Ideas - A Minor Revolution: Prioritizing Kids' Rights Benefits Us All

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

What if there was one thing we could do to significantly impact poverty, crime, and climate change. Law professor Adam Benforado believes there is a solution: prioritizing kids. The author of A Minor Revolution argues that if we centred children when enacting law and public policy, we would all benefit.

On an evening in early December 2018, the young CEO of a cryptocurrency exchange reportedly dies while on his honeymoon in India. This death is not announced to customers for another month. And when they're told Gerald Cotton is the only person to hold the passwords to their funds, conspiracy theories grow, leaving some to wonder, could Gerald Cotton still be alive? Honeymoon, moving the body, all the missing money. It was like, but what happened? A Death in Crypto Land, available now on CBC Listen

and everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas, I'm Nala Ayed. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. We hear a lot about the snowflake generation, how life has become too cushy for kids now, and how they just don't seem to deal very well with adversity. But is that really the case? Do North American kids have it that easy?

Between 2015 and 2023, the number of children employed in contravention of labor laws increased by 283 percent. Philadelphia-based law professor Adam Benferato has some shocking statistics about the lives of children in the U.S. today. In a country whose 500 largest corporations generated $18 trillion in revenue last year, some 9 million children today grow up in poverty. Canada has its own child poverty problem. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives,

Nova Scotia experienced an unprecedented single-year increase in child poverty in 2021. The end of pandemic relief funds coupled with the increased cost of living means one in five children in the province now live in poverty. We have not been good stewards of the world we are handing off to them. And so I see in so-called snowflake culture legitimate complaints about the failure of adults. In fact, Adam Benferato argues that children's rights have stalled over the last century, and it comes at a cost we're all paying for. The root cause of nearly every major challenge we face from crime to poor health to poverty

can be found in our mistreatment of children. What he thinks we should do about it, at least in principle, seems simple. Which is putting child well-being at the center of public policy and law. But in practical terms, what he's proposing is a complete societal overhaul. Adam Benferato teaches law at Drexel University. His most recent book is called A Minor Revolution, How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All. He delivered the Robert R. Wilson Distinguished Lecture

in 2024 at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. You'll hear excerpts from his lecture, along with a conversation we had about what it means to put children first. And I want to begin this talk with a story, a direct account of Judge Ben Lindsay, who in 1904 had recently begun hearing cases in the newly created juvenile court in Denver. began hearing cases in the newly created juvenile court in Denver. So one day, in a busy session of the court, trying a will case involving $2 million,

the courtroom door opened, and a boy poked in his tussled head and freckled face. I ordered a recess of three minutes to the disgust, I fear, of one or two of the distinguished counsel, and the boy came to the bench, unafraid and smiling now, where he was crying with fear the first time he was brought there three months before. He was what is commonly called a street boy or a news boy. He said that he was having trouble,

that for years a policeman on a beat had let him sell papers on a certain corner. And now, as he expressed it, a fly guy had taken his place. And because he was a new cop, he thought he owned the town and had therefore ordered him off his favorite corner. And he was losing 50 cents a day. So what did Judge Lindsay do? He wrote the boy an injunction to deliver to the officer.

As Lindsay described, conjunction to deliver to the officer. As Lindsay described, quote, The boy had a case, to me, as important as the one before the bar involving the millions that a dead man had left behind for surviving selfishness and cunning craft to battle for in the courts. I do not apologize, but I rejoice that I thought the boy and his little case the most important thing before the court. It was a stunning interaction, as one newspaper editorial proclaimed,

a glimpse of our brighter future in which a boy of the streets in his rags has as good footing as the cause of men clothed in broadcloth. But it was not a singular or aberrant one. At the dawn of the 20th century, there was a stirring of children's rights activism across all the country. This was a moment when we passed child labor laws, created a juvenile justice system, built playgrounds,

marshalled resources to protect children from abuse and neglect, bolstered public education, and pushed for basic health measures. These progressives were advancing an argument that the project of raising the next generation of Americans was a collective one. Society bore the ultimate cost of childhood poverty, abuse, illiteracy, and poor health.

