ABSTRACT
While the prevailing paradigm for the academic study of children’s rights is informed by a legal disciplinary approach, it may advance significantly by taking a critical turn. This chapter offers a critical children’s rights response that seeks to move beyond the legal focus on implementation and, instead, arrive at a thorough problematization of the field. To do so, it applies both critical disability theory and a feminist ethics of care to theoretically deconstruct the predominant legal focus, reconstruct alternative pathways, and critique the critical approach itself so as to advance practical understanding for the state of neurodiverse justice-involved youth rights in Ontario, Canada.
