Legal Commentary

Can you name this law professor?

Her scholarly focus has been on juvenile rights, and she has been called one of the most important scholar-activists of recent decades. In a leading article, she argued that discrimination against juveniles requires justification. In making her argument, she compared children to slaves, wives, and Native Americans, as classes of people who have been historically treated as dependents, not legally competent to speak for themselves.

In a second leading article, she extended her argument, contending that because children reach maturity on a gradual basis, courts should not make the same presumption of incompetence for newborns as they do for 17-year-olds. Instead, she urged, children should be presumed competent by the courts, and evidence of legal incompetence should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

In the Yale Law Journal, she wrote: ?By and large, the legal profession considers children ? when it considers them at all ? as objects of domestic relations and inheritance laws or as victims of the cycle of neglect, abuse, and delinquency. Yet the law?s treatment of children is undergoing great challenge and change. Presumptions about children's capacities are being rebutted; the legal rights of children are being expanded. As the structure of family life and the role of children within it evolves, the law is likely to become ever more embroiled in social and psychological disputes about the proper relationship between government and family. The task for lawmakers will be to draw the line between public and private responsibility for children.?

At one point, her husband gained some national media attention in 1987 when there was speculation he might run for president, though he did not enter the race.

Who is she?

The answer is below the fold ...

Hillary Rodham Clinton

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Sources:

Gary Willis, H.R. Clinton's Case, The New York Review of Books, vol. 39, no. 5 (March 5, 1992). http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=2999

Hillary Rodham, Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect, Yale Law Journal vol. 86, p. 1522 (June 1977)

Tamar Lewin, THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Issues: Women and Families; Legal Scholars See Distortion In Attacks on Hillary Clinton, The New York Times, August 24, 1992

Bob Secter and Dawn Turner Trice, Clinton: Most famous. Least known?, Chicago Tribune, November 27, 2007

Wikipedia, Hillary Rodham Clinton

Wikipedia, Bill Clinton