. Rights held by A are appealedto in order to enforce obligations on the partof B whenever this seems required by hesitation or failure on the part B to act inaccordance with these rights. e invocationof rights in this sense is of the nature of a reminder. It is understood that B recognizesA's right and has no reason to question thelegitimacy of these rights or of the claimsbased on it. e main purpose of the reminder is to draw B's attention to impli-cations these rights have for his own dealingswith A. B, for example, has subscribed to theright to free speech all the time, but undercertain circumstances B must be remindedof the fact that this right applies even to theexpression of opinions that he thinks morally or politically disastrous. In thesecases, the advocacy inherent in the languageof rights is based on a shared normative system the vitality of which depends on acontinuous process of mutual monitoring.Viewed from the angle of society at large, itfunctions as device of normative self-control

and self-correction to which various socialinstitutions contribute: politicians and otheropinion leaders, the courts, the media andthe general public.A second function of the language of rightsis the appeal to rights that are not, or notyet, part of the respective normative systembut are postulated as necessary or desirableadditions by moral or political reformers.is is the manifesto use of the language ofrights or, as it may be termed, its revisionaryuse. In this use, rights are postulated in theknowledge that they are not as a matter offact recognized, or only in special cases or byvery few communities, with the hope thatthey will come to be recognized more widelyat some future point of time. is use is perhaps even more typical of ‘rights talk’than the first one because it brings out itscharacteristic surplus normativity. Appealingto rights does not only signify that theyshould be observed where observance is insome way deficient, but that they should berecognized in the first place. Rights, in thisuse, typically have a distinctly utopian flavor.ey call for changes in the system of morality and/or law that are hoped for butnot necessarily expected to come about. ereference to rights is counter factual ratherthan of the nature of a mere reminder. isis evident in fields such as international lawwhere the institutions necessary to enforcethe rights formally asserted by internationaldeclarations are notoriously non-existent.An extreme example is the universal right toperiodic holidays with pay declared in art.24 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.e revisionary function is a frequent char -acteristic especially of the proclamation of

moral rights: Moral rights are postulatedwith an intention to transform them intolegal rights by changing the legal system accordingly and by providing the in sti -tutions necessary for their enforcement. Ethics precedes politics. John Stuart Mill'sdefense, as philosopher and moralist, of the

A

Modesty forbids what the law doesnot./ Lucius Annaeus Seneca /

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accept certain obligations and to think aboutdevising, constructing and entertaining in-stitutions suited to meet them. Most rightspostulated in the manifes to sense, includingthe rights of future generations, have to beclassified as in rem rights in this sense. esame applies to the rights stated in the UNConvention on the Rights of the Child.It is no accident that in rem rights are mostlymoral rights. ey are typically postulatedwith the purpose to establish legal rightswhere they do not yet exist and to establishthe institutions necessary for their being respected within a society's given framework.is sheds light on important characteristicsby which legal rights differ from moralrights. Establishing legal rights is a move ina language game that is essentially pragmatic.As a pragmatic device, legal rights are judgedprimarily by their instrumentality, i. e. bythe extent to which they serve the ends theyare designed for. One of these ends is the safeguarding of moral rights. Moreover, legalrights are relative, both in factual and in normative respects. Not only is it possiblethat a person can have a certain legal rightin one legal community and none in aneighboring one, it is also the case that theserights often make no stronger claim thanthat to be valid in a certain society and within a certain period of time. Not onlycan the institutions capable of enforcinglegal rights be created and abolished at will,but even the legal rights themselves are subject to change. Against this, the claim tovalidity that goes with moral rights is uni-versal. If A has a moral right, A has this rightno matter whether this right is in fact recognized or respected. A can possess thisright even if it is not respected by the majority of existing societies. While a state-ment that A has a legal right is descriptiveand particular, a statement that A has amoral right is normative and universal. As amove in the moral language game, the ascription of a moral right shares the claimto universal validity built into the verylanguage of morality, however illusory (orhypocritical) this claim may seem on thebackground of historical and cultural relativ -ity. e other side of the coin is that moralrights are largely ineffectual as long as theyare not transformed into legal rights andmade part of a system of law that sanctionsviolations. As a rule, a promisee is well ad -vised to safeguard the moral rights accruingto him from a promise by the legal rightsgoing with a legal contract. ough moral -ity by itself is not without its own sanctions,

tion of A to him- or herself or to God. If, ac-cording to traditional Christian thinking,nobody has a right to suicide, this means nomore than that suicide is illegitimate, quiteindependently from the relations in whichthe individual stands to others and inde-pendently from whether the verdict is justi-fied by any obligations he may have toothers.

In personam vs. in rem rightsIn its standard use, to have a right means tostand in a certain normative relation to others, namely that of having a legitimateclaim against them. If A is declared to have aright against B, A is thereby ascribed a legitimate expectation that B, by acting orforbearing to act in appropriate ways, respectsthat right, and a corresponding obligation onthe part of B to do what B owes to A as his orher due. is kind of right can be of one oftwo natures (or both). If A has a legitimate claim against one ormore concrete persons, one can speak of anin personam right. If the claim is against anindefinite totality of persons such as societyor humanity at large, one can speak of an inrem right. e paradigm example of an inpersonam right is the right involved in theinstitution of promises. It is an essential partof promising that the promisor confers aright on the promisee to expect and to de-mand the fulfillment of the promise. epromise establishes a moral relation betweenthe partners that is highly personalized andhighly asymmetric, by defining one of thepartners as the right-holding and the otheras the right-fulfilling party. Another typicalcase of an in personam right is the right ofthe child to be cared for by its parents. Hereagain, the distribution of rights and obliga-tions is highly asymmetric, but differentlyfrom the promise case the right is not estab -lished by a free agreement but by a ‘natural’relation. A further difference is that in thecase of the child the right-holder is also thebeneficiary of the right, whereas in the caseof a promise the beneficiary can be a thirdparty. If B has promised A to do somethingfor A's child, A's child is the beneficiary ofthe promise but not necessarily the holderof the right involved in the promise. An example of an in rem right is the right towork. It is clear society at large is the ad-dressee of this right, but it is far from clearhow fulfillment of this right is to be securedand who is concretely obligated by it. Assuch, it is an abstract right without concreteaddressee. It appeals to society as a whole to

moral right of women to political participa-tion preceded his (unsuccessful) attempt tobring about a vote for women's suffrage as aMember of Parliament.

Rights - some distinctionsTo a semantic purist, the fact that thelanguage of rights takes over important rhetorical functions must seem a mixed blessing. He will approach ‘rights’ with adouble suspicion. First, like other rhetori-cally colored concepts in morality and poli-tics like ‘freedom’ or ‘human dignity’, theconcepts of rights is liable to inflation, thereby blurring its contours and weakeningits normative force. Second, its very popu-larity as a rhetorical device tends to makepeople less inclined to take account of thesemantic differences that exist between thevarious uses of this concept in theory andpractice. I will refrain, in the following, to practice semantic purism and to present the myriadof distinctions and classifications that havebeen proposed concerning rights in philoso-phy and political science. A minimum of distinctions, however, is necessary to maketransparent, in the words of Joel Feinberg'stitle, "the nature and value of rights" (Fein-berg 1980, 143 ff.) and to clarify what it isthat is postulated in so many moralities,constitutions, declarations and manifestos.One first distinction is that between thestandard relational use of the term ‘right’where rights refer to a relation between aright-holder A and a B who is correspond -ingly obligated by this right, and the non- relational use in which to have a right justmeans that one is permitted to do some-thing. In many contexts we can phrase thestatement that A is morally or legally per-mitted to act in the way he does by sayingthat A has a right to act in this way. To have a right, in this non-standard sense,means that A is under no obligation to actotherwise than he in fact does. us, in saying that in any free society everyone hasthe right to act as he wishes as far as this inaccordance with existing law one expressesthe thought that everyone is permitted to dowhat he does provided this is not prohibitedby an existing law. ere is, in this use, noquestion of a special relation, constituted bya right, in which the individual stands toother persons or to society at large. Whet-her A has the right or not need not dependon any interpersonal relations between Aand others. at A is permitted to do some-thing might be seen to follow from the rela-

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parents or, alternatively, by a guardian, andto receive the health care and education necessary for its development into an auto-nomous person. To have a negative claim-right means not to be exposed to certainviolations of one's integrity and correspond -ing risks, for example by physical violenceor psychological torture. e correspondingduties on the part of others are partly negative and partly positive. Others are notonly required not to infringe on or to endanger the integrity of the right-holder,but also to actively provide the means necessary for achieving the good safeguardedby the right. ese are usually taken to include whatever may be necessary to provide for the personal safety of the right-holder. In the case of children and other particularly vulnerable groups, rights aremostly of the nature of negative and positiveclaim-rights. is must not blind us, how -ever, to the fact that the members of vulner -

able groups also enjoy liberties. Some ofthese may even conflict with the fulfillmentof rights, such as in cases in which childrenrefuse a medical treatment which they havea right to receive. A typical example of aclaim-right in this sense is the provision ofthe UN Convention on the Rights of theChild that the system of adoption shall ensure that the best interests of the child shallbe the paramount consideration (art. 21).A right can be classified as a power if it confers on an individual the opportunity tochange the moral or legal relations in whichhe stands to others. In modern societies, thiskind of right has become more and moreimportant with the growing liberty of the in-dividual to establish, within certain limits,his roles and relations by his own will. eindividual has successively become free tocontrol the moral and legal obligations incumbent on him by making autonomouschoices how far to bind himself by contracts,promises and personal bonds.It goes without saying that distinguishingthese kinds of rights does not mean to ignoretheir interrelations, both logical and factual.Powers are logically dependent on liberties.Liberties are factually dependent on claim-rights, at least if they are not meant as formalguarantees but as entitlements that the individual has a realistic chance to exercise


in practice. e distinction according tocontent is also relevant for the question ofwho qualifies as holder of the respectiveright. Since each kind of right is concernedwith a certain kind of good, there are logicallimits to the range of subjects that qualify asright-holders. A right, whether moral or legal,can only be ascribed to beings to which thecorresponding good can be ascribed. As aconsequence, the range of rights that can beascribed to animals is narrower than that forchildren, which is again narrower than thatfor adults. Animals do not qualify as candidates for the ascription of liberties, oronly to the extent that they are capable ofintentional action. ey do not qualify ascandidates for powers. ey do qualify, however, as holders of positive and negativeclaim-rights to the extent that their good depends, among others, on how they aretreated by humans. Infants do not ordinar i -ly qualify as candidates for civil rights suchas the right to vote (except vicariously). Butthey obviously qualify for claim-rights suchas the right to physical and mental integrityand to being provided with the means necessary for their development to maturity.ere is, then, no once-for-all answer to thequestion of who qualifies as a bearer ofrights. It depends on the kind of right inquestion. In general, the range of beings towhich claim-rights can be ascribed is widerthan that to which liberties and powers canbe ascribed. And it follows that there is noreason to uphold the time-honored doctrineof the reciprocity of rights and duties accord -ing to which rights can only be held bybeings that are capable of having duties. isdoctrine is a non-starter because it overlooksthe central function of the ascription ofrights, its advocacy function. A being suchas a sentient animal, an infant or a demen-ted adult is no less qualified as right-holderby not being able to put forward its rightsor even to know about them. On the contrary, because of their dependency on others these beings are particularly in needof having their rights respected. Another relevant observation is that the legalsystem is considerably more generous in ascribing rights than the moral code. As anessentially pragmatic device it is much morefree to ascribe rights to non-personal entitiesthat would not qualify as holders of moralrights, such as trusts and heritages or (con-cerning the right to inherit) the nasciturus,the child yet to be born.Another distinction that is of special impor-tance for the relationship between parents

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these are in general too weak to provide thetrust required for cooperation.In some legal systems, legal protection of interests is graded by distinguishing betweenobjective and subjective rights. Rights are objective if the legal system imposes legalduties on citizens to respect certain limits intheir dealings with one another and withthird parties. Rights are subjective if the legalsystem makes provisions for opportunitiesof the right-holders to have their rights protected by legal action, either by layingcomplaint against violations in person or byadvocates. In many countries, minors havesubjective rights, whilst animals have onlyobjective rights. Both have rights that areprotected by law. But only children are capable of being vicariously represented bytrustees who secure their rights on their behalf.

Liberties, claim-rights and powersAnother distinction between rights that dominates the theory of rights is that bytheir respective content. e favoured approach is to classify the content of moralor legal rights by the kind of goods that theexercise of the right is intended to safeguard.In the case of liberties, this is primarily free-dom and privacy, in the case of claim-rightsit is primarily integrity and opportunities, inthe case of powers it is the interest in auto-nomously structuring one's social relationsby establishing contracts and other agree-ments with others.A right can be classified as a liberty if itmeans that A is free to act as he wishes without the interference of others. In par tic -ular, a liberty can be positive (right to freespeech) or negative (right not to serve in thearmy). In each case the corresponding dutyis negative, that of non-interference. If A hasa liberty, B has an obligation not to interferein A's exercise of the liberty, whether thisconsists in an activity or a forbearance. Anexample for a liberty in the context of children's rights is art.13, 1 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,which assures the child freedom of expres-sion.With claim-rights the differences betweenthe positive and the negative versions aremore pronounced. To have a positive claim-right means to be entitled to being providedwith some good (such as, for example, themeans of subsistence, health care or workopportunities) by certain identified personsor by society at large. In this sense, a smallchild has a claim-right to be cared for by its

At his best, man is the noblest of allanimals; separated from law and justice he is the worst./ Aristotle /

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tive, for example if helping a friend in needis given priority over holding a promise onwhich nothing much depends. Rights are ofvarying normative weight, and at least thoseof relatively low priority may well be judgedto be negotiable even with imperfect duties. Among the metaethical issues surroundingrights two stand out as being the subject ofrepeated and fundamental controversies.One is the issue whether the language ofrights can be completely substituted by thelanguage of duties. Some of the philosophicaldefenders of what has been called the redundancy theory of rights (such as RichardBrandt1) have expressed doubts whether theparticular psychological force of thelanguage of rights can be reproduced byusing only duty-talk. But they think that atleast the semantic content of the language ofrights is fully reproducible in the languageof duties. ough this theory has foundquite a number of adherents,2 there are reasons to doubt whether it is adequate. Forone, the correspondence with rights (on thepart of the recipient) changes the semanticcontent of the concept of duty in its applica -tion to those ‘perfect’ duties that are of central relevance to morality and law as normative systems. At least for moral rights,having a right is more than being the objectof others' moral duties. Differently from duties without corresponding rights, theright-holder can claim the fulfillment of hisright as something that is due to him and forwhich, if fulfilled, gratitude would be out ofplace. Whoever has a right not to starve,need not wait for others to give him to eat.

He is in a position to demand that he getswhat is owed to him. One might even gofurther and follow Joel Feinberg by sayingthat rights seem to involve a second-orderright that entitles the right-holder to claim,under appropriate circumstances, the fulfill-ment of his right.3 Conferring a right on someone means more than to postulate thelegitimacy of a claim. It means to encourageand to support the right-holder in the attempt to make appropriate claims. isconnotation of empowerment explains theclose connection between the possession ofrights on the one hand and self-respect andhuman dignity on the other. Moreover, theredundancy theory fails to do justice to theadvocacy function of rights. Conferring a


rights, each in accordance with its respectivenormative weight. In German constitutionallaw it is agreed that even those basic rightsthat are granted without inherent limits donot hold absolutely but can in practice be limited if their exercise conflicts with otherinherently unlimited basic rights. Only a so-called ‘core content’ of these rights is takento partake of the non-negotiability that ischaracteristic of the right to human dignity(and its protection by the state) in the firstarticle of the German constitution. esame holds for moral rights such as the rightto physical integrity or the rights acquiredby accepting a promise. For both rights, situations are easily thinkable in which theyhave to cede, on reflection, to the rights ofothers provided these carry more weightthan the right sacrificed. It is a moot question,however, whether rights are negotiable notonly against rights but also against dutieswithout corresponding rights, i. e. to thoseduties traditionally termed ‘imperfect duties’. Examples of ‘imperfect’ duties arethe duty of generosity and the duty to cometo the aid of the needy. Differently from‘perfect’ duties that correspond to a right onthe part of the recipient, imperfect dutiesleave the moral agent more choice in deter-mining who is to receive the good the agentis morally bound to provide and in whatexact way this is carried out. If I have contracted a debt it is usually clear who it iswhom I owe the money and in what wayand at what point of time I am expected topay it back. e same holds for other perfectduties like fulfill ing a promise or seeing to itthat my child at-tends school. With‘imperfect duties’this is different. Ihave a choice aboutthe who, how and when of charitable giving,and I have more leeway to exercise my per-sonal preferences. Charity is nothing I oweto its recipients. Is it legitimate to make an ’imperfect duty’ take precedence over a ’perfect duty’? Is it morally unobjectionableto break a promise in cases in which thisconflicts with coming to the aid of someonein need? is is answered in the negative bya great many philosophers, among themKant and Schopenhauer, and there are manyexamples for which this answer seems ade-quate. Normally, it is no excuse for not pay-ing back a debt that more good would bedone by spending the money on a needyfriend. For other cases, the doctrine of prioryof rights over duties is clearly counterintui-

and children is that between mandatory anddiscretionary rights. Mandatory rights arerights that are conjoined with a duty to exercise the right. While liberties and powersare, in general, discretionary in the sense thatthe right-holder is free to exercise the right,some particular liberties and powers aremandatory in so far as they constrain theirexercise. us, parents have the legal rightto bring up their children and thereby theright to exercise their own personal preferences, for example (though with certain limitations) in point of religion, butthis right is conjoined with a correspondingobligation. e right to vote, in some coun-tries, goes together with an obligation tovote. Something similar holds for certainclaim-rights. us, children have a legalclaim-right to education in the sense that society has a duty to provide adequate educational opportunities. On the otherhand, this right is mandatory by being conjoined with a duty. Children in generalhave no choice to go to school or not as soonthey have reached schooling age. Anothertype of right that is similar to a mandatoryright in restricting the options open to theright-holder are inalienable rights. In thiscase, the right-holder is free to exercise theright he possesses, but he is not free to renounce the right or to exchange it formoney or other goods, thereby permanentlydepriving himself of the opportunity of exercising the right. In this way, the right tofreedom is customarily understood both inmorality and in (constitutional) law. eright to freedom implies the right not toexercise this right in particular situations,but it does not imply a right to sell oneselfinto slavery.

e ethics and metaethics of rightsere are a number of controversial ethicaland metaethical issues that regularly comeup in discussions about rights and which canfruitfully be debated without going too deeply into substantive questions concern -ing concrete rights and their limits. Onesuch issue is the status of rights in cases ofconflict with other rights or duties.It is generally agreed that rights are, as a rule,not absolute but have the status of primafacie rights, i. e. can and must be negotiatedwith other rights in cases in which conflict -ing rights cannot be respected at the sametime. us, liberties are commonly held tobe restricted by claim-rights and claim-rightsby liberties, so that any one right is limitedin its range by other items in the system of

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No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it. / Theodore Roosevelt /

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right on someone does not only encouragethe right-holder to put forward his right, butalso others to speak up in his name, especiallyif the right-holder is temporarily or perma-nently unable to do so himself.

