ABSTRACT
The principal purpose of this paper is to explain how acting towards children with the objective of furthering their best interests may be reconciled with treating children as possessors of rights. The two bases for action require reconciliation if the argument is accepted that a right that another should have complete power to determine what is in A’s interests and to direct A accordingly leaves A without any rights at all. The paper argues that the reconciliation can be effected through an understanding of the best interests principle which allows scope for the child to determine what those interests are: this is labelled ‘dynamic self-determinism’. It is an account of what the best interests of the child means. Since most of the discussion of the ‘principle’ in Western legal literature occurs in the context of court decisions about children’s upbringing, this discussion, too, is centred in that context. But the argument has implications which go beyond that context, and the final part of the paper considers briefly the implications of the concept within the framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
