Moral Status and Human Life: The Case for Children's Superiority

Are children of equal, lesser, or perhaps even greater moral importance than adults? This work of applied moral philosophy develops a comprehensive account of how adults as moral agents ascribe moral status to beings - ourselves and others - and on the basis of that account identifies multiple criteria for having moral status. It argues that proper application of those criteria should lead us to treat children as of greater moral importance than adults. This conclusion presents a basis for critiquing existing social practices, many of which implicitly presuppose that children occupy an inferior status, and for suggesting how government policy, law, and social life might be different if it reflected an assumption that children are actually of superior status.

James G. Dwyer is a professor of law at the College of William and Mary. He previously taught at the University of Wyoming and Chicago-Kent. He received a PhD in philosophy from Stanford University in 1995 and a JD from Yale University in 1987. Dwyer has written three other monographs on the rights of children and parents in connection with child rearing, as well as numerous law journal articles on child welfare issues. He serves on the board of child advocacy organizations and has advocated for children in court proceedings.