Another controversial question is of interestprimarily for ethical theorists. e questionis whether rights are fundamental or deriva-tive in the order of logical priority. Shouldrights be seen as social constructs that are -in some circuitous way - derived from dutiesor is it the other way round, so that rightsare the fundamental category? Joel Feinbergspeaks for many legal philosophers in preferring the first route: "It is because I havea claim-right not to be punched in the noseby you, ... that you have a duty not to punchme in the nose. It does not seem to work theother way round."4 is shows that for Fein-berg rights are more fundamental than duties.It does not show that rights are the lastword. In a later remark Feinberg makes itclear that interests are the fundamental cate-gory and that it is they that lie at the basis ofboth rights and duties: "My claim and yourduty both derive from the interest that I havein the physical integrity of my nose."5 Bothrights and duties function to protect inte-rests, either actual or prospective, with rightsprotecting those interests that are particularly crucial for a good life. However,the fact that there are ‘imperfect duties’ thatdo not correspond to rights militates againstFeinberg's proposed order of priority. ’Imperfect duties’ protect the conditions ofa good life in the same way as ‘perfect du-ties’ do. e only difference is that the corre-spondence with rights enables society to putadditional pressure on the fulfillment of perfect moral duties. is explains why many

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philosophers, including Kant and Mill, haveseen a close connection between perfectmoral duties and duties that it is legitimate toenforce by legal sanctions. Another argumentfor the priority of duties over rights is that itis easy to imagine a system of morality or oflaw without rights, but that it is impossibleto imagine a system of morality or law with -out duties. In a world of angels whereeveryone did what duty enjoins, rights mightin fact become redundant.

Notes:1. Brandt 1959: 440.2. E. g., Frey 1980.3. Feinberg 1980: 141.4. Feinberg 1992: 205.5. Feinberg 1992: 205.

References:Brandt, Richard B. (1959): Ethical theory.New Jersey: Englewood Cliffs.

Feinberg, Joel (1980): Rights, justice, andthe bounds of liberty. Essays in social philo-sophy. Princeton, N. J.

Feinberg, Joel (1992): Freedom and fulfill-ment. Philosophical essays. Princeton, N. J.

Frey, Raymond G. (1980): Interests andrights. e case against animals. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Further Readings:Archard, David (2004): Children. Rightsand childhood. London: Routledge (secondedition)

Campbell, Kenneth (2001): Legal Rights.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-rights/. Viewed 20 October 2009.

Dworkin, Ronald (1984): Rights as Trumps.In: Waldron, Jeremy (ed.): eories ofRights. Oxford, 153-167.

Griffin, James (2002): Do children haverights? In: Archard, David / MacLeod, ColinM. (eds.): e moral and political status ofchildren. Oxford: Oxford University Press,19-30.

Hohfeld, Wesley Newcombe (1919): Fun-damental Legal Conceptions as Applied inJudicial Reasoning. New Haven: Yale Uni-versity Press.

Steiner, Hillel (1994): An Essay on Rights.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wenar, Leif: Rights. Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/en-tries/rights/. Viewed 20 October 2009.

Waldron, Jeremy (ed.) (1984): eories ofRights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Submitted: 15 May 2009Accepted after revisions: 20 August 2009

Dieter Birnbacher isprofessor at the Hein-rich-Heine Universityof Düsseldorf. He is alsovice president of theSchopenhauer Society,Frankfurt/Main, mem-ber of the central ethics

commission at the Federal Medical Associa-tion and member of the ethics commissionof the Medical faculty at the Heinrich-HeineUniversity in Düsseldorf. His main fields of interest are ethics, practical ethics and anthropology.

Contact details: Prof. Dr. Dieter Birnbacher,Philosophisches InstitutHeinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf,40225 Düsseldorf.

Email: [email protected]


In the state of nature...all men areborn equal, but they cannot continuein this equality. Society makes themlose it, and they recover it only by theprotection of the law. / Charles de Montesquieu /

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bstract: is paper examines whetheror not children’s continued electoralexclusion is morally defensible.

Ultimately, there is a deep tension between theegalitarian presuppositions of democracy andour apparent unwillingness to grant childrenvoting rights. Unless a plausible distinction canbe found, then, between adults and childrenthat also tracks the underlying reasons for endorsing democracy in the first place, the continued political disenfranchisement of ouryoungest citizens is shown for what it is: socialinjustice. e paper begins by exploring someof the conceptual difficulties that childhoodcreates in relation to democracy. It then assessesthe implications of two very different approaches to democracy for children’s votingrights: proceduralism and a child’s supposedright to an open future.

IntroductionAt first glance, the idea that children shouldhave voting rights probably strikes mostpeople - if they ever contemplate it at all - asan absurdity. One need not be a pediatricianor psychologist (or, parent, for that matter)to appreciate the fact that, especially whenthey are very young, children are often emotionally unstable, ethically immature,and cognitively under-developed and, thus,typically ill-equipped for discharging therights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship. However, the continued exclu-sion of children from the electoral franchisesits rather uneasily with both influential philosophical defences of democracy and theexisting electoral practices of Western liberal-democratic states. What makes democracy ethically attractive as a politicalform is that all citizens are to share equally inshaping the law and public policy that setsout the basic framework of rights and responsibilities that determine, or at leastgreatly influence, their life prospects and opportunities. A democracy is better than itsrivals, so the argument goes, because it treatsits citizens with equal concern and respect.But children are citizens too, so why are theydenied what is probably the single most im-portant democratic right - the right to vote?Furthermore, why isn’t that denial a straight-

forward violation of the equality that demo-cracy is supposed to deliver? As we shall see,one answer is based upon children’s mani-fest disabilities in relation to whatever capa-bility benchmark is used to identify the legalage of majority. is move will not do, however, at least without further argument,because, beyond the legal age of majority,disabilities of those kinds typically do notdisqualify adults above the threshold. In Canada, for example, neither the insane norconvicted criminals are barred from voting.In short, the common intuition about theabsurdity of granting voting rights to chil-dren is, in fact, quite hard to sustain in lightof both the best arguments for democracyand existing electoral practices.

is paper explores some of the complexi-ties surrounding this tension between thecommon intuition, on the one hand, andthe arguments for democracy and existingpractices, on the other. It begins by motivat -ing the topic by showing how, in general,children’s political disenfranchisement raisesserious questions of justice that must be addressed rather than ignored. If we are tocontinue excluding children from the franchise, that exclusion, itself, should bebased upon a defensible political morality rather than simply the result of unquestionedconvention or habit. e rest of the papertakes up this challenge by exploring two verydifferent approaches to democracy to seewhat they yield in connection with children’svoting rights. If the core idea of democracyis the collective authorization of laws by voting for them, broadly speaking, there aretwo ways of defending that idea: first, as afair procedure for adjudicating the compet -ing preferences and interests of citizens, eachof whom are assumed to be equally worthyof political concern and respect; and, second, as the implication of a characterideal rooted in the value of personal auto-nomy. is paper examines the implications

of proceduralism for children’s voting rightsvia David Estlund’s most recent contribu-tion to normative democratic theory.1 InEstlund’s hands, the justification of demo-cracy crucially depends upon the refutationof ‘epistocracy’ - the rule of the wise.2 Like somany others, Estlund deliberately chooses toomit children from the purview of his ana-lysis. However, his arguments bear directlyupon the question of children’s voting rights,because the case for excluding children fromthe franchise normally rests explicitly uponthe premise that political authority shouldbe knowledge-based, and it is this premisethat Estlund attacks. us, if the critique ofepistocracy succeeds, this might supply advocates of children’s voting rights withmuch-needed theoretical support. Becausethe ideal of personal autonomy has playedsuch an important role in recent moral andpolitical philosophy, this paper considerswhat (if anything) is implied by a child’sright to an ‘open future’ in connection withvoting rights.3

What is a child?From the moral point of view, what couldbe worrisome about the electoral disenfran-chisement of children? Up until fairly re-cently, at least, children have not beencentral figures in ethical analyses of politicsso the question was unlikely to arise in thefirst place.4 But in the West, now, after several hundred years of democratic theoryand practice, there are prima facie tensions,perhaps even contradictions, between themost influential justifications of majorityrule and our continued unwillingness to givethe vote to anyone younger than, say, 18years of age.5

I have repeatedly referred to ‘children’. What,then, is a ‘child’? Our modern conception ofchildhood is parasitic on that of adulthood,to the extent that children are often charac-terized primarily as lacking what defines anadult.6 In most philosophical accounts, chil-dren’s relative capacity impoverishment ispervasive, deep and multi-perspectival. Forinstance, Archard states: “ese include themoral or juridical perspective from whichpersons may be judged incapable, in virtue


Should Democracy Grow up? Children and Voting Rightsby Prof. Dr. Steven Lecce

A

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget thathe is someone today. / Stacia Tauscher /

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of age, of being responsible for their deeds;an epistemological or metaphysical viewpointfrom which persons, in view of their imma-turity, are seen as lacking in adult reason orknowledge; and a political angle from whichyoung humans are thought unable to contribute towards and participate in therunning of the community.”7

Analytically, then, a concept of childhoodrequires that children be somehow distin-guish able from adults in light of some un-specified set of attributes; a conception ofchildhood is a specification of those attributes.In the contemporary Western world, a widespread, perhaps dominant, conceptionof adulthood (and therefore also of child-hood) goes something like this: an adult issomeone who is rational, physically inde-pendent, autonomous, and with a sense ofidentity that derives partly from critical reflection upon her beliefs and desires. Because of this, she can make free and informed choices for which she can / shouldbe held responsible. It is because a child lacksthese dispositions and capacities that she isthought unable to, say, work for a living, belegally accountable for her actions, or vote.

A structural problem confronts any concep -t ion that indexes childhood to adulthood inthe way that Western culture seems to.8 Tobe at all plausible, a psychological accountof human development, or an epistemologi-cal account of the acquisition of knowledgewill have to be gradual. As Locke sought todemonstrate, barring social or natural catastrophes, humans acquire reason gra-dually, so the transition from childhood intoadulthood is typically both continuous andcumulative.9 But legal rights and responsi-bilities, including voting rights, would seemto be all or nothing - either one has the rightto vote, or one does not. As Archard astutelypoints out, this creates the problem “of howto dovetail a psychological account of humandevelopment, or an epistemological accountof the acquisition of knowledge, with theestablishment of criteria whose possessionguarantees a certain moral, political and ju-ridical status”.10

Some critics have found the problem to beinsoluble, such that any attempt to drawlegal distinctions between children andadults on the basis of supposed age / com-

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petence correlations alone is inherently un-fair.11 Clearly, there is something inherentlyarbitrary and therefore unfair about drawinglegal distinctions on the basis of age alone.To discriminate against the young becausethey are young is as bad, morally speaking, asdiscriminating against, say, blacks or womenbecause of the colour of their skin, or theirsex, respectively. at kind of ageism, as it isnow called, is indeed reprehensible. Butthere is nothing necessarily objectionableabout using age as a reliable proxy for variouscompetences that might be relevant topeople’s abilities to effectively dischargerights and responsibilities.12 Ultimately, thereal questions are whether or not the proxyof age reliably tracks (in a probabilisticsense) the competences that are supposed tobe relevant, whether or not those compe-tences really are relevant, and, finally, whet-her a possession of them is fairly demandedof everyone or, instead, tested for or, evenworse, assumed, only selectively. For argument’s sake, then, let us dividechildhood into the following subcategories:infancy (birth-6 years), childhood proper (6-12 years), and young personhood (12-18years).13 With this framework in mind, weshould ask: is there a compelling basis for ex-cluding children from the franchise, one thatwill not also lead to the exclusion of some(perhaps many) adults, or to giving someadults plural votes? In sum, is their exclusionconsistently defensible in light of the best ar-guments for democracy?

Is there a problem with children’s politi-cal disenfranchisement?e core idea of democracy is the collectiveauthorization of laws by the people who aresubject to them. As such, democracy is inseparable from voting.Symbolically, voting rights are the mark ofdemocratic citizenship. Citizens are thosewho participate in the government of theirsociety; they do so either by voting on lawsdirectly, or by electing representatives to doso on their behalf. In the voluminous litera-ture on democratic theory, there are manydifferent explanations as to why voting hasthe normative significance that democratsallege, that is, why casting a ballot legitima-tes the results and makes them binding andauthoritative on everyone, even on politicallosers. Here are two promising candidates. First,democracy is implied by a principle of basicequality. At least among adults, “no personsare so definitely better qualified than others

to govern that they should be entrusted withcomplete and final authority over the government of the state”.14 On this view,majority rule follows from the assumptionthat a legitimate government must giveequal consideration to the good and interestsof every person bound by its decisions.

Second, democracy is a fair procedure fortranslating individual preferences into socialchoices when people disagree. Any other social choice mechanism will either antece-dently assume that some people’s interestscount for more than those of others (violat -ing equality) or it will incorporate some con-troversial pre-political standard of right andwrong that people’s votes should track (makingvoting dispensable). is violates equality andignores pluralism.15 Both strategies are fraughtwith difficulties when it comes to denyingchildren - certainly older teenagers - votingrights. e egalitarian argument invokes theinterests of every person but proceeds, on thebasis of that premise, to limit the franchiseto every adult citizen. As critics have pointedout, this slide, while characteristic, typicallyoccasions little notice.16 But sound argu-ments are required to justify denying chil-dren the vote, particularly when the unequalvoting power of the elderly relative to theyoung leads (predictably) to the lattergroup’s heightened liability to poverty andall of its associated horrors. e proceduralargument can exclude children tout courtonly by assuming that, as a group, they lackthe capacity to make rational decisionsabout alternative parties and their policies inlight of whatever information is availableabout them. Do they? Of course, this is anempirical, not a philosophical, question, butwe can’t begin to answer it without doingphilosophical legwork first, because preciselywhich capacities are required will dependupon how democracy is interpreted - itspoint, value and purpose. We cannot knowwhether or not their relative capability defi-cits should disqualify children from votinguntil we know which capabilities ground vo-ting rights. And we cannot know what those capabilities are, in turn, without closely examining leading accounts of democracy.Shortly, we turn to procedural and substan-tive accounts of democracy shortly to seewhether, in fact, children may be justifiably


…the voice of children must be heard and respected in all mattersconcerning their rights./ Unicef /

The major purpose of democracy, its ritual and its feast - this is theelection. / Herbert George Wells /

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excluded on the basis of their relative capa-bility deficits. For now, we can say at leastthis much: in order for children’s continuedpolitical disenfranchisement not to requirejustification, the following three highly dubious things would have to be true:(1) Children have no distinctive interests of

their own;(2) Even if they do have such distinctive

interests, their parents can adequately represent them at the polling booth;

(3) e costs of disenfranchisement are borne by all children, not simply by the poor and powerless.17

As Schrag points out, the most obvious chil-dren’s interest that is not shared by adults isthe interest in receiving an adequate educa-tion, one that potentially conflicts with interests in maximally high after-tax paren-tal incomes. Even if children’s interests couldbe fully represented by their parents, how -ever, such representation will hardly beequally influential or effective, given existinglevels of socio-economic inequality, and thisseems to violate the procedural fairness thatmany democratic accounts champion. Finally, because parents from different socialclasses are not equally likely to vote, childrenof the most vulnerable will remain the leasteffectively represented, even if we assumethat children’s interests are best representedby their own parents. In the end, if we wantto continue to deny children the vote, wewill have to confront questions that our political ancestors have ignored, that is, theirexclusion must be justified rather than simply assumed. Can it be?

Democracy, Plato’s shadow and the ruleof the wiseWestern political theory begins with the suggestion that democracy is not naturallyplausible because it hands over political decision-making to those too stupid to beentrusted with power.18 Today, and at leastopenly, this is almost universally denied, butthe conclusion is surprisingly hard to resist.After all, when it comes to life and deathmedical decisions, for example, could therebe anything more moronic than holding avote instead of relying on a doctor’s exper-tise? Surely, the stakes in political decisionsare sometimes equally high, involving asthey do national security, warfare, the admin -istration of criminal justice, the provision ofessential educational and social services, andso on. If the ancient medical/political analogy is apt, we seem to have the basis foran anti-democratic argument with the

following general structure:(1) ere are true (procedure-independent)

normative standards by which political decisions ought to be judged;

(2) Some (relatively few) people know those normative standards better than others; therefore

(3) e normative political knowledge of the relative few is a warrant for their having political authority over the rest.19

Call this the argument for ‘epistocracy’, orrule by the knowledgeable.20 Let us ignorethe separate and admittedly difficult issue asto the precise content of the relevantknowledge and the education responsible forproducing it. Assume that such knowledgeexists and also that people with that educa-tion will tend to rule more wisely than thosewithout it.21 Both seem like fairly minimalassumptions and, if we concede them, we finally have a promising basis for justifiablyexcluding children from the franchise be-cause, along with the majority of adults, theylack the expertise of the politically wise.22

Given our purposes, then, it is worth pondering whether or not the argument forepistocracy succeeds.

Premise (1) looks unassailable and child liberationists, in particular, are certainly inno position to reject it to the extent thattheir demand for children’s political inclu-sion itself is advanced as a true requirementof political morality. Premise (2) might render the argument tautological, but only ifwe identify the content of the requisite political education as whatever happens tolead the relative few to rule more wisely. Ifthere is a way of giving content to that education such that, contingently, peoplewith it will tend to rule more wisely, then(3) seems to follow from (2), and democracyis a non-starter along with children’s votingrights, because it is certainly reasonable tothink that children, especially the veryyoung, will in all likelihood lack the relevantknowledge that grounds political authority.