And society therefore had a right and a responsibility to intervene to better the lives of youth. To be sure, today, far fewer American kids die of malnutrition or lose fingers in factory accidents than back in 1900. But on nearly every axis of child well-being, we've simply not made the progress that would be expected. Our capacity to better children's lives would amaze those early progressives. But we fail to leverage this incredible wealth, knowledge, and technology. A century on, we have turned our back on Judge Lindsay, reverting to a justice system that

regularly treats kids as adults when it comes to policing and punishment, but not when it comes to basic rights. Since 2002, one in five pedestrians stopped by New York City police were 18 or younger, and tens of thousands of kids are prosecuted as adults each year. And in 2023, more than half a dozen states introduced bills to weaken existing child labor protections. Once in the vanguard, we have fallen behind other advanced nations on investing in and safeguarding children at every stage of development. And an American kid today is 70% more likely to die before adulthood than a child living in one of our peer nations.

In part because we vigorously blocked gun and vehicle safety laws that our peers passed years ago without controversy. So, the statistics that you cite about the state of children in the US are really, really stark and alarming. You mentioned that children's rights have stalled over the last century, but is it a stalling or is it a backsliding? I think unfortunately it's both. It depends on the area that you look at. I mean, something like child labor, for example, I think you can say, okay, well, we've made

clear progress there. And in some ways, that's true. There are not kids rolling, you know, cigarettes in New York City factories anymore. But if you look particularly over the last few years, there's been a rollback at the state level of really important laws that protected children in labor conditions. And we see actually an increase, not a decrease, but an increase in labor violations involving children over the last couple of years. So I personally think it's stagnation, yes, but it's also backsliding.

And that should worry all of us. We're seeing some of the same phenomenon here in Canada as well. The issue of child labor has come up in several provinces. But when you look at the larger themes that you raised, the larger problems, is there one reason why this is happening? Like what's changed from Judge Lindsay's time to today? Well, I think, you know, it's obviously a very complex

set of factors that are behind this shift. But I would say the biggest one in the United States has been a shift to a notion that the project of raising the next generation is solely the responsibility of individual parents. And this is something that we're seeing at, you know, a broad cultural level, but it's also something that's being reinforced and really expanded by elite institutions like the Supreme Court, which sort of issues a couple of really landmark cases in the 1920s saying parents are the deciders and therefore it's parents who get to direct their children's education.

It's therefore parents who get to direct their children's access to medicine or social interactions. Well, the adage, you know, that it takes a village doesn't come out of nowhere. But you mentioned the Supreme Court. I wonder if you could expand the answer to the question of what the law's role in helping make that ideological shift from children as a collective responsibility to our individual responsibility today? Right, so, you know, we have this pretty remarkable moment in the early 1900s where we have this sort of blossoming

of children's rights legislation organizations across the United States and indeed more broadly in Europe. And this does, even though I think the early progressives make a lot of headway, this produces a pretty strong backlash, particularly from, I think, business interests. Actually, there were a lot of prominent individuals who thought this is going to be crippling for business, and it's infringing on the rights of parents. You have a right to the money from your child's work. And if, in fact, that is banned,

you are gonna have less money as a family, and guess what? That means the government is gonna have to pay for that. is banned, you are going to have less money as a family. And guess what? That means the government is going to have to pay for that. So we have a strong backlash from prominent individuals. Then we have some of these cases which come out involving, say, mandatory public education and the ability of parents to opt out. And the Supreme Court comes in.

And my reading of some of these opinions is it's more ambiguous. It's a moment where the Supreme Court is a little unsure how far it wants to go. Do we really want to say that this is a fundamental right, that any infringement here is going to be just the utmost scrutiny? But I will tell you today, there are activists on the right in the United States who are pushing hard to expand parental rights and who treat all of this precedent as absolutely enshrining a fundamental right, in which the government's role is really subservient and only directed toward the preferences of the parent.

And I think that's a radically different notion than the consensus that existed 100 years ago. Yeah. Just to stay with labor for a moment, the issue specifically of labor, here in Canada, the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce wants the province to lower the minimum working age from 14 to

13 to help address labor shortages. I'm sure you see this kind of maneuvering elsewhere, but I'm wondering what that strategy says to you. Well, it says that it's the same arguments that were being made 100 years ago when there was resistance. It has always been the case that people say it's economic necessity. Why do we need kids working in poultry plants in Ohio? Well, with COVID and, you know, crackdowns on immigrant, you know, we don't have any people to work in these factories.

