This seminar will cover major legal and philosophical issues surrounding parentage. For example, we will examine the normative and historical grounding for parental rights, and apply the lessons learned to current questions about the robustness of parental rights when they conflict with a) the potential rights of children or b) the interests of the state. The seminar will also cover the logically prior question of who is a parent? Here, the seminar will delve into the bioethics and philosophical literature on why genetic parents are the default legal parents, and under what circumstances this default should change. We will also examine current law, including various recent legal developments on de facto parentage and disestablishing paternity, to uncover implicit judgments current law makes about the nature of parentage. Other questions that the seminar will address include: Can/Should the government require potential parents to obtain a license before becoming legal parents? What is the proper balance of power in the state-parent-child triad? What are the ethical dimensions of the decision to have children? What obligations might grown children owe to their parents?
Williams, Sean H.