How to reject epistocracyPerhaps this is too quick, though. Even if weconcede (1) and (2) - and we probably should- the inference from (2) to (3) commits the‘expert/boss fallacy’ by illicitly assuming thatbecause someone would rule better they are

pro tanto a legitimate or authoritative ruler.23

David Estlund makes the point as follows:“It is important to see that authority doesnot simply follow from expertise. Even if wegrant that there are better and worse politi-cal decisions (which I think we must), andthat some people know better what shouldbe done than others (we all think some aremuch worse than others), it simply does notfollow from their expertise that they haveauthority over us, or that they ought to. isexpert/boss fallacy is tempting, but some -one’s knowledge about what should be doneleaves completely open what should be doneabout who is to rule. You might be correct,but what makes you boss?”24

Like so many other contemporary defendersof liberal-democracy, Estlund invokes a principle of political legitimacy in which statepower must be publicly justified, that is, reasonably agreed to by everyone subjected toit.25 It is this justificatory standard that rulesout epistocracy: the inference from (2) to (3)above would be reasonably rejected by freeand equal citizens unwilling to irrevocablysurrender power to putative political experts.e kind of pluralism - cultural, religious,ethical, metaphysical - likely to survive andthrive under free institutions is not conduciveto generating a normative consensus thatwould identify the relevant experts.26

Estlund highlights the expert / boss fallacyin order to block epistemic justifications ofplural voting systems, that is, of systems thatgrant more votes to those better qualified(because better educated) to rule.27 He chooses to ignore children, but the omissionis rather curious in this context. e reason -able rejection standard of political legitimacythat he deploys to vindicate egalitarian democracy by blocking the inference from(2) to (3) seems to cut both ways. On Est-lund’s view, all adults are to have the samevoting rights despite their being differentiallyendowed with political wisdom because suchwisdom is not the basis of justified author ity.Fine, but why should we deprive children ofthe vote on the basis of their relative epistem ic deficits when similar deficits arenot grounds for excluding adults? e argu-ment that vindicates egalitarian democracyfrom Plato’s elitist shadow also casts seriousdoubt on the continued exclusion of chil-dren from the franchise.One way for proceduralists to resist this conclusion would be to identify a thresholdlevel of competence below which childrenare thought to fall. On this satisficing con-ception, voting rights require people to have


A child becomes an adult when herealizes that he has a right not onlyto be right but also to be wrong./ Thomas S. Szasz /

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enough of whatever composite of abilities isrelevant to collective self-rule but, over andabove that amount, differential abilitieswould not translate into unequal entitle-ments. If the legal age of majority is actuallya reliable proxy for that composite, then pro-cedural accounts of democracy may, in theend, justifiably exclude children from thefranchise. Lacking the requisite knowledgeand abilities, children would not countamong those whose reasonable consent wasrequired to justify state power. Subjected toparental authority, they would be as Lockedescribed them - gradually on the way to ac-quiring freedom (including political free-dom) as they developed over time intocompetent reasoners.28

So the central question is this: are childrenunreasonable? Before rushing to the conclu-sion that they most certainly are, there areseveral things to keep in mind. Some of thechildren currently below the legal age of ma-jority in Canada (18) are ‘young persons’, asI’m calling them, between 12-18 years ofage. Many of these children are probablymore computer literate, news savvy and politically sophisticated than their parents,and in a way that makes it likely that theypossess basic abilities to understand and rationally evaluate alternative parties and policies. is seems like a prima facie reasonto lower the voting age to somewherearound 15, perhaps even lower.29 In anyevent, rationality - the ability to relate endsto means in logically consistent and coherentfashion - is not critical to the proceduralist’sstandard of political legitimacy. Failing to berational in that sense will certainly impugna person’s capacity to be autonomous, thatis, to live a partly self-chosen life that’s reflective of one’s fundamental values andcommitments. We examine the connectionbetween personal and political autonomylater in connection with a child’s supposedright to an open future. But personal auto-nomy, itself, is a contested value aboutwhich reasonable people will disagree.30

A child’s right to an open future?For some political philosophers, the centraltask of governments is to help people leaddecent, or ethically valuable, lives.31 Today,such lives are often characterized as person -ally autonomous ones.32 Suppose, then, thatchildren have a moral ‘right to an open future’33, one in which they, rather than theirparents, are to choose the ethical ideals thatguide their lives.34 Distinguishing betweenautonomy as a substantive character ideal

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and autonomy as a set of capacities for criti-cal self-reflection, we could then say, and onthe basis of that supposed right, that parentshave positive duties to foster, and negativeduties not to harm, those capacities. In attributing fairly sophisticated autonomyrights to children, admittedly many ofwhom are not yet capable of exercisingthem, we are not making a fundamental category mistake, as some critics allege.35

Instead, we are only ruling out kinds of violating parental conduct now that will guarantee, or at least make it significantlymore likely, that important options for chil-dren are foreclosed later. So the kind of autonomy that’s invoked here might be calledanticipatory: ”[a child’s] right while he is stilla child is to have these future options keptopen until he is a fully formed self- determiningadult capable of deciding among them“.36

Does children’s political exclusion violatetheir right to an open future? If so, thiswould be problematic for both children anddemocracy, because democratic institutionsare often defended precisely on the groundsthat, under them, personally autonomouslives are likely to flourish.37 ere are severalreasons for thinking that children’s politicaldisenfranchisement might undermine theirinterest in their having futures left sufficiently open. To begin with, there is thecorrelation I hinted at earlier between thatdisenfranchisement and heightened levels ofpoverty and its concomitant miseries. Sincethe young are so disproportionately power-less relative to the elderly, law and policy-makers have very little incentive to takeyoung people’s interests and preferences se-riously. As a result, they are neglected alongvarious dimensions - health, education, andday care, for example - in ways that adverselyimpact the range and quality of optionsopen to them later in life as adults, as well astheir capacities to assess and make use ofthose options. Children’s anticipatory auto-nomy is damaged by adults / parents choos -ing to fund education inadequately, therebydamaging what might be called its internalresources. ere are many different accountsof personal autonomy and, therefore, manydifferent ways of interpreting its anticipatorydimensions. However, any plausible inter-pretation will make personal autonomy acomposite of three distinct conditions: appropriate mental abilities, an adequaterange of options to choose from, and independence from outside manipulationand coercion. Clearly, if a person is to bepartly the author of her own life by choos ing

and pursing projects - relationships, commit -ments, goals - then she must possess a rangeof cognitive skills. She will require, at mini-mum, practical reasoning skills that enableher to conceive of alternative options forchoice. Additionally, she must have themental abilities to form complex intentionsas well as the capacity to comprehend themeans required for the realization of hergoals. Such cognitive skills and mental abilities are clearly damaged by inadequatelyfunded, under-staffed and poorly managededucational systems.

Children’s anticipatory autonomy is alsothwarted by adults / parents pre-committingexpenditures, thus damaging the materialmeans for its exercise. Alongside the cogni-tive capacities necessary for project pursuitand freedom from manipulation and coercion,the final precondition of personal autonomyis an adequate range of options for choice.is adequacy criterion is satisfied primarilythrough variety, and not number, of options.Because choices are guided by reasons, theoptions available for an autonomous indivi-dual must differ enough to rationally affectchoice. To be sufficient for personal auto-nomy, then, an option-set must contain: (1)a plurality of options with (2) distinct opportunities that yield (3) significantly different reasons for choice and, of these (4)at least one and ideally several of them mustbe thought of as worthwhile by the personin question.38 When adults / parents pre-commit public expenditures in ways thatunfairly shift fiscal burdens onto subsequentgenerations, there is the worry that such generations will have their capacities for personal autonomy stunted via a diminishedand impoverished range of choices - social,economic, cultural, recreational, artistic, aesthetic, and so on.

Children’s voting rights: addressing thelingering worriesGranting children the vote is one way toblock uses of parental / political power thatforeclose the anticipatory autonomy of chil-dren in these various ways. On the onehand, there is an obvious flaw with this suggestion, namely, that while anticipatoryautonomy implicates future abilities, the effective and intelligent use of voting rightsdepends upon children’s present capacities to


A child educated only at school is anuneducated child./ George Santayana /

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share in collective self-determination.39

ere is something incoherent about grant -ing ‘rights-in-trust’40 to people (children)whose very capacities to exercise them aredeveloped by having their freedom pater -nalistically limited now. On the other hand,and within limits, children’s present incapa-cities might, themselves, be partially relatedto their political disenfranchisement. In OnLiberty, J.S Mill argues that: “e human faculties of perception, judgment, discrimi-native feeling, mental activity, and evenmoral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice.He gains no practice either in discerning orin desiring what is best. e mental andmoral, like the muscular powers, are improvedonly by being used” [emphasis mine].41

If the capacities for effective democratic par-ticipation track those implicated in chil-dren’s anticipatory autonomy, that is, ifbeing personally autonomous is, in somesense, a constitutive part of what makes someone a good democratic citizen, then weshould not be too quick to point to chil-dren’s relative disabilities to deny them voting rights which we currently grant toadults.42 Why not? Because, if Mill is right,some of those capacities will likely be deve-loped and subsequently improved only byregular use. erefore, one familiar objectioncan be turned on its head: we shouldn’t exclude children because they are incompe-tent; we should include them so they become less so, and much sooner. Childrenhave to grow up; perhaps democracy shouldtoo.is conclusion also reveals a critical but un-noticed flaw in recent proposals for the political enfranchisement of children viaproxy votes. Some philosophers argue that,in order to instantiate genuinely universalsuffrage, parents should be granted pluralvotes, for example, either one extra vote ifthey have minors living with them, or oneextra vote for each minor in their house-hold.43 e idea assumes that children’s interests are best represented by their parentsor whoever is rearing them, given the fairlypredictable workings of affection and natu-ral partiality. e standard objection is that,unfortunately, we cannot count on parentsto effectively represent their children’s inte-rests.44 Because of a variety of factors - selfishness, shortsightedness, irrationality,and ignorance, to mention but a few - theyoften will not do so. But Mill reminds us ofa deeper worry, namely, that empowering

parents (or other indirect strategies for thatmatter, including the guardianship propo-sal) does nothing to address or rectify theunderlying cause of children’s exclusion inthe first place - their relative capability deficits.

ConclusionWhere does all of this leave us? In connect -ion with the franchise, a child’s right to anopen future leads to less decisive conclusionsthan does the procedural understanding ofdemocracy. However, an appropriate solutionto the balance of considerations seems topoint in the direction of a gradualist com-prise, not to a total rejection of the case forlowering the age at which people are legallyentitled to vote. While there is not much tobe said in favour of politically empoweringyoung infants who are as likely to eat, ratherthan mark, a ballot, we should do more thanwe presently do to expedite and facilitatechildren’s full inclusion into the politicalprocess. Aside from encouraging variousforms of democratic participation at homeand in school, we should encourage childrento take a more active interest in the values,processes and results of political decision-making. Lowering the voting age would bea good way of doing so. Nothing in this pro-posal is offensive to the proceduralist argu-ment, because that argument does notdetermine a particular age cut-off. It is alsoconsistent with the essentially evolving nature of childhood.45

Notes1. Estlund 2008.2. Plato 1974.3. Feinberg 1980.4. In the canon of Western political thought,the three most notable exceptions are, ofcourse: Plato 1974; Locke 1964; Rousseau1979. For a comprehensive survey of thegrowing contemporary (Anglophone) litera-ture, see the ‘Bibliographical Essay’, Archard2004: 231-242. I have written about the ethics of upbringing. See Lecce 2008b.5. For an especially clear and succinct state-ment of these tensions and potential contra-dictions, see Schrag 2004.6. Schapiro 1999: For example, Schapiroclaims that childhood is essentially a predi-cament that must be overcome before moralresponsibility can be ascribed to people. SeeArchard 2004 for a very illuminating dis-cussion of how Locke’s picture of children asfledgling but imperfect reasoners is typicalof much contemporary philosophical wri-

ting on childhood.7. Archard 2004: 32.8. e contemporary Western conceptionnow insists upon a sharp distinction bet-ween the behaviour demanded of childrenand that expected of adults. ere is now amarked division of roles and responsibilitiesthat did not always obtain, or at least not ne-arly so sharply. Other non-Western culturestoday also possess the concept of childhood,recognizing as they do a difference betweenchildren and adults, but ”they see childrendiffering from adults in a far less dramaticand obvious fashion than is implied by themodern conception“, Archard 2004: 39.9. Locke 1964.10. Archard 2004: 12.11. Farson 1974; Holt 1974.12. Clayton 2006: 186.13. Archard 2004: 65.14. Dahl 1998: 79.15. Lecce 2003; 2005; 2008a.16. Schrag 2004.17. Schrag 2004: 374.18. Plato 1974: 206-212.19. Estlund 1993/ 2008.20. Estlund 2008: 30.21. Estlund’s examples are the following:”basic literacy, basic knowledge of how one’sgovernment works, some historicalknowledge, knowledge of some variety of ex-tant ways of life in one’s society, someknowledge of economics, some knowledgeof the legal rights and responsibilities of one-self and others, basic knowledge of the con-stitution of one’s political community, andso forth“, Estlund 2008: 212.22. Schumpeter 1976.23. Estlund 2008: 40.24. Estlund 2008: 3.25. Barry 1995; Cohen 1997; Larmore1987; Lecce 2008a; Nagel 1991; Rawls1971; 1993; Scanlon 1998 and see Lecce2008a for analyses of alternative formulati-ons of the liberal principle of political legiti-macy.26. ”Even if some have knowledge, othershave no way of knowing this unless they canknow the same thing by independentmeans, in which case they have no use forthe other’s expertise“, Estlund 1993: 84.27. See Mill 1972 for a liberal justificationof plural voting.28. Locke 1964.29. See, for example, Wahlrecht ohne Altersgrenze? Verfassungsrechtliche, demokra-tietheoretische und entwicklungspsychologischeAspekte, Foundation for the Rights of FutureGenerations 2007, for claims that the ap-


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propriate age should be 12.30. Lecce 2008a.31. Raz 1986.32. Dworkin 1990; Feinberg 1980; Kym-licka 1989; Raz 1986.33. Feinberg 1980.34. See Lecce 2008b for reasons to doubtthat they do have this right, at least as it is ty-pically interpreted.35. Onora O’Neill insists that the way forchildren to overcome their dependence andvulnerability is not to assert their rights butto ‘grow up’. O’Neill 1989: 204.36. Feinberg 1980: 126.37. Dworkin 1990; Kymlicka 1989; Mill1972.38. Lecce 2008a: 106.39. Tremmel 2006; Van Parijs 1999.40. Feinberg 1980: 126.41. Mill 1972: 126.42. Callan 1997; Gutmann 1995.43. Van Parijs 1999.44. Schrag 2004.45. “…children change through the processof intellectual, emotional, and moral deve-lopment from being the sort of creatureswhose interests are protected by rights tobeing the sort of creatures whose rights pro-tect their choices”. Brennan 2002: 54.

ReferencesArchard, David (2004): Children, Rightsand Childhood. 2nd Edition. London:Routledge.

Barry, Brian (1995): Justice as Impartiality.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brennan, Samantha (2002): Children’sChoices or Children’s Interests. Which dotheir Rights Protect? In: Archard, David /MacLeod, Colin (eds.): e Moral and Po-litical Status of Children. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 53-70.

Callan, Eamon (1997): Creating Citizens.Political Education and Liberal Democracy.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Clayton, Matthew (2006): Justice and Legi-timacy in Upbringing. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press.

Cohen, Joshua (1997): Deliberation andDemocratic Legitimacy. In: Bohman, James/ Rehg, William (eds.): Deliberative Demo-cracy. Essays on Reason and Politics. Cam-bridge: MIT Press, 67-92.

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Dahl, Robert A. (1998): On Democracy.New Haven: Yale University Press.

Dworkin, Ronald (1990): e foundationsof liberal equality. In: Peterson, Grethe B.(ed.): e Tanner Lectures on Human Va-lues. Salt Lake City: University of UtahPress, 1-119.

Estlund, David M. (1993): Making TruthSafe for Democracy. In: Copp, David. /Hampton, Jean / Roemer, John (eds): eIdea of Democracy. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, pages? 71-100.

Estlund, David M. (2008): Democratic Aut-hority. A Philosophical Framework.Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp.71-100

Farson, Richard E. (1974): Birthrights. Lon-don: Collier Macmillan.

Feinberg, Joel (1980): e child’s right to anopen future. In: Aiken, William / Lafollette,Hugh (eds): Whose Child? Children’sRights, Parental Authority, and State Power.New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 112-123

Gutmann, Amy (1995): Civic Educationand Social Diversity. In: Ethics. Vol 105,557-579.

Holt, John C. (1974): Escape from Child-hood. e Needs and Rights of Children.Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Kymlicka, Will (1989): Liberalism, Com-munity and Culture. Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press.

Larmore, Charles E. (1987): Patterns ofMoral Complexity. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Lecce, Steven (2003): Contractualism andLiberal Neutrality. A Defence. In: PoliticalStudies. Vol. 51 (3), 524-41.

Lecce, Steven (2005): Should Egalitarians bePerfectionists? In: Politics. Vol. 25 (3), 127-134.

Lecce, Steven (2008a): Against Perfectio-nism. Defending Liberal Neutrality. To-ronto: University of Toronto Press.

Lecce, Steven (2008b): How Political is the

Personal? Justice in Upbringing. In: eoryAnd Research in Education. Vol. 6 (1), 21-46.

Locke, John (1964): Some oughts Con-cerning Education. Edited by F. W. Gar-forth. London: Heinemann. (Originallypublished in 1693)

Mill, John S. (1972): Utilitarianism, On Li-berty and Considerations on RepresentativeGovernment. Edited by H. B. Acton. Lon-don: Everyman.

Nagel, omas (1991): Equality and Partia-lity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.O’Neill, Onora (1989): Constructions ofReason. Exploration of Kant’s Practical Phi-losophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Plato (1974): e Republic. Translated byG. M. A Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett.(Greek original edition Πολιτεία/Politeía.380 BC.)

Rawls, John (1971): A eory of Justice.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Rawls, John (1993): Political Liberalism.New York: Columbia University Press.

Raz, Joseph (1986): e Morality of Free-dom. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1974): Emile, or,On Education. Edited by Allan Bloom. NewYork: Basic Books. (French original edition:Emile ou de l'éducation. 1762.)

Scanlon, omas (1998): What we Owe toEach Other. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-sity Press.

Schapiro, Tamar (1999): What is a Child?In: Ethics. Vol. 109, 715-738.

Schrag, Francis (2004): Children and De-mocracy. eory and Policy. In: Politics,Philosophy & Economics. Vol. 3 (3), 365-379.

Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1976): Capitalism,Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Har-per and Row.

Stiftung für die Rechte zukünftiger Genera-tionen (ed.) (2008): Wahlrecht ohne Alters-grenze? Verfassungsrechtliche, demokratie -


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theoretische und entwicklungspsychologi-sche Aspekte. Munich: oekom Verlag

Tremmel, Joerg C. (2006): Handbook ofIntergenerational Justice. Cheltenham: Ed-ward Elgar.

Van Parijs, Philippe (1999): e Disenfran-chisement of the Elderly, and Other Attemptsto Secure Intergenerational Justice. In: Philo-sophy & Public Affairs. Vol. 27, 292-333.

Submitted: 1 June 2009Accepted after revisions: 12 October 2009

Steven Lecce teachesPolitical eory at theUniversity of Mani-toba, Canada. His research interests in-clude: theories of socialand distributive jus -tice; ethical founda -

tions of liberalism; and children, familiesand the state.

Contact details: Prof. Dr. Steven Lecce,University of Manitoba, 521 Fletcher ArgueBuilding, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V5.

Email: [email protected]


bstract: Changes in social policy inthe United States (US) over the pastfour decades have provided health

insurance for 100 percent of persons over age65 and decreased poverty for this group whilethe number of children in poverty has risen andten million are uninsured. is increasing intergenerational inequity reflects political decisions where children lack a voice. e pur-poses of this paper are to: 1) summarize, fromthe fields of ethics, government, law, social wel-fare and public health, current thinking aboutenfranchisement of children; 2) review the evolution of voting and representation in the USand identify misperceptions about barriers toequitable representation of children; 3) discussthe legal basis for children being regarded asadults and adult proxy decision making forchildren; and 4) suggest strategies to stimulatean equitable system of child representation byaltering our current system of voting.