And you know who we can give the worst jobs at the lowest pay at the worst times to? Kids. Kids. And I think that that is, that oughta really, really give us pause and think, gosh, like how can we be having this same conversation again? This ought to have been settled decades ago. To change course, I argue that we must ensure a set of core children's rights. I'm gonna highlight just one of those, the right to be course. I argue that we must ensure a set of core Children's rights. I'm going to highlight just one of those the

right to be heard. So why this one? Well, because in some ways I think empowering young people, giving them the right to vote, serve on juries, run for office and exercise real power in our important societal institutions may be the most important right in securing the others. I believe a big part of why we have not made more progress on addressing climate change, gun violence, crumbling schools, and childhood poverty is that kids themselves have no power. As Susan B. Anthony explained, the moment you deprive a person of his right to a voice in

government, you degrade him from the status of a citizen of the Republic to that of a subject, a person helpless, powerless, bound to obey laws made by superiors. Now when I talk to folks about extending the franchise to those under 18, the first response I usually get is that kids lack the necessary capacity. But I think that is belied by the evidence we have from psychology and neuroscience, which suggests that when it comes to voting relevant cognition, there doesn't appear to be a significant difference between the average 16-year-old and the average adult. And of course, the fallback defense I hear is even if it's true that children shouldn't be disqualified based on the incapacity. It's a fact that those under 18

don't have relevant life experience. But think about that one for a second. Many young people have significant lived experience relevant to the most pressing issues of the day. They know what a lockdown drill feels like. They are fluent social media users. They have lived in a shelter. They have had a parent incarcerated. They have lost a family member to addiction. And they have skin in the game. A 15-year-old is going to live with the consequences of the next election on her reproductive choices, on her job prospects, on the habitability of her world in a way that her 89-year-old great-grandfather simply will not. What is it that stands in our way in changing course and realizing a children's rights revolution when it comes to youth empowerment and everything else, education, child health, infant product safety, economic mobility. I am convinced that it's not animosity to children, a desire to harm them or keep them

down, but a heedlessness. Once again, I want to tell you a story. Before my family moved into our 1860 row house in Philadelphia, I called up the Philadelphia Water Department to get the drinking water tested. So as I explained to the technician who came out, I was concerned because when we had bought the house, I'd gone to the basement and saw something that appeared to be a lead service line. I had a two-year-old daughter

and I really wanted to protect her. Now the technician who came out assured me that the water was very unlikely to be contaminated because quote unlike flint philadelphia adequately treats its water so the pipes maintain a protective coating that prevents leaching and the test results when i received them showed just as much. As the technician wrote to me, quote, the water appeared to be normal city water and there was no cause for concern regarding lead in it. So my wife, daughter, and I moved in and began drinking, cooking, and bathing with the water. But several months later we did something that I don't think anyone else has ever done. We got our

water tested again because there was a new startup that was actually soliciting, asking if they could test people's water. And we thought, why not? It's a nonprofit. I fully expected we'd get the same results. Indeed, my initial response on opening the letter

was that it must have been sent to the wrong address. The first sample from our house had more than 70 times the amount of lead as Philadelphia water had detected. The second had more than 10 times the amount. We had what was described in the materials as a serious lead contamination problem. It was baffling. I compared the collection methods and discovered that the city didn't actually sample the water that had been sitting in the lead

service line. The one I'd repeatedly emphasized was the reason for getting my water tested in the first place. Instead, they tested the water sitting in the new non-lead pipes directly next to the kitchen sink. And then after letting the water flush for a full 10 minutes, the water from the non-lead main out in the street. My wife and I were shocked. Parents like us aren't interested in the minimum lead exposure level for our children. If our kids let the tap run for 10 minutes

every time they get a glass of water or brush their teeth, we want to know how much lead is contained in the water when they act like normal children who turn on the faucet when they're thirsty, drink the cup as soon as it's filled, and head back to whatever they're doing. But testing the water left stagnant in suspect pipes carries a huge downside for municipalities like Philadelphia, precisely because it is a far more accurate means to capture the risk. The EPA's Lead and Copper Rule states that if more than 10% of sampled sites exceed the action level of 15 parts per billion, a utility must address the contamination, including replacing lead pipes.

