ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the rights of children in state foster care. Martha Fineman has very eloquently expressed the risk that children's rights may open the door to the state's intrusion on caregiver's autonomy. But when children are in state custody, parental autonomy has already been violated, and children are already very vulnerable. Disempowering the child can often leave the family unit without its most ardent defender. At the other extreme, one could argue, as did Justice Scalia in, that children in state custody cannot claim constitutional protections because they have no liberty interest to begin with. Lower courts have split on whether a child in foster care is in a special custodial relationship to the state. In With time, perhaps the weight of international consensus in regards to our nation's lawlessness and the universality of human rights abroad will open the door to Tony's human rights at home.