Analyses of intergenerational inequity:the case for proxy votinge status of children in the US reflects howthey are regarded in the American politicalsystem. Every child born in the US is a citizen and granted equal protection underthe law by the 14th Amendment to the USConstitution. Each child is also counted forapportioning representatives to the USHouse of Representatives as declared in theConstitution. erefore the 75 million chil-dren under the age of 18, representing about

25 percent of the population, should haveconsiderable influence in how policy is madein Congress. However, due to disenfranchise -ment, children’s issues are no match for thepolitical agendas of groups with votingpower.Peterson was one of the first to analyze theconsequences of children’s disenfranchise-ment.2 Using data from 1959 to 1990 hedocumented the steady fall in povertyamong the elderly from 35 percent to 11percent while the poverty rate in children increased from 14 percent to 21 percent. Heanticipated that if children were given theright to vote, substantial changes in healthcare, funding of public schools, and policiesaddressing retirement pensions would result.He concluded, “Benefits to children wouldbecome a matter of right rather than a public benefaction”.3

Paralleling the discrepancy in poverty is theinequity in healthcare. e upcoming(2010) budget for Medicare, which provideshealth insurance for all individuals over age65, is 453 billion dollars. In contrast, the national initiative for insuring low-incomechildren has been funded at five billion dollars annually since 1997 with funding for2010 scheduled to be increased to ten billiondollars. is budget, less than 20 percent ofthe amount Medicare spends on prescriptiondrugs, was considered a major accomplish-ment with passage of the Child Health Insurance Reauthorization Act of 2009, yet

there are still ten million children who willbe uninsured due to the disparity that characterizes healthcare funding.Newacheck highlighted the shift in spendingtoward the elderly that occurred within thelast generation.4 In response to the high poverty rate in the elderly in 1965 there wasa rise in the percent of all social welfare expenditures allocated to the elderly from 21percent to 33 percent by 1986. Howeverthere was a simultaneous decrease in chil-dren’s share of social welfare spending from37 percent to 25 percent. Between 1980 and2000, the gap between the funding of pro-grams for the elderly compared with chil-dren’s programs increased by 20 percent. Heclearly articulates the basis for the inequity:“democracy does not always yield fair results,especially when important segments of thepopulation are disenfranchised from the voting process”.5

Newacheck proposes the federal governmentguarantee children a minimum benefit levelto parallel the support offered to the elderly.While recognizing this would require an in-crease in taxes to more closely reflect the Eu-ropean Union he believes “the country can

Improving Public Policy for Children: A Vote for Each Childby Prof. Dr. Robert H. Pantell and Prof. Dr. Maureen T. Shannon1

A

Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are peoplewhose current needs and rights andexperiences must be taken seriously./ Alfie Kohn /

New Release

e Institute of Development Studies has devoted issue13 (november) 2009 of its "Policy Briefing" to thetopic: Climate Change, Child Rights and Intergenera-tional Justice.

From the cover: "e response to climate change willprofoundly affect the quality of life of future generati-ons of children, yet this intergenerational aspect has yetto be placed at the heart of climate change discussions.A child rights approach to climate change would takethe concerns of intergenerational justice into accountand radically transform the policies and commitmentsof those in power."More information: www.ids.ac.uk

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choose to meet the basic needs of both po-pulations”.6 However, given the insight ofhis previous statement, this seems unlikelywithout addressing directly the core problemof disenfranchisement.Van Parijs developed proposals to promoteintergenerational justice based on several assumptions including that each generationshould make sure the situation of the nextgeneration is no worse than its own.7 iscould occur with “genuine universal suffrage: every member of the population isgiven the right to vote from the very first dayof her life”.8 He recommends granting parentsproxy votes.9

Rutherford provides a foundation for legallyestablishing proxy voting. “Proxies are acommon system for delegating the right tovote. In fact, the entire system of democracycan be seen as giving elected representativesproxies to vote for their constituents”.10 Hercriteria for who should hold a child’s proxyinclude personal familiarity, the child’s access to the representative, accountabilityon the part of the representative and anemotional bond. She argues this is consistentwith existing legislation and the premise thatparents will make decisions in the best interest of their children. In reviewing the constitutionality of proxy voting she citesmany ways in which parents already act asproxies for their children in medical andlegal issues but concludes that the SupremeCourt is unlikely to hold that states shouldextend voting rights to children. She notesthat voters without children comprise 34percent of the population but control 46percent of the vote and argues that this extravoting power dilutes the votes of parents.She concludes that “a law to expand thefranchise to children through proxies wouldbe both desirable and constitutional becauseneither the Constitution nor sound publicpolicy requires that we give disproportionateelectoral power to childless individuals”.11

Proxy voting has also been advancedthrough writings examining a broader approach to improve the status of children.Hewlett and West advocate a pro-familyelectoral system that would give parents incentives to vote through mechanisms suchas waving fees for drivers’ licenses and providing monetary bonuses for parents receiving public assistance.12 ey also statethat “serious consideration should be givento the suggestion that parents be given theright to vote on behalf of their children”.13

Aber, contributing to a monograph focusingon ‘big ideas’ to improve the well-being of

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children, advocates proxy voting, “I can thinkof no other single act which, if achieved,would more dramatically change the ‘politi-cal economy’ of children’s issues than to enable parents/legal guardians to vote fortheir children”.14

Despite substantial writing on intergenera-tional inequity resulting from children’s disenfranchisement, there has yet to be movement towards change. is may in partbe due to misperceptions about who gets tovote and who decides who gets to vote. efollowing section provides a brief historicaloverview and some common misperceptionsabout US voting.

Voting in the United Statese history of voting in the US is one ofstruggling to achieve ever increasing repre-sen tation. While a rallying cry of the Ame-rican Revolution was ‘No taxation withoutrepresentation’ and the Declaration of Inde-pendence called for ‘equal representation forall’, the path to universal representation hasbeen a slow, difficult and often violent struggle that still excludes the 75 millionchildren constituting a quarter of the popu-lation. Although free elections are the hallmark of a true democracy, the Constitu-tion did not guarantee voting rights to its citizens but in 1789 granted decision-ma-king about voting to the thirteen states.15

How ever, the way in which representativesto Congress were apportioned was specified.All ‘free persons’, including women and children, were to be counted. Slaves were in-cluded as ‘three fifths of all other persons’ asthey were considered both property and

persons. is was done to assure slave hold -ing states were not under-represented andwould therefore vote to ratify the Constitu-tion. e Census was established to countthe population every ten years for apportion -ment to remain accurate.Voter qualifications, established by eachstate, were fairly uniform; only white maleproperty owners over the age of 21 wouldhave the right to chose representatives. eage of 21 was a holdover from the MiddleAges in England because males of that agecould wear armor and therefore were eligiblefor knighthood. Some states allowed thoseunder 21 who fought in the militia during

the Revolutionary War to vote. However,the majority of soldiers, at any age, couldnot cast a ballot even if they had taken a bullet to establish the right to have an elected government because they did notown property. Neither could Catholics, Jewsnor Quakers vote. Over the next century states changed voterrequirements so that virtually all white malesover 21 years of age could vote. e postCivil War amendments prohibited statesfrom denying voting privileges to former slaves under penalty of losing representativesin Congress. However, starting in the late19th century states found ways to limit voting by requiring literacy tests which wereable to exclude voting by former slaves in thesouth or Irish immigrants in Massachusettsand Connecticut. Poll taxes and judgmentsof moral fitness by election workers werealso methods used to eliminate votingrights.16 A number of states (Wyoming in1910, New York in 1917) allowed voting bywomen before the 21st Amendment was ratified August 18, 1920. Widespread disenfranchisement of African-Americans insouthern states resulted in the Voting RightsAct of 1965 and 1970 which prohibited barriers to voting including poll taxes and literacy tests. ere was also growing pres-sure to allow voting by 18-21 year olds sincemany soldiers serving in the Viet Nam Warhad access to the cartridge box but not theballot box. e 1970 Voting Rights Act lowered the age of voting to 18, but waschallenged by several states. In Oregon v.Mitchell (400 US 112 [1970]), the SupremeCourt held that Congress did not have theright to set the age for state elections, butcould for federal elections, allowing 18 yearolds to vote for the president. Confrontingtwo sets of registration procedures (for national and for state elections) the statesquickly ratified the 26th amendment lower -ing the voting age to 18. e importance ofvoting rights is underscored by the fact thatsince ratification of the Bill of Rights in1791, nine of the subsequent 17 constitutio-nal amendments address electoral policies.

Voting misperceptionsPerhaps the leading myth is that the Constitution guarantees the rights of citizensto vote. It does not. e Constitution sets thequalifications for office holders but criteria forwho votes for them are set by states and localdistricts. Constitutional amendments haveensured that groups are not excluded fromvoting in state or federal elections.


We cannot solve the problems wehave created with the same thinkingthat created them./ Albert Einstein /

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It is erroneous that age qualifications ensurevoting by mature/responsible individuals.e argument for what indicates a responsi-ble voter has been progressively changed asstates shed the rule that only propertyowners could vote and constitutionalamendments recognized the abilities andrights of slaves, women and 18 year olds tocast ballots. In addition, individuals with cognitive or psychiatric impairment are permitted to vote in all 50 states. Sevenstates have no provision to exclude personson account of mental disability, 34 excludeonly those who have been declared legallyincompetent while eight have electoral lawsthat are vague or unlikely to be enforceable

(in one state a person must be of ‘quiet andpeaceable behavior’ several states exclude‘idiots’). Only one state has an affirmativestatute stating that all developmentally disabled persons are eligible to vote.Another myth is that citizenship is requiredto vote. As districts can set qualifications forlocal elections a number of districts in citieswith large immigrant population such asChicago and New York have granted non-citizens the right to vote in school boardelections. In 1991 a Maryland communityallowed non-citizens the right to vote. eselocal decisions have been upheld by thecourts.Prisoners and ex-felons are not necessarilyexcluded from voting. e Constitutionignores a criminal’s ”right to vote except fornot reducing states“ congressional represen-tation for disenfranchising citizens partici-pating ”in rebellion, or other crime“.States retain the authority to grant votingprivileges to current or former prisoners.With 2,3 million prisoners and 4,9 millionon probation or parole, this issue has beenwidely addressed with substantial changes inthe past decade. In another example of intergenerational injustice, there is currentlygreater advocacy for enfranchising adultsconvicted of crimes against children thanthere is for enfranchising children.Another misperception is that ‘one personone vote’ is the law of the land and thereforeproxy voting cannot happen. e concept of‘one person one vote’ was first put forwardin a 1962 Supreme Court decision (Baker vCarr) addressing legislative apportionment

and re-affirmed in a series of related cases in1963-64.17 None of these cases addressespersons with no vote (children), nor whethera proxy could deliver their vote. Ironically,in the apportionment process, children arecounted as persons when allocating represen -tatives to Congress. e ‘one person onevote’ concept was summarized by Bennett,“Despite the slogan, the apportionment de-cisions were not about the assignment of asingle vote to each voter”.18 Rutherford takesan even stronger position: “If, however, chil-dren are viewed as persons with a right to berepresented in the political process, then theprinciple of one person, one vote authorizes,if not requires, such proxies”.19

Another myth is that persons under 18 arelegally barred from the electoral system.Teenagers and younger children can volun-teer in campaigns. In addition the SupremeCourt in 2003 (McConnell v. Federal Elec-tion Commission) overturned a section ofthe 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform ActLaw by permitting persons less than 18 yearsold to participate in the electoral process bycontributing money to candidates. erehave been bills introduced in twelve states tolower the voting age. None has been successful. However, 18 states now allow 17year olds to vote in primary elections if theywill be 18 by the time of the subsequent general election. is, in effect, gives 17 yearolds the vote in certain situations, such aswhen a political party dominates voting ina district or a candidate runs without an opponent from another political party.

Legal basis for child enfranchisementWhile persons under 18 years old cannotvote they are treated as adults by the crimi-nal justice system with many states prosecut -ing and sentencing juveniles as young as age14 as adults. Until 2004, 16 year olds couldbe sentenced to execution. Persons under 18are also granted many other legal rights thatrequire ‘adult’ judgment. Eight year oldsneed to give assent for participating inhuman experimentation; twelve year oldscan obtain hunting licenses enabling themto carry loaded weapons; without parentalinvolvement children can consent to certainmedical treatments (sexually transmitted infections) at any age; if a legally emancipa-ted minor they can consent to medical pro-cedures; they can serve in the military at age17; and while most states set the legal age formarriage at 18, several allow it legally at 16and all allow substantially lower ages of marriage (as low as 13) with parental consent.

Finally, all children pay sales, local, state andfederal income taxes at the same rate asadults. Unfortunately, for children, the concept of taxation without representationcontinues to be a reality.Parents are responsible for overseeing theirchild’s growth, development and well-beingand are given legal rights over decisions regarding their children such as signing legalcontracts. Also, they are held accountable fortheir child’s well-being and there are legalconsequences for failures in responsible parenting. ere is a long legal (and moral)tradition that allows parents to make proxydecisions for their child. Allowing parents tomake proxy decisions for their child in electing officials or voting on public policiescould be considered in this tradition. It hasbeen argued that parents given proxy votesfor a child might not vote for what is in thechild’s best interest. While this may be true,it also applies to every decision a parentmakes for a child from those legally grantedto parents (e.g. the right to commit a childto a mental institution) to financial decisions(e.g. choosing a college based on the cost oftuition rather than the school’s ability toprovide the best education suitable to thechild’s needs and abilities).

Strategies for ReformWhile this paper focuses on children’s disenfranchisement in the US it is surprisingthere has not been greater international attention to the issue since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of theChild, ratified by 193 countries (but not theUS or Somalia) states in article 12 “Partiesshall assure to the child who is capable offorming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the childbeing given due weight in accordance withthe age and maturity of the child”. While Semashko advocates children’s suffrage in ananalysis focusing on the Russian Constitu-tion,20 only Germany has taken action with43 members of the German Parliament sub-mitting a bill in August 2008 to give parentsproxy voting rights for their children. As fora lower voting age, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Somalia and Nicaragua have 16 as a votingage while East Timor, Indonesia, Sudan,North Korea set the age at 17.Despite proposals to increase children’s representation summarized in this paper, theidea has not gained traction. It is unlikely,given the current international economiccrisis, that this will become a priority in the


The greatest truth must be recogni-tion that in every man, in every childis the potential for greatness./ Robert F. Kennedy /

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next few years. Nevertheless, it remains asimportant to work towards increasing the visibility of children’s enfranchisement as securing voting rights has been for other historically disenfranchised groups. Bennettargues that ignoring children’s enfranchise-ment, an idea with “such normative appealand one with great potential to change thepattern of public policy decisions”,21 is dueto complacency with American democracy.While the Civil War and Viet Nam Warwere sentinel events underpinning changesin the voting rights of slaves and persons 18-21 respectively, securing woman’s suffrage inthe US took more than seventy years fromthe 1848 issuance of e Declaration ofSentiments in Seneca Falls. e timeframefor achieving women’s suffrage may havebeen even longer without the conceptuali-zation and framing of women’s right to voteas a fundamentally important and just issueof gender equity combined with the persistence of those who believed in thisright.To achieve equity in enfranchising all citizens,including children, we propose four corestrategies.

- Proxy voting: parents/guardians shouldhave the right to represent each child in thevoting process. e process of allocatingproxy rights would be a matter of decisionby each state (or country) and a variety ofscenarios are likely including allocating 1/2vote to each legally responsible parent withodd number of children and single parentsgetting one vote for each child. Administra-tive processes are already in place to identifythe legally responsible guardian for purposesof taxes, schooling and medical-decision making and could form the basis for deter-mining who holds a child’s proxy vote. Special situations such as foster care and institutionalized children would need to beaddressed. Parents/guardians should havethe right to allow children to vote on theirown above a certain age. is would parallelparents’ abilities to permit their children tomarry as governed by state marriage laws.- Lower voting age: follow the lead of somecountries by lowering the voting age for all chil-dren to age 16. An alternate proposal would beto set a specific age (e.g. 16 or 17) or have evi-dence of completing three or four years of highschool education, whichever is achieved first.

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- Facilitate voting: given the additional timeconstraints involved in raising children, providing polling sites in all schools anddaycare centers would increase accessibilityto voting by parents and guardians of minorchildren. is would also facilitate voting bystudents granted the right to vote. Additio-nal monetary incentives can be given to parents to vote as suggested by Hewlett andWest22 and mirroring the cost transfers discussed by Aber.23

- Monetary consequences: children are clearly in the position of American colonistsprior to the Revolutionary War in terms ofbeing taxed without representation. Elimi-nating taxes for goods purchased for and/orby children without enfranchisement is asuggestion with historic underpinnings.

Potential inequities created by proxy voting.While enfranchising children would be astep towards intergenerational justice, nochange is without consequence and there isthe potential for creating other inequities.e foremost concern would be to increasethe inequities between rich and poor chil-dren. It is well established that voting ratesare influenced by socioeconomic status. erefore parents in higher socioeconomicgroups would have even greater power toimplement a political agenda than parentsin lower socioeconomic categories. Furthermore, single mothers, who have thehighest rate of poverty, have on averagefewer children than two parent families. isfactor could also shift voting patterns favor -ing more affluent two parent families. Nevertheless, it might be expected that thecommon concern of rich and poor, singleand two parent families, would be to ensurethe current and future well-being of theirchildren.

Translating ideas into actionWhile there are many voices speaking aboutenfranchising children they do not seem tobe speaking to each other and they are notspeaking collectively. Historically, sentinelevents have often been the impetus to over-coming the inertia that accompanies the‘good idea’ phase of a movement. Upheavalssuch as the Civil War directly enfranchisedslaves while the Viet Nam War did the samefor 18-21 year olds. Events such as the Seneca Falls Convention for women’s suffrage24, and the less well-orchestratedevents such as Rosa Park’s refusal to acquiesceto segregation on a public bus25 or the

refusal to tolerate police harassment at theStonewall Inn encounter that galvanized thegay rights movement26 are examples of defining events in launching social change.We believe it unlikely that a spontaneoussingular event or social movement is aboutto happen. erefore, we advocate emulat -ing the approach that launched women’s enfranchisement,27 by holding a summit ofinvited participants that would includescholars in social welfare, education, health,law, ethics, economics, journalists, advocacygroups, parents, religious organizations; boysand girls clubs, organizations with experiencein ‘framing’ social movements; and, impor-tantly, children. Also critical would be involving groups likely to oppose expandingthe franchise to children. e goal would beto initiate a public dialogue about consider -ing children’s enfranchisement not as a novelidea but a logical step in guaranteeing uni-versal suffrage to all persons and establishingintergenerational justice.Another goal could be to identify potentialavenues for progress where there has been related success. One potential would be tobuild on the success of enfranchising non-citizens with children in local school boardelections. Building upon the logic that formed the basis for this electoral reform, itcan be argued that parents should haveproxy votes in such elections as it bears directly on the education and well-being oftheir children. Another incremental strategywould be to have a state that currently grants17 year olds voting rights in primaries lowerthe voting age for general elections.