By instructing its technicians to avoid sampling water left in the lead service lines, and instead to take water from the main, Philadelphia water can avoid costly regulation. You might assume, as I did, that 15 parts per billion, that action level for lead, is the threshold between safe and unsafe drinking water.

But that's not actually what it is. Under the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act, the EPA was required to determine the level at which various contaminants in water produced no adverse health effects. For lead, the maximum exposure level was identified as zero. There is no amount of lead in water that is safe for children. When fetuses and children are exposed to even very low levels, the consequences can be devastating. Lead has been linked to lower IQs, learning disabilities, nervous system damage, and social and emotional dysfunction.

The problem for the EPA was that for decades, Americans built houses with lead pipes and lead solder joints. Setting a maximum contaminant level at zero would mean replacing all of that plumbing. What we clearly have then is children's health ignored at the moment of building poor infrastructure, ignored at the moment of crafting regulations to address harms from that infrastructure, and ignored at the moment of complying with those regulations. This is not, though, a story about people setting out to harm children. This is a story about not focusing on them. I was really shocked by that story that you tell

about the lead levels in the water in your home. What ended up happening with the water and the lead levels in this instance? Yeah, so, you know, I think the immediate reaction was I wrote to the city and I said, hey, I can't remember, I think I wrote to the head of the Philadelphia Water Department. And I said, hey, like you came and tested my water

and you said that there is no detectable lead in it. And that was wrong. And that happened because you used a protocol that's designed not to find lead. And I have a two-year-old, and this is really wrong. And I don't think you're a bad person. But I think you have done something that's really, really harmful to the kids in Philadelphia.

And I think it's just really revealing what the response was. I didn't receive a letter back from Philadelphia Water. I received a letter back from the Solicitor General of the city saying, now, no one told you not to change out the lead service line. And I was like, oh my gosh, like this is in a progressive, in a blue city, filled with lots of people who care about environmental protection. This is the response. But I think that's how we deal a lot with issues, particularly of harms to kids. We immediately think, okay, let's get the lawyers involved.

There's been an allegation of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and the diocese in Pennsylvania. And let's lawyer up, minimize this, let's sign nondisclosure agreements. And I think it's really gets in the way. Now, you know, the- Why do we do, maybe I'll just interject here. Why do we spend more energy guarding against potential lawsuits instead of actually just at the front end making things safer for children? Well, I think this is part of a broader problem with law,

particularly in the United States, which has been a very conscious decision to embrace procedure over substantive justice. And I think that is likely to be harmful to everyone, but it's gonna be particularly harmful for kids. Because so often, right, if you are, you know, going through a checklist and you know, you know, you're a municipality cash strapped, right,

you are gonna look for ways that you can still check off the boxes, but avoid finding problems. And then you can pat check off the boxes, but avoid finding problems. And then you can pat yourself on the back. I followed the EPA's protocol or I followed what this law says. When you really didn't, like the whole purpose of having a law

about like lead levels is because lead is a poison. There's no safe level of lead in drinking water. And so if you work at somewhere that delivers water, your goal ought to be, I want to deliver zero lead to children. And that should be your passion. In fact, you should want the most detailed, the most sensitive test possible.

And you want to err on the side of caution. And I think you want to actually not rely on information disclosure. So this is another thing. I don't mean to be bashing the legal establishment, but I will. And this is another thing I think is really problematic, which is our embrace of information disclosure rather than actually fixing problems. So we give people a pamphlet when they move into rental housing, which says this house was built in 1952 and therefore likely has lead paint. Lead paint is bad for babies and pregnant women.

That doesn't make sense. You should actually look and say, well, when we hand out these pamphlets, do people read them? Do people take the precautions that we identify in the pamphlet? Do they have disposable income to remediate lead paint? And if you actually look at the data, no, they do not have the money. No, they do not read the pamphlet. No, they do not do anything about it. And yes, those little babies are getting lead

off of the windowsill. They're getting it in the corner where there's dust collecting. And it can have a devastating lifelong effect. Is there one thing, is there like the biggest, I don't know if this is such a typical sort of journalist question, but is there one big overarching barrier in us getting to a child-first approach right now? Well, I think one of the reasons I have focused on enfranchisement rights and where, you know, in 2024 that's going to be a big push with a new organization I'm launching called Minor Power, is that I think this is the avenue for making progress on all of these other areas of children's rights.

