This Essay documents the limitations of the parental rights lens for Black families and argues that the more appropriate lens for marginalized families focuses on the survival of both individual families and the larger community tied to these families. With this in mind, it contemplates what the future of the Restatement might hold against the backdrop of a reconfigured framework.
Children’s lives are increasingly shaped by their online environment, quite apart from the physical geographies of home and school. How they make choices in that space, and how those choices are shaped by law and parental authority, warrants deeper discussion than the Restatement of Children and the Law was able to provide. The complex challenges of children’s engagement with social media, both as content creators and consumers, help illuminate some of the core tensions in this Part of the Restatement—namely, the tension between children’s autonomy, parental authority, and state regulation.
The importance of initial prosecutorial decisions in juvenile outcomes is well-studied, but recent developments in the law, including the Supreme Court’s decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma; new laws and proposed legislation pertaining to youth being tried in juvenile or criminal court; and the forthcoming adoption of the Children's Restatement require that we reexamine their significance.