ConclusionIn spite of the pressing need for economicand healthcare reform that has been magni-fied by the current economic crisis, weshould not become apathetic to the interge-nerational inequity that exists for children. Acontinuing decline in the political voice ofchildren means a continuing decline in thestatus of children. is should not be the legacy of this generation. While this paper

has frequently highlighted intergenerationalinequity, the most persuasive argument forchildren’s enfranchisement is that it is thefair thing to do and, therefore, should beand can be done.


“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” / Abraham Lincoln /

The greatest Glory of a free-bornPeople is to transmit that Freedom totheir Children/ William Havard /

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Notes:1. is paper was presented in part at the annual meeting of the Pediatric AcademicSocieties in Boston on May 4, 2009. We aregrateful for the opportunity to have discus-sed ideas in this paper with many individualsparticularly Laura Rosenbury, professor oflaw, Washington University School of Law,Saint Louis and John Takayama, associateprofessor UCSF. Inspiration was providedby Kate Pantell who graduated from NewYork University School of Law in 1909 butwas not allowed to vote for another eightyears.2. Peterson 1992.3. Peterson 1992: 171.4. Newacheck 2004.5. Newacheck 2004: 145.6. Newacheck 2004: 145.7. Van Parijs 1998.8. Van Parijs 1998: 17.9. From a child welfare perspective Duncanagrees that the political system fails to pro-vide a mechanism to represent children’s in-terests (Duncan, 2003). Concerned with thehigh number of children in poverty (14 mil-lion in 1991) he argued that in order to endchildhood poverty, children must have theright to representation in order to ensuretheir interests are protected. Imig questionswhy the richest nation in the world couldrank next to last among developed nations inchild poverty without evolving a social move-ment to improve the status of children (Imig,2006). He argues that while US Americansagree that children are in trouble, there is noagreed upon master frame defining the plightof children or what needs to be done. Bennettalso believes that children’s disenfranchisementhas a substantial impact on public policy. Headvances the idea that for meaningful repre-sentation of children parents should have extravotes (Bennett, 2000) and that this principle“is grounded in the liberal vision and its basicbelief that politics is about adding up privateinterests, though it is republican in its faith thatat least part of the accounting can be accom-plished by the representation of the interest ofone by another”.10. Rutherford 1998: 1502.11. Rutherford 1998: 1516.12. Hewlett and West 1999.13. Hewlett and West 1999: 240.14. Aber 2008.15. Amendments to the Constitution since1789 have not changed the fundamentalright of the states to determine voting qualifications but have denied the rights ofstates to discriminate based on a class of

individuals (race, women, 18-21 year olds).16. A brief history of the origin and abo-lishment of poll taxes can be found atwww.usdoj.gov/crt/voting.17. Despite these rulings, in the current elec-toral college system, a Wyoming resident hasfour times the voting power as a resident inTexas in selecting the President.18. Bennett, 2000: 9.19. Rutherford, 1998: 1516.20. Semashko, 2004 21. Bennett, 2000: 41.22. Hewlett and West 1999.23. Aber 2008: 201.24. is convention, held in Seneca Falls,New York in July 1948, produced the firstdocument demanding the right to vote forwomen.25. Rosa Parks became a symbol of the civilrights movement when on December 1,1955 she refused a bus driver’s request to va-cate her seat for a white passenger in Mont-gomery, Alabama.26. Following a June 28, 1969 raid by policeon the Stonewall Inn in New York a seriesof riots ensued protesting police hostility to-wards homosexuals. is is regarded as laun-ching the gay rights movement.27. See endnote 24.

ReferencesAber, J. Lawrence (2008): A Big, New In-vestment in America’s Poorest (and Youn-gest?) Children: Conditional Cash Transfers.In: Big Ideas for Children. Investing In OurChildren’s Future. First Focus: WashingtonD.C. Pp 192-202.

Bennett, Robert (2000): Should Parents BeGiven Extra Votes on Account of eirChildren?: Toward a Conversational Under-standing of American Democracy. North-western Law Review vol 94 2: 2000 pg 9:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers. cfm?ab-stract_id=186071.

Duncan, Lindsey. Why Children ShouldHave a Vote (2003): http://www.childwel-fare.com/Kids/kidsvote.htm.Viewed 29 Fe-bruary 2008

Hewlett, Sylvia Ann/ West, Cornel (1999):e War Against Parents. Boston Massa-chusetts: Houghton Mifflin.

Imig, Doug (2006): Building a Social Mo-vement for America’s Children. In: Journalof Children and Poverty. Vol. 12 (1/2006),21-37(17).

Newacheck, Paul / Benjamin, A. (2004): In-tergenerational Equity and Public Spending.In: Health Affairs. Vol. 23 (5/2004), 142-146.

Peterson, Paul (1992): An Immodest Proposal.In: Daedalus. Vol. 121 (4/1992), 151-174.

Rutherford, Jane (1998): One Child, OneVote: Proxies for Parents. Minneapolis, MN:Minnesota Law Review.

Semashko, Leo. Electronic Journal of Socio-logy (2004): Children's Suffrage as a KeyWay of Improvement of Children's Well-being in an Age of Globalization. www.sociology.org. Viewed 17 June 2008.

Van Parijs, Philippe (1998): e Disfran-chisement of the Elderly, and Other At-tempts to Secure Intergenerational Justice.Philosophy & Public Affairs (Fall 1998),292-333.

Submitted: 1 August 2009Accepted after revisions: 15 November 2009

Robert H. Pantell, is aprofessor of pediatrics,at the University ofCalifornia, San Fran-cisco.

Contact Details:3333 California StreetSan Francisco, CA 94143-0503E-mail: [email protected]

Maureen T. Shannon,is an associate professorand Frances A. Mat-suda Chair in Wo-men's Health at theUniversity of Hawai`iat Mãnoa

Contact Details:2528 McCarthy MallWebster Hall 402Honolulu, HI 96822email: [email protected]


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On Behalf of Children? The Plural Voting System in Belgium –from 1893 to 1919by Prof. Dr. Laurent de Briey, Aurélie Héraut and Elise Ottaviani

he voting rights of children have received renewed attention in recentyears. One idea being discussed is

to allow legal representatives to exercise thisright by proxy from the day the child is bornuntil he/she reaches the legal voting age. econcept behind vicariously exercising chil-dren’s voting rights - ChiVi1 - is supportedin the academic literature by political scien-tist Paul Peterson (1992) and sociologistStein Ringen (1997). Several publications2

have also dealt with the arguments in its favour as well as the objections raised. Recently, there have been attempts to estab -lish ChiVi in the political arena, too. In Germany, a bill was introduced to the Bun-des tag in 2003 by 47 MPs from a range ofpolitical parties but it was eventually turneddown.is short article primarily deals with histo-rical examples: a legal system existed in Bel-gium between 1893 and 1919 which did infact permit fathers to cast several votes.In 1893, Belgium opted for ‘universal malesuffrage tempered by the plural voting system’. e new article 47 of Belgium’sConstitution stated that all men had theright to vote, with up to two additional votesbeing granted to some categories of the po-pulation. One additional vote was grantedto fathers over 35 years of age who ownedaccommodation costing at least 5 Belgianfrancs in taxes, as well as the owners of realestate (worth at least Belgian 2,000 francs)and those who earned at least 1,000 Belgianfrancs. A third vote was also granted to thosewho held a university degree or a secondaryschool certificate. ese requirements wererelatively restrictive: around 20 percent ofthe 1.4 million voters had two votes andaround 15 percent of them had three votes.In practice - except for the exemption ofwomen - the ChiVi and the Belgian pluralvoting system lead to a similar outcomewhereby fathers can in fact vote severaltimes. However, the plural voting system isbased on principles which are opposed tothose of the ChiVi.Universal suffrage tempered by plural votingis a hybrid system. It originates from a com-promise between supporters of universal

suffrage, who were helped along by workers’strikes and conservative circles, concernedwith maintaining the privileges that the suffrage granted to the favoured social classes(based on capabilities and on ownership ofproperty/tax assessment).3

Political rights versus civil rightsSupporters of this system also underline thespecific nature of political rights in oppositionto civil rights. Usually political rights areconsidered as ‘functional rights’. Citizens arenot granted these rights in their own interestand for their own satisfaction, rather theyhave to exercise them ‘in the interest of thestate’ or at least according to their percept ionof this interest. Citizens exercise, by meansof these rights, the functions they have beeninvested with by the Constitution.4 As far asthe right to vote is concerned, the functio-nality of this system consists of one majorfactor – taking part in the nomination of political authorities. According to the supporters of the plural voting system suffrage is an importantfunction, so obtaining it requires some abilities and competencies.5 is is a justifi-cation for giving the most competent peoplein society increased electoral weight. Conse-quently those with higher levels of educationwere able to exercise up to three votes each.Real or personal property was seen as proofof a certain financial independence and anability to administer one’s goods. is meantthat the owner, by means of the taxes paid,contributed to public finances. is provid -ed legitimate grounds for one to be able toinfluence the administration of public finances. Moreover, because the right to votewas deemed as a function, it was made com-pulsory in 1893. e additional vote granted to the head ofthe family functions via the same logic. A family is conceived of as a fundamental so-cial reality, which deserves to be representedas such. However, the system was not intend -ed to allow the father to represent his wifeand children. As specified by article 47,which describes the additional financial re-quirements, it is justified through the imageof the father as an administrator, who is used

to take into consideration the interests of several people and whose behaviour is honourable.In the then parliamentary debates, the onlyexplicit mention of children’s representationby their parents is an a contrario argumentagainst the thesis of equality put forward bysupporters of universal suffrage. Catholic deputy Auguste Beernaert conceived that, “ifthe absolute right to vote could be admittedon grounds of political equality, it should beenforced with all its consequences. Womenand children would also have their say. How -ever, the father would exercise the child’sright, such as for the civil rights. e fatherwould also exercise the woman’s right”.6

e differences between the Belgian plural voting right and the ChiViConversely, the most interesting argumentin favour of the ChiVi is one which intendsto establish a real universal suffrage by ma-king a distinction between the right to voteand the exercise of that right. According tothe universality of suffrage, the right to voteshould be granted to every citizen from theday of his/her birth. However, suffrage shouldno longer be assimilated as a function, but asan individual right which should be handledin the same way as civil rights: when a childis unable to exercise his/her right himself/herself, his/her legal representative shouldexercise it in his/her name. In reality, the principle of ChiVi came closerto being put into practice in France than inBelgium. Several bills were seriously discussedby the French between World War I andWorld War II. ey aimed at enforcing fulluniversal suffrage through family voting. Ofnote the National Assembly almost adoptedthe following bill in 1923, proposed byM.H. Roulleaux-Dugage: “Article 2: e personal exercise of the rightto vote belongs to all French citizens, menand women, who are at least 21 years old.Article 3: e father exercises the right tovote for himself, for his legitimate, naturalor recognized children, male or female.”7

In actuality, although these voting systemsare based on opposite principles, the ChiVisuffers from its similarity to the plural vot ing

T

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system. It produces a reactionary aspectwhile the ChiVi intends to push further thelogic of the universality of suffrage. e factremains that, in practice, it results in an inequality between citizens when it comesto casting votes. is inequality mainly ex-plains why the ChiVi has found difficultygaining support.

Notes1. Grötzinger 2001.2. Hinrichs 2002, 2007; and de Briey 2007,among others.3. See Pilet 2007: 23.4. Delpérée 2000: 152-155.5. Chambre des représentants de Belgique,1892-1893: 797-1176.6. Chambre des représentants de Belgique,1892-1893: 797-1176.7. Toulemon 1933: 125.

References: Chambre des représentants de Belgique(1893): Annales parlementaires, ordinarysessions 1892-1893, sessions from February28th to April 14th: 797-1176.

de Briey, Laurent, Vanderborgh, Yannick(2001): Le suffrage universel intégral. In: LeSoir (12 Jan 2001).

de Briey, Laurent (2007): Droit de vote desenfants par procuration. In: Bourdeau, Vin-cent, Merrill, Roberto (dir.), DicoPo, Dicti-onnaire de théorie politique, http://www.dicopo.org.

Ringen, Stein (1997): Citizens, Families,and Reform. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Toulemon, André (1933): Le suffrage fami-lial ou suffrage universel intégral. Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey.

About the authors : Prof. Dr. Laurent de Briey is assistant pro-fessor in philosophy, Faculty of Economics,Social Sciences and Business Administra-tion, University of Namur

Aurélie Héraut is junior researcher in Con-stitutional Law Research Centre on the Stateand the Constitution, Catholic Universityof Louvain

Elise Ottaviani is junior researcher at thePermanent Centre for Citizenship and Participation (Centre Permanent pour la Citoyenneté et la Participation – CPCP)

Corresponding author: Prof. Dr. Laurent de BrieyFaculty of Economics, Social Sciences andBusiness AdministrationUniversity of NamurRempart de la Vierge, 85000 NamurBelgium

E-Mail : [email protected]

is article did not undergo peer-review.


Delpérée, Francis (2000): Le droit constitu-tionnel de la Belgique. Bruxelles: Bruylant.

Deutscher Bundestag (2004): Plenarproto-koll 15/102, 1. April 2004. Berlin: 92699280.

Deutscher Bundestag (2005): Plenarproto-koll 15/178, 2. June 2005. Berlin: 1683816849.

Grözinger, Gerd (2001): Proxy Votes forChildren and the Case for Representation,Deliberation, Sustainability: One Size FitsAll? Flensburg: Mimeo.

Hinrichs, Karl (2002): Is EnfranchisingChildren a Good Idea? In: European Jour-nal of Sociology. Vol. 43, 35-38.

Hinrichs, Karl (2007): Faut-il accorder ledroit de vote aux enfants? In: Revue philo-sophique de Louvain. Vol. 105, 42-76.

Moiné, Willy (1970): Résultat des électionsbelges entre 1847 et 1914. Bruxelles: Insti-tut belge de sciences politiques.

Peterson, Paul E. (1992): An immodest pro-posal. In: Daedalus, 151-174.

Pilet, Jean-Benoît (2007): Changer pourgagner? Les réformes des lois électorales enBelgique. Bruxelles: Editions de l’Universitéde Bruxelles.

New book release

is three-part book explores the situationof young people of today in comparison totheir direct predecessors. e first part, eFinancial Situation of the Young Generationin a Generational Comparison, deals with thisgeneration’s financial standing; the secondpart, e Rush Hour of Life, examines theirtime restrictions. Both are considered froma life-course perspective. e third part, Onthe Path to Gerontocracy?, addresses the de-mographic shift in favor of the elderly inaging Western democracies.

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Priscilla Alderson: Young Children’s Rights. Exploring Beliefs, Principles and PracticeReviewed by Alessy Beaver

hilst twenty years have passedsince the United Nations crea-ted created the Convention on

the Rights of the Child (CRC), its influenceon the civil, political, economic, social andcultural rights of children is still a hot topicof debate. Of the body of literature thatexists on the subject, few works have focusedspecifically on the impact for the very youngest in society. Priscilla Alderson’s latestbook - an updated edition of her 2000 publication Young Children’s Rights - makesa welcome exception, offering a brief over-view of how the implementation of theCRC has affected British children 8 yearsold and under. e book is designed to coverthe basic inalienable rights children are entitled to in accordance with the Conven-tion, with particular focus on the ‘3 Ps’; protection, provision and participation. Aswell as providing a solid introduction to thesubject area the book also presents the casefor greater involvement of, and consultationwith children in private and public sphereto ensure their needs and interests are adequately represented. e book opens with an examination of the‘3 Ps’. Chapter 1 deals with the right to provision by succinctly setting out the standards of care and consultation Britishchildren are entitled to in accordance withthe UNCRC. is includes a brief overviewof issues such as health care, education, childcare and living and working standards. Alderson argues in favour of a more meaningful consultation process betweenyoung children and adults to ensure appro-priate standards of care are set that reflect theneeds and desires of both parties. She believ esthis is required to avoid adult-centric poli-cies and child based exclusion from the decision making process on the basis of perceived lack of agency and capacity. ereader is provided with several good reasonsto believe that children are capable of play-ing an important part in determining theirown care, with a number of well chosen casestudies supporting this hypothesis. From athree year old diabetic who is able to moni-tor her own blood sugar levels to children inRajasthan who set up their own night

school, the reader is offered a compellingevidence for the empowerment of childrenas determiners of their own welfare. Chapter 2 tackles the issue of children’s pro-tection rights through an examination of theethical, social and financial implications oftheir implementation. Alderson cites a rangeof data highlighting the need for greater protection for the countless millions of vul-nerable children worldwide. With well chosen evidence showing the alarming num-ber of young people living in precarious conditions, who face the daily prospect ofabuse, exploitation, discrimination, peopletrafficking and extreme poverty the moralforce of Alderson’s claim for increased pro-tection appears hard to refute. With refe-rence to the ‘Every Child Matters’ govern mentGreen Paper, Alderson suggests that state le-gislation should reflect a baseline whichstarts with every child being at risk, ratherthan assumed safe. is is not offered as amerely idealistic proposal; Alderson is morethan ready to consider the practical difficul-ties of its implementation. To begin with thelevel of bureaucracy required to execute thisbaseline could be problematic, especiallywhen it comes to reconciling the right toprivacy with universal application. For ex-ample, the right to security and protectioncould be seen conflict with the equally

inalienable right to non-interference (articles16.1 and 16.2 UNCRC) when, as has beenproposed in the UK, the creation of databases and vetting procedures supportingthese protective measures contravene thebasis of familial privacy. Other cases of over-protection are also referenced, including theinternational labour market, where overlyzealous protective measures have served tolimit children’s working opportunities, thereby push ing them into more precariousforms of labour such as begging and sexwork. Again this point seems to reiterate thekey message of the chapter that a meaning-ful counter-balance between children’s entitlements to security and exercise of basicfreedoms is required to ensure protectionrights are not counterproductive.In addition to presenting a powerful case forrespecting children’s provision and protec-tion rights, Alderson tackles the more con-tentious issue of whether children shouldhave active participation rights in chapter 3.Alderson argues that greater respect for chil-dren’s views is necessary in familial, publicand policy fields to ensure children are notoverlooked or excluded from opportunitiesand resources. is point is continued inchapter 4 where Alderson examines what shesees as the route of children’s omission fromthe sphere of adult’s right; traditional per-ceptions of ‘children’ and the constructionof ‘childhood.’ Alderson argues that childrenhave been too rigidly defined in legislativeand familial circles to adequately representtheir worth, dignity and agency, which hasled to their exclusion from certain autono-mous rights. She says that respect for chil-dren and their capabilities can only beachieved through deconstructing the mythsand normative conceptions which have resulted in their initial misrepresentationand exclusion. In comparing the plight of children’s rightsto that of standpoint feminism, Aldersonconvincingly argues that children’s exclusionfrom the ‘we’ of society closely mirrors thatof women who were previously barred fromaspects of public life due to arbitrary and erroneous assessments pertaining to theircompetence and ability. Alderson suggests it