Why have we not made progress on child poverty? I think that is because legislatures don't care what children think because they don't vote. They have no political power. I think you would not see the backsliding on labor laws. I think you would have much more of the budget going to children-related issues if children had their interests represented. And so for me, this is the gateway to accomplishing all of these other agenda items. [♪ music and children playing in the background.

You're listening to Ideas. Ideas is a podcast and a broadcast heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on U.S. Public Radio, across North America, on Sirius XM, in Australia, on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca.com. You can find us on the CBC News app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayaed. I'm Sarah Trelevin and for over a, I've been working on one of the most complex

stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now. Adam Benferato is a legal scholar who delivered a talk at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. It's titled, How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All. He argues that we need to overhaul the legal system in order to put children first.

What is law's purpose? Over the years, I've been given various answers. To ensure fairness, to promote efficiency, to facilitate the will of the years, I've been given various answers to ensure fairness, to promote efficiency, to facilitate the will of the people, to keep us safe, to punish the wicked, to encourage grace and civility. I never imagined I'd have one of my own, but I do now. The core purpose of law should be to prioritize the interests of children. I don't mean simply in children's matters, education, foster care, custody, and the like.

I mean in all law. When we answer any of the fundamental organizing questions for our legal order, I believe the best response is to prioritize children. So what is the proper aim of government? What is our democracy for? What should our legal rules, processes, and institutions seek? How should we articulate the state's promise

to its citizens? What is the responsibility of a Supreme Court justice? The president, the Exxon Mobil Board of Directors, an elementary school teacher, a lab technician at the Philadelphia Department of Water, a prosecutor, a prison warden, a crossing guard, a city planner. It ought to be to prioritize the interests of kids.

Why am I convinced this is the path? Well, let me give you four reasons. First, prioritizing the interests of children, protecting them from harm, ensuring their needs, granting them standing and voice, is the least costly and most effective way to create the society we all want to live in. And the choice is simply whether to pay pennies on prevention and early intervention in childhood or dollars trying to address ills that have metastasized and hardened over decades. There is no free option. It's pre-K and routine health screenings or prisons and triple bypasses down the line.

And the data is clear and consistent across fields. Don't wait and remediate. Childhood is the window of opportunity. But it's not simply cost-story. When you ensure that kids reach their full potential, you also get all of the upside on your investment in terms of increased lifetime earnings and tax revenue. And you can expect more community strengthening behavior in adulthood, more home ownership, savings,

educational attainment, civic engagement, stability and interpersonal relationships, with resulting intergenerational benefits. Now, another way to think about this is that the law is far too reactive. In general, the law waits for bad things to occur and then tries to address the consequences after the contract is broken,

after the harassment has occurred, after the burglary, after the dereliction of duty, after the song has been copied and played on the radio. But in fields like medicine, there's been a concerted effort in recent decades to shift toward a proactive approach that places greater emphasis on predicting and avoiding problems before they wreak havoc. Child prioritization can help facilitate a similar

reorientation of law. Now second, children's interests should be primary in law because kids are canaries in our coal mines. The things that harm kids also tend to harm adults. Kids are more sensitive to the bad effects. So when we make them our principal focus, we intervene earlier and more completely with major benefits for everyone. Tear gas, lead in water, solitary confinement, car accidents, all really bad for kids, but actually bad for everyone. One of the reasons we have such high rates of avoidable illness, suffering, and death in this country is because we have crafted so many of our legal standards, protocols, and practices based on healthy adult

males. As a result, anyone who isn't healthy, adult or male, the majority of the population, is put at unnecessary risk. A child-centric model offers a vital correction. It allows us to appreciate the vulnerability and malleability of all human beings to addictive products, manipulative marketing, criminogenic environments, and other situational pressures. We can all agree that no five-year-old consciously accepts the risk of toxic train spills by living in a house near the tracks. Now third, drawing attention or attention to children can help remind us of our values, offer moral clarity, and promote pro-social behavior. In experiments when participants have their attention drawn to children, they show greater

motivation to tackle social problems and help other people. And this benefit of placing the laws focus on children is particularly relevant to the contemporary United States because one of the major impediments to our success in recent decades has been our retreat from collective investment. The unparalleled prosperity of mid-century America had much to do with our nation's embrace of public funding of core infrastructure projects, scientific and technological research and development, and education. Child prioritization in law can facilitate a return to that commitment.