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is necessary for society to deconstruct therhetoric, language and perceptions of child-hood in much the same way as it was im-portant to re-conceptualize gender. Key tothis is recognising children as full-humanbeings, rather than sub-people, who shouldhave access to a full range of rights, not onthe basis of age, but because of their person-hood. Chapter 5 provides a brief synopsis of thecase for and against the consultation of chil-dren, drawing on the work of Professor Free-man, University College London. In turnthis includes an examination of how the pro-cess of consultation advocated throughoutthe book can be reconciled with rights ofchildren to be protected from the adultworld. rough providing a list of usefulstarting points for debate, Alderson challenges readers to reconsider their ownposition and common beliefs about the rolechildren should play in the consultation process. Alderson believes that regardless ofthe side of the debate the reader sympathiseswith, there needs to be a greater emphasison trusting children’s capabilities to ensurethey are not excluded from decisions whichaffect them directly.Leading on from the merits of consultingchildren, chapters 6 and 7 consider the appropriate means and levels of involvingchildren in this process. Alderson argues thatthe consultation process itself is fraught withpractical barriers including time restraints,language obstacles, skill deficits, managing awork/play mix, which complicates the process of involving children. Drawing onthe work of other authors in the field, in-cluding Miller, Treseder and Morrow, Alderson presents a range of appropriatemeasures to facilitate work and communi-cation with young children in order to increase their level of involvement. Aldersonclaims that a wider level of adult and childparticipation can only be achieved throughgaining confidence and experience in theconsultation process. Chapter 8 considers how children can be actively involved in sharing decisions and responsibility for matters which directly affect their own wellbeing. Alderson claimsyoung children are capable of making ratio-nal decisions even when presented with awide range of information and that thisshould serve as a justification for their involvement in major personal decisions.She cites examples such as health care wherehospital staff are increasingly allowing chil-dren to make autonomous decisions concern -

ing their treatment. Alderson fiercely rebukesthose who claim children lack the moralsense to take part in such decisions, claimingit is adults rather than children who havedifficulty delineating between right andwrong. Chapter 9 provides a succinct summary ofAlderson’s research and findings. It reitera-tes the key objections to children having fullautonomous rights (can not/shouldnot/must not) whilst offering valuable coun-ter arguments, which are detailed throug-hout the case studies and evidence listed inher book. Alderson sees our functionalist society as the main barrier to progress on therights issues, stating that people are unlikelyto be critical of present inequalities if thestructure of society best suits their interests.She believes that the best way to promote amoral and just order is to move towards theCRC’s vision of “inherent dignity and in -alienable rights for all members of the humanfamily.” Alderson states that the focus on theCRC is crucial because it sets out a practicalframework from which duties can be dis -charged, which also allows for the views ofthe children to be represented, not as a mat-ter of privilege but as a matter of justice.is ensures children are protected fromadult centric policies and allows them to berepresented as active competent socialbeings.Alderson concludes by calling for the em -powerment of children; advocating the crea-tion of power sharing arrangements toenable greater respect for children’s rightsand change the current dynamics by whichthey are infantilised. She offers that the re-distribution of power between old andyoung is a necessary requisite of social justicein much the same way as the redistributionof resources is necessary for global justice.Alderson believes this is unlikely to comeabout because society’s attitudes towardschildren are so deeply entrenched that thebalance of power will always be in the favourof adults. Alderson suggests that a radicalrethinking of perspectives and policies is required to ensure adults and children canco-operatively create a better future.Alderson’s Young Children’s Rights is a valuable addition to the existing body of literature on children’s rights. It offers an excellent introduction to the subject areaand provides a unique insight into the lives,relationships, experiences and aims of youngchildren. From the outset it is clear that Alderson’s book is not intended to be a solelyacademic exercise, rather a straightforward,

relatable text which aims to appeal to awide-ranging audience. e book compe-tently cuts through the extensive policylanguage of the CRC, simplistically relayinghow the key concepts relate to young chil-dren, without ever alienating the more casual reader with cumbersome rhetoric. Alderson’s positions are clearly explicatedand forwarded with a commendable amountof passion, though the book never verges onbeing a moral crusade for children’s rights.Instead it should be seen as a list of pragma-tic reasons for respecting children’s dignityand worth which would be hard to refute.An excellent use of case studies and evidenceis employed to explicate Alderson’s argu-ments, which humanises the debate forthose not well acquainted with the issues discussed. In doing so a ‘child-centric’ approach is provided, which serves to chal-lenge pre-conceived ideas about the natureof childhood and capabilities of young chil-dren, which have resulted in their uncom-pensated exclusion from major aspects ofsociety.Whilst the majority of the book’s audienceare likely to sympathise with the moderatearguments Alderson forwards, there will beothers who find the case for children’s in -volve ment too modest, and conversely thosewho believe it is overstated. In relation to thefirst claim, some readers might wonder whyAlderson – who so adeptly argues for youngchildren’s inclusion in a range of ‘adult’rights - stops short of advocating full votingrights. Indeed the exemption of childrenfrom the electoral process is barely addres-sed by Alderson, although neither explicitlyrejected. roughout the text frequent reference is made to children’s interest in,and comprehension of a plurality of com-plex political and social issues such as citizenship, racism, inequality, poverty, andthe environment, which could be viewed asan implied justification for their electoral involvement. Whilst the text may be seen bysome to tacitly support the concept of forchildren’s voting rights, Alderson’s reticenceto dedicate more space to its discussionmeans that her position remains somewhatunclear.In relation to the second point, many of thearguments Alderson forwards for wider participation and consultation of childrencould be viewed as unjustified, since theyrely on a conception of children which willnot be shared by everyone. Indeed to statethat most children are intuitive, capablebeings, with basic human facets is hardly


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problematic, but to imply that they maypossess the level of abstract thought andlogic necessary to dictate their own provi-sion of care for example, is far more contro-versial. Considering the book deals with veryyoung children, sceptics maybe not be convinced that the examples of children arranging ribbons or organising discos reallytranslate into a realistic argument for theirinvolvement in key decision making matters.Another point which readers may find contentious is Alderson’s claim that the current inequitable distribution of resourcesbetween young and old is somewhat unjust.If we consider that, in most cases, a person’slife span is expected to cover both youth andold age, the distribution of resources is nottechnically unjust since the age bias favourseveryone at some point. In this sense Alder-

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son’s argument for a radical overhaul of resource distribution between age bracketsas a requisite of generational justice mightbe seen to miss the point of what justice requires.However none of the issues constitute a realsticking point for the book. e key argu-ment, for a better understanding of childrenand their needs, remains convincing, even ifthe level of their participation and consulta-tion remains open for debate. Indeed whenthe book focuses on issues that are interge-nerational in scope, such as the provision ofresources in the near future, it is clear to seethat allowing children a say in matters whichwill directly influence their present and future prospects is essential.Young Children’s Rights is to be recommen-ded to anyone with an active interest in the

subject of children’s rights. It touches on alargely neglected subject area – the natureand scope of young children’s right - whichis desperately in need of consideration andprovides a voice and forum for the youngestand most vulnerable in our society. Alder-son’s claims are cogently argued and wellthought out, and she is able to circumventserious objections to children having rightsthrough relating her wealth of experienceand research in the field. In doing so sheproduces a book full of sensible ideas, whichcarries both moral force and practical use.

Priscilla Alderson (2008): Young Children’sRights. Exploring Beliefs, Principles and Prac-tice. London/Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Pu-blishers. Second Edition, 231 pages, ISBN978-1-84310-599-2, price: £19.99 / $39.95:


Books• Tremmel, Jörg (ed.) (2008): Demographic

Change and Intergenerational Justice. e Implementation of Long-Term inking in the Political Decision Making Process. Berlin: Springer Verlag. €79.95

• Tremmel, Jörg (ed.) (2006): Handbook of Intergenerational Justice. Cheltenham: Ed-ward Elgar. €50

• Stiftung für die Rechte zukünftiger Genera-tionen (ed.) (2008): Wahlrecht ohne Alters-grenze? Verfassungsrechtliche, demokratietheo-retische und entwicklungspsychologische Aspekte. Munich: oekom Verlag. €39.90

• Tremmel, Jörg / Ulshöfer, Gotlind (eds.) (2005): Unternehmensleitbild Generatio-nengerechtigkeit. eorie und Praxis. Frank-furt: IKO Verlag. €25

• Stiftung für die Rechte zukünftiger Genera-tionen (ed.) (2003): Handbuch Generatio-nengerechtigkeit. Munich: oekom Verlag. €25

• Stiftung für die Rechte zukünftiger Generationen (ed.) (1999): Was bleibt von der Vergangenheit? Die junge Generation im Dialog über den Holocaust (with a pre-face by Roman Herzog). Berlin: Ch.Links Verlag. €20

• Stiftung für die Rechte zukünftiger Genera-tionen (ed.) (1998): Die 68er. Warum wir Jungen sie nicht mehr brauchen. Freiburg: Kore Verlag. €10

• Gesellschaft für die Rechte zukünftiger Generationen (ed.) (1997): Ihr habt dieses Land nur von uns geborgt. Hamburg: Rasch und Röhring Verlag. €10

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Peer-reviewed• Climate Change and Intergenerational

Justice (vol. 9 issue 3)• Young Generation Under Pressure?

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(vol.8 issue 3)• Grundlagen der Generationengerechtigkeit

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Generationengerechtigkeit? (vol. 7, issue 4)• Wege zu mehr Kindern in Deutschland

(vol. 7 issue 3)• Gesellschaftliche Generationen am Beispiel

der 89er-Generation (vol. 7 issue 2)• Nachhaltige Entwicklung in Spanien -

German-Spanish edition (vol. 7 issue 1)• Erneuerbare Energien - 2nd German-

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Justice - 3rd Engl. Ed. (vol. 5 issue 3)

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• German-Polish edition: Einführung in die Generationengerechtigkeit (vol. 4 issue 4)

• Generationenbeziehungen und Bildung (vol. 4 issue 3)

• Justice, Ethics, Ecology - 2nd Engl. Ed. (vol. 4 issue 2)

• Generationengerechtigkeit und Bevölkerungspolitik (vol. 4 issue 1)

• Generationengerechtigkeit und Familienpolitik (vol. 3 issue 3)

• Unternehmen und Generationengerechtigkeit (vol. 3 issue 2)

• Generationengerechtigkeit oder Nachhaltigkeit (vol. 3 issue 1)

• What is Generational Justice? - 1st Engl. Ed. (vol. 2 issue 3)

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(vol. 2, issue 1)

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Available books and journals of the FRFG

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he questions ‘what is a ‘child?’ or‘what rights do children have?’ are farfrom being consensually answer ed. In

fact, children have been more commonly defined for what they are not than for whatthey are.In a 1973 article, Children Under the Law,Hillary Clinton (then an attorney) argued foran interesting point of view: children's rightswere a “slogan in need of a definition”.Her suggestion was to abolish the legal statusof children as minors, and instead ensure thatall the procedural rights guaranteed to adultsunder the American Constitution should begranted to children whenever the state movesagainst them. For her, describing a ‘minor’ as‘everyone under 18 or 21’ was artificial anddid not take into account the differences incompetency levels and maturity amongstchildren of different ages.In a very creative and surprising move, Clin-ton argued in favour of creating somethinglike a ‘scale’ whereby children could ‘gradually’ see their maturity and competencerecognised.Now, in 2009, 20 years since the Conventionon the Rights of the Child was created, thenotion of children’s rights is yet to be well de-fined. ere is no singularly accepted defini-tion or theory on the rights held by children.Today Somalia and the United States are theonly countries who have not ratified the Con-vention. In fact, in 2002, Somalia's previoustransitional government signed the Conven-tion, just as the United States did under Clin-ton’s presidency in 1995, though neither hasratified it. However UNICEF announced lastNovember that the Somali Cabinet of Ministers has agreed to ratify the Convention.is makes the Convention the most widelyratified international human rights treaty,leaving the United States as the only countryoutside the pact.In the Introduction of e Moral and Politi-cal Status of Children, (from 2002), the edi-tors recognise that an apparent trend alreadyexists towards viewing children as distinct individuals and as subjects of moral and political theory. ey clarify in the book thatthe so-called status of children does not reallyrefer to their ‘moral or political status’. Better,

it addresses the question of how we shoulddefine a child (p. 13).ey argue that defining someone as a childunder chronological criteria seems inappro-priate. It also seems inaccurate to define achild by referring to their lack of ability whencompared to adults when some adults lackthose same competencies. Archard and MacLeod argue against the division generallymade between ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’.More properly, we should distinguish between the terms ‘infants’, ‘young people’,‘teenagers’ and ‘adolescents’, instead of using‘childhood’ to refer to all groups (p.14).e anthology is structured in three partswhich explore the different dimensions of themain topic: I. Children and Rights; II. Autonomy and Education and; III. Children,Families and Justice.e first block consists of five articles on thedefinition of children’s rights.An interesting thesis is one defended by JamesGriffin in the first article Do children haveRights?. He contributes to the extensive debate around legal and human rights. He argues confidently for children having legalrights but questions if they also have humanrights (pp. 19-21). He starts by comparingchildren’s vulnerable status to zygotes, embryos, foetuses, animals or severe mentallyimpaired people. Griffin believes human

rights can be defined as a shield for ourhuman standing, our ‘personhood’. Person-hood can be defined when we analyse theconcept of ‘agency’. Being an agent means ha-ving the ability of assessing and making choi-ces, taking decisions concerning one’s owncourse through life. Furthermore, the authorargues that ‘personhood’ cannot be the onlyground for human rights. He is not particu-larly explicit when explaining which othergrounds should be taken into account whenwe are referring to human rights. But hebriefly describes those grounds as ‘practicali-ties’ (pp. 23-24).Referring to the Convention, the authoridentifies the purpose of this legislation as aninstrument to protect vulnerable children.e author concludes that infants have no‘human rights’, just like severe mentally impaired people, but that society in generalimposes on itself heavier obligations towardsthem. Nevertheless, many children, thoughnot infants, are capable of agency. For thatreason, the author agrees that children maybe entitled to rights, given that human rightsare claims that individuals can make againstothers, including their society (p. 28).Harry Brighouse’s point of view, in WhatRights (if any) do Children Have? does not differ greatly from Griffin’s article. He beginsby saying that fundamental rights, seen fromthe liberal perspective, are concerned withautonomous capable individuals and for thatreason, we cannot assume that children havethem. However, he argues children can begranted legal rights. He believes that childrenhave solely welfare rights instead of agencyrights (pp. 31-32). And he goes further: chil-dren not only lack fundamental rights but at-tributing those types of rights to them wouldrisk their best interests (p. 32). Here the author makes an exception. He says that it isacceptable to grant children some agencyrights, but only in as far as those rights are dif-ferent from those of adults and when the ageof entitlement is clearly specified. is oughtto be made in respect to their welfare rightsand their prospective autonomy. Brighouseargues that the Convention jeopardizes chil-dren’s prospective autonomy, granting somelegal agency rights to young children, and at

David Archard and Colin M. Macleod (ed.): The Moral and Political Status of Children

Reviewed by Marisa dos Reis

T

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the same time, giving parents too much ef-fective control over the development of theirrational abilities and their access to informa-tion (p. 51-52).In Children’s Choices or Children’s Interests:Which do their Rights Protect? Samantha Bren-nan intelligently presents the debate betweenthe choice theory of rights and the interesttheory of rights (pp. 55-63). Again, there isthe suggestion of graduating the conceptionsof rights in such a way that one can protectboth choices and interests. She stands for a‘compromise’ between the two models where,in the beginning, rights for children functionto protect their interests and as they grow upand become autonomous choosers, rightsfunction as a protection of their own indivi-dual choices. is theory is directly connectedto Neil MacCormick’s, who argued for a reconciliation of both theories: choices’ andinterests’. He stands up for a common foun-dation for both sorts of rights. Brennan findshis theory attractive but disagrees with himwhen he believes that rights do not only pro-tect interests but choices as well. e authorargues that MacCormick does not give us theanswer about the foundation of these rights.She argues that these rights base themselveson the protection of choices even if thosechoices are against the chooser’s best interests.For her, children are “would-be choosers”and, such as adults, they do have rights, onlyfrom a different kind (pp. 63-67).Barbara Arneil brings us Becoming versusBeing: A Critical Analysis of the Child in Libe-ral eory. e early liberal theory classifieschildren as potential right-bearing citizens: onone hand, “half beings with a kernel of ratio-nality” and, on the other hand, “the negationof their future adult form” since there are stillseen as irrational creatures. e definition of‘becoming’ derives from seeing children as future adults and not as already existing independent human beings. For John Locke,the ‘product’ of ‘becoming’ will be the rational citizen or the property owner, capableof understanding rules and accepting author -ity and the State (pp. 71-74).Several theories on children’s rights have triedto deny this point of view, arguing that chil-dren are beings entitled with rights. AgainstLocke’s position, where only the father hadsomething to say, here the state and societymust get involved in their lives and take careof them as well. Similarly to Brighouse, Ar-neil finishes by saying that a possible solutionshould emphasize responsibilities towards chil-dren rather than focusing on rights, in a waythat allows us to better address children’s

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interests (pp. 75-86).e article is quite descriptive albeit coherent -ly argued. However, it may not add much tothe discussion. e solution pointed out bythe author does not seem creative or a trueanswer to the question. It opens a seconddoor towards ethics but does not close thefirst towards rights (pp. 89-91). e otherthree authors in this chapter assumed a morepractical and interesting approach, even if, insome cases, like Brighouse’s, the article doesnot have so many references or a well balanced structure. In fact, Brighouse barelystepped away from Onora O’Neill, RobertGodin and Dianne Gibson in his references.Griffin and Brennan have clear and profoundarticles, carrying true answers and pointingout relevant references on the subject.e second part of the book tries to relate theprogressive autonomy gained by children asthey grow up with progressive moral evolu-tion, achieved by education.Robert Noggle starts his chapter with a veryexplicit position: children should not be givena completely open future by making theirpresent free of values or religious concepts(pp. 112-115). In Special Agents: Children’sautonomy and Parental Authority he says thatif we do so, we would be preventing childrenfrom progressing from what he calls “a specialagent” to a full developed, “temporally extended moral agent” with a sense of moraldecency. He describes the relation betweenchildren and their parents as a fiduciary onewhere the parents should decide under a kindof Rawlsian “veil of ignorance” how to raisethe moral new being (pp. 97-100). He believes children should carry the moral values of their families in the early stages toavoid them from being raised without prin-ciples at all. Otherwise, we could expect a“moral psychopath” (p. 111). However, parents cannot force children to keep thesevalues when they grow up.e idea of applying Rawl’s theory to chil-dren’s education is not new. However, the waythe author relates it with the fiduciary specialrelationship between parents and children isvery interesting and seems to explain well themoral relationship between both agents. Nog-gle does not hide himself behind hypocrisyand assumes that children are not free tochoose their moral and religious values. Onthe other hand, parents do not have permis-sion to perpetuate their own beliefs in timenor have they the right to do it in an intole-rant, unreasonable way.e second article, Autonomy, Child-Rearing,and Good Lives by Eamonn Callan tries to

explain that autonomy is a sine qua non con-dition to a ‘good life’ at least, from a liberalpoint of view (p. 118). However, what ‘a goodlife’ is or what ‘a good life’ seems to be isunclear. us, autonomy would be an instrument which helps enable agents tomake their own choices according to theirown conception of good (p. 119-121). Nevertheless, the instrumental theory collap-ses once we acknowledge that autonomy canbe a virtue and not just an instrumental insipid thing. erefore, the author tries toexplain that emphasizing autonomy as an instrument, could lead to failure of our judgement about goodness (p. 123). Callan argues that, not only have we to gain auto-nomy, but we also need to recognise the im-portance of fostering our capacities leading toa conception of good. Autonomy belongs tocharacter rather than being a mere instrument.From Callan’s liberal point of view, exposingchildren to a multicultural environment maynot facilitate this task (p. 137-138).David Archard develops this issue in his article Children, Multiculturalism, and Educa-tion. He attempts to become clearer about thebalance required between individuals’ orgroups’ interests and children’s interests to acquire (or not) an identity as an individual.He argues that it is legitimate for a group orfamily to transmit its own values to childrenand that the existence of cultural diversity isnot, in itself, a bad thing.However it is wrong to raise children merelyas means to the fulfilment of parental or agroup’s wishes. Children have, as futureadults, an interest in how they will be raised.But raising a child as a mere future groupmember may contribute to prevent her tochoose any other paths in her life. So thenwhat does it mean to have a right to an ‘open-future’? ere is a right for parents to sharetheir family life with children to such an extent that children may be raised to share the values of the group. Just like Noogle, Archard believes neither the parents nor groups havethe right to impose their way of life to the nextgeneration. (pp. 158-159).Archard claims that children may bear thecost of being exposed to differences betweentheir families’ values and the ones existing insociety (pp. 150-152).Joe Coleman’s brilliant article AnsweringSusan: Liberalism, Civic Education and theStatus of Younger Persons starts with an hypo-thetical situation where Susan, a 15 years oldgirl and a 10th grade student, addresses apanel of political theorists that are debatingtopics such as what does liberalism require in


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the way of civic education. Coleman realisesthat if on one hand, young children lack a capacity to understand a Rawlsian concept ofthe good, on the other hand, we cannot advocate that an adolescent closer to majoritylacks that power as well. Coleman advocatesa more democratic, participation-orientatedapproach where educators and students areseen as equals.e author points to a very relevant and fallacious aspect of liberal theory about citi-zenship and age (pp. 163. Liberals accept aperson as a citizen as long as that personachieves 18 years of age (in most countries).e status of childhood cannot be limited byany artificial criteria (p. 170). Joe Coleman’sarticle is, indeed, one of the most well writtenarticles in the whole book and deserves ourpraise. In fact, Coleman reaches importantconclusions, written in a pleasantly amusingalbeit serious way.Hillel Steiner starts the third chapter of thebook. is final cluster of essays is dedicatedto issues concerning distributive justice. In Silver Spoons and Golden Genes: Talent Diffe-rentials and Distributive Justice he approachessome polemic – and still present – ethicalquestions. Steiner theorizes about whatpeople should give or get from others. eauthor says that this question should be answered by taking into account one’s talentsor abilities (p. 183). is is important whenwe deal with children’s education or the development of children’s abilities. e author wants to show how differences in natural endowment can lead to inequalities(p. 184). It is said that children have a right toclaim against adults, for they have the obliga-tion of creating the necessary environment forchildren to develop in. Is it possible for chil-dren to claim from their parents a better genetic heritage? Steiner argues that childrencould claim a right against bad genetic endowment, as long as the changes that couldhave been made did not change the person’s(child’s) identity (p. 190).From a softer point of view, Peter Vallentynein Equality and the Duties of Procreators advo-cates that the only special duty procreatorshave towards their children is to ensure thatthey have good perspectives in life and thatthey do not violate their rights (p. 195). It isoffered that agents have the moral duty of de-ciding not to have children when there arebad prospects for the offspring’s life (p. 199).However, there is no special duty to assure theoffspring have the highest standards of lifepossible.Colin MacLeod’s article Liberal Equality and

the Affective Family tries to conciliate liberaltheory with children’s special status. He recognises that liberals did not pay much attention to the role of children or their sta-tus. Children should be seen as full, equal anddistinct subjects. If liberal ideology allowssome inequalities among adults, those inequalities should not be reflected (or com-pletely reflected) on children. (p. 219) Publicprovisions could help to reduce these inequa-lities. It is acceptable that some inequalitiesarise among adults due to individual choicesmade in an initial position of equality, but itis not that when those differences arise due toother factors such as social or natural con -tingencies. Another interesting point is thatinequalities arise among children because pa-rents care more about their own children thanabout others’. MacLeod believes that it is pos-sible to limit these ‘side-effects of love’ by pursuing social policies that constrain parentsto express themselves impartially about theirown children (pp. 226-228).It is hard to understand how this would bepossible in a liberal society. is may be theonly weakness of his thesis. is positioncould hardly cope with the liberal ideals ofchoice, freedom and propriety.What Children Really Need: Towards a Criticaleory of Family Structure, by Shelley Burtt,tells us about the family structure in the USA.During the 90’s, approximately half the chil-dren that were born were raised by single-pa-rent families, thereby increasing poverty rates(p. 231). is phenomenon made most politicians and scholars argue in favour of areturn to the traditional family model inorder to ‘disguise’ the moral and economicalfailure of society (p. 232-234). Burtt thinksit is more important to create new policiesthat cope with the different family modelsexisting at present. She stands for a “criticaltheory of family structure” where one evalua-tes children’s needs and also gives some clueson how to achieve those needs in each kind offamily model (pp. 241-245).e book ends with Véronique Muñoz-Dar-dé’s article, addressing some questions Ma-cleod already approached. In Family, Choiceand Distributive Justice she says somethingvery pertinent: the simple existence of familyis so strong, that it can for itself impair theaccess of individuals to equal opportunities.is affects not only material distribution. Itaffects the moral and psychological develop-ment of the child and their ability to have afuture in equal circumstances.However a fair society must contain a familyin some form. But if we agree with it, we

must be aware that individuals will not haveequal opportunities in life. e conclusion isthat a theory of justice, even a Rawlsian one,cannot have equal opportunity as a priorprinciple to family (pp. 267-268).is book offers a good opportunity to godeeper into such subjects concerning chil-dren’s rights (especially the debate aroundchildren’s status, welfare or agency rights).It is especially pertinent given that the debateabout children’s rights has grown in the lastyears.Should today’s adolescents be treated as infants, when it is known that they possessnearly the same capacities and knowledge asan adult? Should we abolish the idea of majority because it is based on artificial andmainly historical criteria? Again, the questionof creating a “graduation scale” arises.After reading the preamble of the Conven-tion on the Rights of the Child, we could saythat the Convention was created under thevision that entitles children to welfare rightsbut without agency rights. It is said that chil-dren should be “afforded the necessary pro-tection and assistance, recognising that thechild, for the full and harmonious develop-ment of his or her personality, should growup in a family environment, in an atmosphereof happiness, love and understanding”. Moreover, it is said that a child should be fullyprepared to live an individual life in society. Itgoes without saying that in this legislation,the child is not yet seen as a full moral indi-vidual, but rather like a human being ‘underconstruction’. is Aristotelian concept ofchildren – as being something similar to ‘unfinished human beings’ – is still the predominant theory.However, today we can observe a rising inte-rest in the idea that children should be recog-nised as capable individuals. A good exampleof this change in focus is the motion for a re-solution presented to the Council of Europelast May which proposed lowering the votingage to 16 in all the countries from the Coun-cil.Despite the fact that it may be a little exhaustive or repetitive concerning liberaltheory and John Rawls’ works – and some -times not particularly innovative – we can surely recommend this book as a major, provocative and still up to date reference onthe topic.

David Archard and Colin MacLeod (eds).(2003): e Moral and Political Status of Chil-dren. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 296pages. ISBN 0199242682. Price: £64.60/$65.


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What Would Happen if Citizens Under 18 Years Old Had theLegal Right to Vote? The German U18 Project Experienceby Dan Sylvain and Marisa dos Reis

n recent decades increasing attentionhas been given to children’s and youngpeople’s civil and political rights. Some

authors argue that the principle of demo-cracy requires us to recognise that all citizenshave the right to express their voice, independent of their gender, beliefs, ethnicor cultural background – and age. A discri-mination according to age is dubbed‘ageism’.In fact, it is very contested if people under18 should have the legal right to vote. Onthe one hand, some theories argue thatpeople under 18 are not yet mentally andemotionally developed in such a way thatthey could have a valuable political point ofview. Some go even further and argue thatpeople under 18 years old don’t really careabout politics and don’t have any idea ofwhat a democratic society is. On the otherhand, some authors defend the idea thatpeople should be entitled to vote from thecradle through familial representation untilthey are of vote casting age. Some theoriestake a more moderate position, defendingthe proposal that societies should lower theminimum age limit to vote to 14 or 16 yearsold, but are against the idea of having theirchildren and youngsters opinion ‘represented’ by their families while they’reyounger.us, regardless of what your own opinion ison this topic, the following question arises:What would happen if citizens under 18 yearsof age had the opportunity to vote in an election?On 18th September 2009, nine days beforethe ‘real’ general elections in Germany, aninteresting political education initiative unfolded: the U18 election (under 18 election). People under 18 years old couldvote and freely express their political

opinion. Even though the minimum age forlocal elections in some Länder is 16, the voting age for general elections is 18. isdoes not count for the U18: for several yearsthis initiative has called on children andyoungsters to participate in their own ‘general elections’. Meanwhile, the most influential child and youth German organi-sations supported the non-party and independent initiative. Even though the results of the U18-elections have no directrepercussions for the composition of theGerman Bundestag it reflects the opinionand the political interests of today's younggeneration. e aim of this initiative was todirect politicians’ and parties’ attention tochildren’s and young people’s will to activelyparticipate in a democratic process and toproduce their own political choices. e purpose of the U18 was to help youngpeople to understand politics, to identifydifferences between party programmes andto question promises made by politicians.is way children and youngsters couldlearn to recognise and formulate their owninterests, and to find answers to politicalquestions, whilst taking an active part inshaping their future.is was the second time the U18 promotedan election for people under 18 years old. In2005, 48,461 children and youngsters expressed their political opinion by votingin 583 polling places.But on 18th September 2009, the numberof votes cast in the U18 reached a surprising127,208 at 1,000 polling places: in schools,leisure facilities and other places where

young people usually go. e Foundationfor the Rights of Future Generations alsoopened a polling station in Oberursel andthus contributed to the success of the U18project. e youngest voter was a nine yearold girl.Here are the results, in comparison to thereal German election one week later:Young people have chosen the Social Democrats (SPD), with 20.45 percent of thevotes, closely followed by the ecologicalparty ‘e Greens’ with 20 percent. ethird place was given to the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) with 19.35 percent.Another important result, is the one for thesmaller parties, such as the Far Left party,with 10.35 percent, the ‘Pirates’, with 8.7percent, the Liberals (FDP) with 7.6 percentand the Animal Protection party, 5.19 percent. 13.54 percent of the votes werespread among other parties.As a matter of fact, on the German elections,that took place on 27th September 2009,the incumbent Christian Democrats won,with 33.8 percent of the votes and the Social Democrats were second with 23 percent.e Liberals came in third, with 14.6 per-cent, the Far Left party reached 11.9 percentand the ecological party ‘e Greens’ gained10.7 percent. e ‘Pirates’ had 2 percent ofthe votes and the Animal Protection Partyonly 0.5 percent.e party’s leaders commented on these results. For instance, Andrea Nahles, partyleader for the Social Democrats consideredthe U18 election a full success and said itshowed that children and youngsters know

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U18 results German general election results

SPD: 20.45 percent CDU/CSU: 33.8 percent

Die Grüne: 20 percent SPD: 23 percent

CDU/CSU: 19.35 percent FDP: 14.6 percent

Die Linke: 10.35 percent Die Linke: 11.9 percent

Die Piraten: 8.7 percent Die Grüne: 10.7 percent

FDP: 7.6 percent Die Piraten: 2 percent

Die Tierschutzpartei: 5.19 percent Die Tierschutzpartei: 0.6 percent

Others: 8.36 percent Others: 3.4 percent

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how important it is to participate in demo-cracy and to defend their interests throughthe medium of voting. Kai Gehring from ‘e Greens’ party reactedto their good U18 election results by sayingthat many youngsters support their de-mands for climate protection and for thestrengthening of civil rights. Diana Golze from the Far Left party addedthat more important than the results is thefact that all over Germany about 125,000children and youngsters were listened in an

electoral procedure. Jens Seipenbusch, chairperson of the ‘Pirates’ is pleased with the results and believes that they are related to his party'smanifesto, which include crucial topics for

the 21st century.Had young people's participation in theU18 translated into real votes the AnimalProtection Party would have received tentimes its actual volume of votes in the Bun-destag. Its chairman Stefan Bernhard Eckconsiders this result a gigantic success for hisparty's cause.ere is no doubt that after crosscheckingthe results for both the U18 election and theGerman official election there are several significant discrepancies. e younger gene-ra tions have contrasting political views fromthose who are older. In a true democracy,their opinion would have the same strengthper capita as the ones from older individuals.More over, we have strong reasons to believethat if young people already had the legalright to vote, even more citizens under 18years old would feel mo tivated to vote andto participate in a democratic society.


Ballot Boxes created by young people

s the international community celebrates the 20th anniversary ofthe Convention on the Rights of

the Child (CRC) in November 2009, it istime to take a closer look at this document.As a legally binding document, the Con-vention has been instrumental in settingstandards of children’s rights and motivatinginstitutional capacity-building for the pro-motion and protection of children.e Convention acknowledges provision,protection and participation rights, for instance that every child has the right to life,his or her own name and identity, to be rai-sed by his or her parents within a family or cultural grouping and have a relationshipwith both parents, even if they are separat ed.Here is a summary of the rights under theConvention on the Rights of the Child:

Article 1 (Definition of the child): e Con-vention defines a 'child' as a person belowthe age of 18, unless the laws of a particularcountry set the legal age for adulthoodyounger. e Committee on the Rights ofthe Child, the monitoring body for theConvention, has encouraged States to review

available measures to make sure children’srights are respected, protected and fulfilled.When countries ratify the Convention, theyagree to review their laws relating to chil-dren. is involves assessing their social services, legal, health and educational systems, as well as levels of funding for theseservices. Governments are then obliged totake all necessary steps to ensure that the minimum standards set by the Conventionin these areas are being met. ey must helpfamilies protect children’s rights and createan environment where they can grow andreach their potential. In some instances, thismay involve changing existing laws or creat -ing new ones. Such legislative changes arenot imposed, but come about through thesame process by which any law is created orreformed within a country. Article 41 of theConvention points out the when a countryalready has higher legal standards than thoseseen in the Convention, the higher stand -ards always prevail.

Article 5 (Parental guidance): Governmentsshould respect the rights and responsibilitiesof families to direct and guide their children

the age of majority if it is set below 18 andto increase the level of protection for all chil-dren under 18.

Article 2 (Non-discrimination): e Con-vention applies to all children, whatevertheir race, religion or abilities; whatever theythink or say, whatever type of family theycome from. It doesn’t matter where childrenlive, what language they speak, what theirparents do, whether they are boys or girls,what their culture is, whether they have adisability or whether they are rich or poor.No child should be treated unfairly on anybasis.

Article 3 (Best interests of the child): ebest interests of children must be the primary concern in making decisions thatmay affect them. All adults should do whatis best for children. When adults make decisions, they should think about how theirdecisions will affect children. is particular -ly applies to budget, policy and law makers.

Article 4 (Protection of rights): Govern-ments have a responsibility to take all

The 20th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

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so that, as they grow, they learn to use theirrights properly. Helping children to under-stand their rights does not mean pushingthem to make choices with consequencesthat they are too young to handle. Article 5encourages parents to deal with rights issues"in a manner consistent with the evolvingcapacities of the child". e Conventiondoes not take responsibility for childrenaway from their parents and give more authority to governments. It does place ongovernments the responsibility to protectand assist families in fulfilling their essentialrole as nurturers of children.

Article 6 (Survival and development): Chil-dren have the right to live. Governmentsshould ensure that children survive and develop healthily.

Article 7 (Registration, name, nationality,care): All children have the right to a legallyregistered name, officially recognised by the

government. Children have the right to anationality (to belong to a country). Chil-dren also have the right to know and, as faras possible, to be cared for by their parents.

Article 8 (Preservation of identity): Childrenhave the right to an identity – an official record of who they are. Governments shouldrespect children’s right to a name, a nationalityand family ties.

Article 9 (Separation from parents): Chil-dren have the right to live with their parent(s), unless it is bad for them. Childrenwhose parents do not live together have theright to stay in contact with both parents,unless this might hurt the child.

Article 10 (Family reunification): Familieswhose members live in different countriesshould be allowed to move between thosecountries so that parents and children can stayin contact, or get back together as a family.

Two optional protocols were adopted on 25May 2000. e first restricts the involvementof children in military conflicts, and the se-cond prohibits the sale of children, child pro-stitution and child pornography. All nationsof the world except Somalia and the US haveratified the convention. Compliance is mo-nitored by the United Nations Committeeon the Rights of the Child which is compo-sed of members from countries around theworld. Once a year, the Committee submitsa report to the ird Committee of the Uni-ted Nations General Assembly, which alsohears a statement from the CRC Chair, andthe Assembly adopts a Resolution on theRights of the Child. All States parties are ob-liged to submit regular reports to the Com-mittee on how the rights are beingimplemented. States must report initially twoyears after acceding to the Convention andthen every five years. e Committee cannotconsider complaints by individuals.jt

he aim of the FRFG is to ensure agenerationally just and sustainablesociety on the basis of democratic

principles. One fundamental principle ofdemocracy is that attention is being paid tothe rights and interests of all societal groupsthat are being affected by the decisionstaken. is includes children and young persons. Nevertheless their needs are onlyconsidered insufficiently in many cases.is year marks the 20th anniversary of theapproval of the UN Convention on theRights of the Child. e gap between thestandards and reality is especially obviousconcerning participation rights. Article 12of the Convention states: “States Parties shallassure to the child who is capable of forminghis or her own views the right to expressthose views freely in all matters affecting thechild, the views of the child being given dueweight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.” For voting rights, theinflexible age limit of 18 years does not meetthese requirements from our point of view.

e vast majority of countries in the worldhave established a voting age of 18, loweringit in many cased in the 1970s. Although anartificial criterion, countries consider thoseunder this preassigned threshold to lack thenecessary capabilities and knowledge tovote. Age restrictions vary a lot around theworld. In the Indonesian case everybody isentitled to full voting rights providinghe/she is married. If not, voting rights become available on reaching 16 years ofage. Countries such as Austria, Brazil, Cuba,Nicaragua, as well as some Länder in Germany (see below), and a Canton in Switzerland have already set 16 as the mini-mum voting age.However, at present, some countries likeJapan and Saudi Arabia respectively still have20 and 21 years of age as the minimum ageto vote, and in Saudi Arabia only men canvote.Iran is an particularly interesting example.Until 2006 the voting age was 15 but in2006 parliamentary legislation increased the

country's voting age to 18 years.Despite the Iranian case, there is a worldwidetrend in favour of lowering the voting age. In Germany, the voting age has been lowered to 16 in the ‚Land’ of Bremen in a historical decision – this is the first time inthe long German history that 16-18-years-olds are allowed to cast their ballot on a Län-der level. e FRFG supports the loweringof the voting age to 16 but deems this limitas being chosen at random and being unfairin individual cases. e politically interested15-year-old, who has been engaged incleaning up the environment in a Green-team for years, is still being treated unfairly.us the FRFG advocates a voting rightthrough registration independently of age.It is not to be confused with a voting age ofzero. FRFG's solution does not feature thedownsides of a fixed limit and is much morecreative than a step-wise lowering of the voting age.us we demand the implementation of aindividual voting right for minors. To be


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Voting Rights and Age Restrictions –The Position the of Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations

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more precise, we suggest that children andyoung people can claim the right to vote ata self-chosen moment. e adolescent is ofcourse free to register for only the local elections, without making use of the votingright for the regional, federal and Europeanlevels. e adolescent can make his decisionto claim his voting right official, by register -ing at the electoral authority in charge. eyoung boy or girl would pay a visit to thecompetent authority (on his own, withoutbeing accompanied by his parents) and signa form stating: „I want to participate in elec-tions.“ is is not a ‘claim’, since a claimcould be turned down, but a declaration ofintent. is declaration of intent works thesame way as registering in many other states,like the USA, where adults have to registeronce before they are allowed to vote in elections. ere should be no examinationwhatsoever of the ability to vote of the adolescents, since this would lead to a two-tiered society as there is no examination of

the ability to vote of persons who have reached the legal voting age.Apart from this ‚individual’ voting age thatis created by the free choice to claim a right,a general voting age of 16 should be imple-mented. is would mean that everybodyfrom the age of 16 onwards should be granted the right to vote and thus receive apolling card at his home address automati-cally.

We recommend not letting children below16 participate through postal voting in orderto ensure that the child has the maximumchance to vote without being influence byhis parents. We deem the polling booth isthe best place to ensure this.FRFG has published a book (in German) onthe complex question of voting rights forminors. An English summary can be foundat http://www.intergenerationaljustice.org >Publications > Books > "Wahlrecht ohne Altersgrenze? Verfassungsrechtliche, demo-kratietheoretische und entwicklungspsycho-logische Aspekte" (engl. translation of thetitle: "Voting Rights without Age Limits?Constitutional Law, Democratic eoryand Psychological Development")

FRFG’s position paper on Children’s Rightsis available (only in German) at www.gene-rationengerechtigkeit.de > Publikationen >Positionspapieree FRFG board members


Young girl in a ballot box

n May 2009, a motion in favour of lowering the voting age to 16 in allcountries of the Council of Europe was

presented to the Parliamentary Assembly(not to be confused with the European Parliament):

1. Twelve years have passed since the Assembly adopted Recommendation 1315(1997), recommending to “rapidly harmonisethe age for the right to vote and stand forelection at 18 years in all countries and forall elections”. Since then, we have witnesseda significant development in issues concern -ing the minimum age for voting. It is there-fore time to re-evaluate the Assembly’sposition on this very important topic.

2. e trend of lowering the voting age hasspread throughout Europe: In Austria thevoting age has been lowered to 16 years forall elections. In Germany and Switzerland,16-17 year olds can vote at local elections insome of the constituent states. Current

16-17 year olds, they apparently do notshow up at the ballot boxes or register as voters. According to IDEA, InternationalInstitute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, voter turn-out amongst youngpeople in the age from 18-29 years in Western Europe is systematically lower thanthe average level of turnout in the popula-tion (see Voter turnout since 1945, a globalreport – IDEA, 2002).

4. Furthermore, there is a fear that the demographic development in many Euro-pean countries will worsen the problem. According to EUROSTAT statistics we willfor instance see a 44,5 percentage increase inthe 65-79 year olds and a 24,3 percent decline in the 15-24 year olds by year 2050.ere is a real risk that young people will bemarginalised in the political process, bothon a specific level as they will be numericallyout-numbered, but also because the politi-cal agenda risks becoming dominated by issues that are primarily interesting for older

knowledge on the experiences from elec tionsin these countries is very promising in termsof 16-17-year olds level of participation.

3. In Great Britain, Finland, Norway andthe Czech Republic the possibility of lowering of the voting age to 16 is currentlybeing evaluated by the governments. eprimary reason hereof has been a deep concern over young people’s reluctance toparticipate in democracy. Despite a wide-spread interest in political issues amongst the

Motion for a resolution presented to the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly:

”Expansion of Democracy by Lowering the Voting Age to 16“

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Barring Adults from Voting: Disenfranchisement of Felons and Mentally Disabled People Around the Worldby Marisa dos Reis

people. is is particularly problematic in atime, when societies more than ever willneed the commitment and work efforts ofyoung people in order to keep up economi-cal growth, social security systems and socialcohesion.

5. Needless to say, this development is dangerous for the future stability of Euro-pean democracy. We need to find means tomake young people engaged in democracy.Lowering of the voting age could be a part ofthat solution.

6. Recalling Recommendation 1019 (1985)on the participation of young people in political and institutional life, the Assemblysaid that it was “‘convinced - if democracyis to survive and develop – of the importanceof the active and effective awareness, under-

standing, participation and commitment ofyoung people in political and institutionallife at local, national and European levels.”

7. Recalling Resolution 1630 (2008) on Refreshing the youth agenda of the Councilof Europe that underlines that in the youthpolicy of the Council of Europe: “A key element has been encouragement of the active participation of young people in civiland institutional life.”

8. e Assembly recommends an investiga-tion on the advantages and drawbacks of engaging and securing young people’s parti-cipation in democracy by lowering of the voting age to 16 in all member countries ofthe Council of Europe.

e motion was signed by:

Jensen Mogens, Denmark, SOCAyva Lokman, Turkey, EPP/CDvan der Bellen Alexander, Austria, NRBilozir Oksana, Ukraine, EPP/CDBrasseur Anne, Luxembourg, ALDEDuesund Åse Gunhild Woie, Norway,EPP/CDDzembritzki, Detlef, Germany, SOCFreire Antunes José, Portugal, EPP/CDHancock Michael, United Kingdom, ALDEde Melo Maria Manuela, Portugal, SOCMuttonen Christine, Austria, SOCNeugebauer Fritz, Austria, EPP/CDO'Hara Edward, United Kingdom, SOCPoulsen Jørgen, Denmark, ALDEWurm Gisela, Austria, SOC

At the time of writing (December 2009), themotion has not yet been discussed.mdr

he revocation of the right to suffrageto a person or group of people, orrendering a person's vote less effec-

tive/ineffective is called disenfranchisement.Law can determine it or it can occur impli-citly by intimidation or due to lack of con-ditions to make voting effective.Around the world, there are several countriesthat restrict the possibilites to vote of theircitizens if they are convicted criminals.e USA (in the majority of states) and NewZealand for example disenfranchise thosewho have been convicted of serious crimeseven after they are released from prison. Inthese countries, the denial of the right to voteis automatic on a felony conviction, whereasin other countries (e.g. China, Cape Verde,France and Germany, Portugal, Spain,) vo-ting rights can be limited in accordance withcertain crimes such as those against the elec-toral system or are dependent on a court’s de-cision. In other places such as Brazil orEast-Timor prisoners who are in pre-trial de-tention are not disenfranchised. However,like in Ireland, where prisoners are not spe-

cifically denied the right to vote, they are alsonot provided with appropriate access to a bal-lot station, so are effectively disenfranchised.Until 2002 Canada allowed only prisonersserving a term of less than 2 years the right tovote, but this was found to be unconstitu-tional by the Supreme Court in Sauvé v. Ca-nada (Chief Electoral Officer). Now,prisoners are allowed to vote. Besides Ca-nada, countries like Israel, Hungary, Japanand South Africa also allow felons to vote.ere are several movements against felondisenfranchisement around the world. In theUS the Democracy Restoration Act (DRA) isan example of federal legislation that seeks torestore voting rights in federal elections to ex-felons. e bill was introduced on July 24th,2009 by Senator Russell Feingold and Re-presentative John Conyers.In Brazil in July 2009 several religious andcivil organizations created the “MovimentoNacional pela Cidadania da Pessoa Presa ouInternada” (National Movement for Citizen-ship of Arrested or Hospitalized Persons)which attempted to fight the de facto disen-

franchisement of hospitalized persons andprisoners in pre-trial detention who have notlost their right to vote but do not have accessto a ballot station.Mentally disabled people are also the subjectof disenfranchisement. With the exceptionsof Canada, Sweden, Nicaragua, Italy and Ire-land, the majority of countries worldwidelimit their right to vote. In some countriesthere has to be a court decision declaringsuch impairments, but in others, it will beenough that the person is visibly mentallydisabled. (e.g. Portugal). In the USA, again,legislation differs across states.New trends towards the enfranchisement ofthese two excluded groups (felons and men-tally impaired persons) are becoming increa-singly visible around the world.e table on page 157 gives an overview ondisenfranchisement of adults around theworld. Moreover, it lists the legal voting age.

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e Right to Vote in the World - December 2009

Countries Age Mentally disabled Felons (in prison) Additional informations on voting legislation

Angola 18 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote. Compulsory.Argentina 18 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote. Compulsory. Exceptions:

older than 70, impaired persons; judges and their assistants working inthe electoral act; some State workers.

Australia 18 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed except people serving relatively short prison sentences, up to 3 years can vote. Compulsory for all over 18.

Austria 16 Not allowed to vote. Allowed to vote with restrictions. Compulsory in two Länder.Brazil 16 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote except

prisoners in pre-trial detention. Compulsory for individuals from 18 to 70.

Canada 18 Have the right to vote. Have the right to vote.Cape Verde 18 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote, but if the

penalty is more than 3 years or if the felon was convicted for a crime against the State they cannot. Compulsory.

China 18 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote except those stripped of their political rights. Compulsory.

Cuba 16 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote.East-Timor 17 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote unless they

are in pre-trial detention.France 18 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote.

Permits disenfranchisement only when it is imposed by a court.

Germany 18. 16 for Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote except thosemunicipal convicted for electoral crimes orelections in crimes that undermine thesome Länder. democratic order, and whose

court-imposed sentence expressly includes disenfranchisement.

Hungary 18 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote.India 18 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote except in

pre-trial detention.Indonesia 16 if single, Not allowed to vote.

any age if married.

Iran 18 Not allowed to vote. Before 2007 it was 15.Ireland 18 Have the right to vote. Have the right to vote.Israel 18. 17 for Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote.

municipal elections

Italy 18 Have the right to vote. Have the right to vote with restrictions.

Japan 20 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to voteNew Zealand 18 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote.

ey cannot vote for several years even after completing their sentence, but only in cases where they were convicted for buying or selling votes or for corrupt practices.

Nicaragua 16 Have the right to vote. Have the right to vote with restrictions.

Norway 18 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote with restrictions.

Portugal 18 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote. Except those convicted for crimes against the State. Permits disenfranchisement only when it is imposed by a court order.

Russia 18Saudi Arabia 21 Not allowed to vote. Only male citizens.

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South Africa 18 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote.Spain 18 Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote.

Permits disenfranchisement only when it is imposed by a court order.

Sweden 18 Have the right to vote. Have the right to vote.Switzerland 18. 16 for Not allowed to vote. Have the right to vote. Compulsory in one Canton only.

cantonal andmunicipal elections.

United 18 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote, except those Kingdom in pre-trial detention.USA 18. In many Not allowed to vote for Not allowed to vote, but rules e Democracy Restoration Act

states people presidential election, about this depend on the State. (DRA) is federal legislation that can vote in but different rules in seeks to restore voting rights in primary state elections depend federal elections to ex-felons.elections if on the State. e bill was introduced on July they will be 24th, 2009. Currently, 35 states 18 on or continue to disenfranchise people before the after release from prison.day of general election.

Turkey 18 Not allowed to vote. Not allowed to vote except felons Compulsory.convicted of negligent offences

Venezuela 18 Not allowed to vote. Permits disenfranchisement when it is imposed by a court order.

Call for Papers for the Intergenerational Justice Review

‘Intergenerational Justice and the Scourgeof War’We are looking for articles in English for theupcoming issue 1/2010 of the IGJR with thetopic Intergenerational Justice and theScourge of War.

e Charter of the United Nations signed inSan Francisco on 26 June 1945 starts withthe words “We the peoples of the United Na-tions determined to save succeeding genera-tions from the scourge of war, which twicein our lifetime has brought untold sorrow tomankind […]”. e Charter was obviouslyformulated and signed under the impressionof the recently ended Second World War,which was the single event with the sharpestdecrease of human welfare in history. epriorities have since shifted during an era ofunprecedented peace in the OECD worldand on a global scale. But even though asmany as 192 states have signed the UNCharter, starting with an expression of de-termination to rid the world of the scourge ofwar, conflicts still ravage large parts of theworld, particularly in Africa, the Middle East

and Central Asia. According to findings ofthe AKUF (Working Group on the Causesof Wars) in Hamburg, Germany, the num-ber of conflicts has even steadily risen sincethe end of the Second World War, whileinner state conflicts increasingly dominatethe statistics.e persistence of the institution of ‘war’might be the greatest threat of all to futuregenerations. Its negative consequences for thefuture of societies are obvious. Apart fromthe people dying, traumatised soldiers andvictims pass down the psychological dama-ges they suffered in war times to the futuregenerations as parents. Additionally newforms of inner state conflicts have a muchlonger duration in comparison to classic in-terstate wars and leave the economies, statestructures and societies of the states they ra-vaged in ruins for decades to come. usmodern inner state conflicts are more likelyto affect future generations than classicalwars with clearly defined warring parties thatusually end with a truce or a peace treaty.Evidently the problem the ‘scourge of war’poses to mankind is far from being solved.

In this context it is remarkable that studieson intergenerational justice have so far ne-glected the topic, especially considering thatthe UN Charter specifically pointed out ‘suc-ceeding generations’ as the beneficiaries of itsdetermination to rid the world of wars.e upcoming issue 1/2010 of the Interge-nerational Justice Review addresses this issue,with the aim to establish the groundwork fora comprehensive discussion of peace policiesin the scope of intergenerational justice. eissue aims to clarify the relation between therights of present and future generations for apeaceful life, the role of humanitarian inter-ventions based on chapter VII of the UNCharter and interventions in general. isincludes interventions for conflict manage-ment, peacebuilding, peace enforcement,peacekeeping, state and nation building.Weapons of mass destruction pose an excep-tional danger to the future of mankind. e-refore the ban and demolition of nucleararms as well as the elimination of chemicaland biological weapon are important ele-ments of the topic.

Deadline for the submission of full articles is12th February 2009.

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Possibilities and Limits of Party Coopera-tion in Democraciese editors are seeking articles in English foran upcoming issue in 2010 of the IGJR withthe topic ‘Possibilities and limits of party co-operation in democracies’.

Every democratic system requires the compe-tition of political parties and parliament fac-tions, and to a certain degree it is part of thedemocratic role play to maintain such com-petition. Nevertheless, in a democratic systemit is important to aim for as much competi-tion as needed and as much cooperation aspossible, in order to achieve the majorities for

necessary decisions. Democracy is always astruggle to balance between cooperation andcompetition. Across the globe there are manydifferent approaches to finding this balance;the British Majority system, the concordancesystem in Switzerland, the coalition system inGermany and the Presidential democracies ofFrance and the USA. But which system ispreferable from the point of view of future ge-nerations?

Deadline for the submission of abstracts is15 February 2010.Deadline for the submission of full articles is30 March 2010.

Ways Towards a Legal Implementation ofIntergenerational JusticeFuture individuals are not yet born, that iswhy they cannot participate in our decision-making processes today. How can we legallyguarantee that their rights are not infringedupon? One upcoming issue of IGJR 2010 will bedevoted to this topic. e Call for Papers willbe published online in January 2010.

Marisa dos ReisMrs. dos Reis has beencollaborating with theFoundation for theRights of Future Gene-rations in the Interge-nerational Justice Reviewsince September 2009

and her project is financially supported bythe European Commission. She is 30 yearsold and comes from Lisbon, Portugal. She

has a licentiate degree in law by the Facultyof Law of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Du-ring her studies, she worked as a free-lancejournalist in the portuguese regional pressand radio. After completing her studies in2002, she worked in a lawyers’s firm in Lis-bon and then worked as a deputy district at-torney from 2003 to 2007. In that context,she had a close professional relationship withtwo commissions for the protection of mi-nors at social risk. She achieved a specialist

diploma in international law by the Facultyof Law of Universidade de Lisboa and nowshe is writing her final thesis on HumanRights for an Advanced Masters DegreeCourse that she attends at that institution. Marisa dos Reis: “Collaborating with thisFoundation and contributing to this noblemission is the perfect scenario for pursuingmy studies and self development, both in aprofessional and personal dimension”.

Imprint

New Editorial Staff

Publisher: Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations (Stiftung für die Rechtezukünftiger Generationen)Editor-in-Chief: Jörg Chet TremmelEditorial staff: Hannah Taylor-Kensell, Marisa dos Reis, Alessy Beaver, Patrick Wegner,Dan SylvainLayout: Angela Schmidt, OblaDesignPrint: LokayDruck, Königsberger Str. 3,64354 Reinheim (www.lokay.de)

Editorial office address:Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations, (Stiftung für die Rechte zukünftiger Generationen)Postfach 5115, 61422 OberurselGermanyTelephone: +49(0)6171-982367, fax: +49(0)6171-952566Email: [email protected]: www.intergenerationaljustice.org

e peer reviewed journal Intergenerational Justice Review aims to improve our understand -ing of intergenerational justice and sustainabledevelopment through pure and applied ethicalresearch. Quarterly published in English andGerman, the IGJR (ISSN 1617-1799) seeks articles representing the state of the art in philosophy, politics and law of intergenerationalrelations. It is an open access journal that is pub -lished on a professional level with an extensiveinternational readership. e editorial boardcomprises over 50 international experts from tencountries, and representing eight disciplines. eIGJR is not only read by the scientific commu-nity but also by members of parliaments, decision makers from the economy and personswith a general interest in intergenerational justice. e internet version is free of charge, theprinted version has an annual subscription costof 25 Euros which has to be paid in advance. ecancellation period is three months until the endof the year. For subscription, see last page.Published contributions do not necessarily reflectopinions of members or organs of FRFG. ethematic quotes within the articles have been

selected by the editorial staff to complement thearticles.e authors of the articles have no influ-ence on the selection of these quotes. Citationsfrom articles are permitted upon accurate quotation and submission of one sample of theincorporated citation to FRFG. All other rightsare reserved.

is project has been funded with support fromthe European Commission. is publication reflects the views only of the editors, and theCommission cannot be held responsible for anyuse which may be made of the information contained therein.

FRFG wholeheartedly thanks our EVS partici-pants Hannah Taylor-Kensell, Dan Sylvain andMarisa dos Reis for their work as our editorialstaff members. Special thanks go to Alessy Beaverfor proof-reading this journal.

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Intergenerational Justice Review

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Transcript of Intergenerational Justice Review