Now fourth and finally, focusing on children's welfare can get decision makers thinking about the long-term health of our nation. When you focus on youth rights, it becomes essential to think of the decades ahead to preserve resources, to see connections between generations. With elderly leaders dominating every branch of government and many of the other most powerful entities in society, We end up looking at problems very shallowly, spending too much on the present and sending the bill to our project and not investing enough in the future.

You're asserting that we're not investing enough in the future by not prioritizing children, which you argue would be actually a lot cheaper of a way to address the social problems that we live with today. So can you give an actual example where that would hold true? Sure. So, you know, I think one of the lessons from the United States over the last century is

that our country did best when we invested in the public, when we invested in schools, when we invested in infrastructure, when we invested in public parks and libraries. These were the engines of the incredible growth. I mean, again, the 1950s and 1960s in the United States were just this incredible period of economic growth. And it was a period-

This is post-war. Yes. And it was this period where we actually, there was a great leveling, right? So it wasn't that this was all going to CEOs and no, this was rising up workers and everything. And it set us on this incredible path. What happened subsequently, and this is from sort of the neoliberal revolution, was a shift away from that where we stopped funding science and tech public investment. And I think, you know, if the question is, how do we get back to that? I think one of

the ways is by prioritizing children and law. Because I think that ensures that our focus is not on the next five years, but the next 70, or 80, or 90. And I think that requires, particularly at the federal level, big investment in children. This is where you get the most bang for your buck. It's paid pennies on creating robust, excellent public education or trying later in life on job programs and retraining and things like that. And I think that's, you know, long-termism, I think, has gotten a lot more attention recently. With respect to also thinking about future generations, when we focus on kids and have

that longer-term perspective, that is a way of forcing us to preserve resources, to think, hey, we shouldn't just be passing off debt from this, another forever war onto future generations. We should actually look out for them and see those people as real human beings who will walk this earth and suffer the consequences or enjoy the bounty that we have left to them. I bet you're watching very closely some of these youthful attempts at legal reparations for the destruction of the future, so to speak, where the environment is concerned. Yeah, and I mean, I really commend young people for bringing those lawsuits.

And I think there is, with respect to the United States, there are really important pathways to using impact legislation, finding rights to a healthy environment in state constitutions. I think we should pursue that. But again, I worry about using the court system as a means. It is so easy, and we've actually seen this around the world, to tell children, you don't have standing to sue. Maybe this is a meritorious claim, but you don't have standing to sue in your own right. There are so many ways to derail lawsuits.

And that is why I really want to have kids having power at the ballot box. Because when 73 million American children have a vote, when it's really one person, one vote in America, I think that is where we can see the rapid change on addressing climate change in the United States. It also takes political buy-in and I'm wondering how empathetic or how much politicians are listening to this message that you and others are delivering. Is there appetite? Because you're talking about foundational change here.

Yeah, well, I think for me, there is certainly an appetite on the left. The question is, how do we reach people on the right? And I will tell you, I try to talk to everyone. And I gave a interview to NPR Dallas a few months ago. And this was from a guy who said, hey, I'm a very conservative person. I live in the suburb of Dallas.

And I just want you to know that I heard what you said about the logic of paying for school lunches for kindergartners. And I have to say, you're exactly right. I agree that no five-year-old chooses who his parents are. And you and I can disagree about whether the parents are bad people for not making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or taking care of their kids.

But I agree, I think we should put that to the side and just agree that you can't learn to read if you're hungry. That must have been heartening to hear. Oh, it's hugely heartening, but it's not actually an anomaly. It's hard to have these conversations. And I think the conservative people that I know care a lot about kids.

And one of the things that I think is really powerful is just if you do not like children, if your only goal is like less tax dollars wasted, you should prioritize kids. Because that is the best cheapest way to deal with social problems in America. And so I think, again, I think this is a topic children's rights, that people on the right

naturally don't think they're gonna find areas of agreement, but when you actually have conversation, I think there's lots of areas of agreement. You know, we do live in this era, like it or not, you know, where corporate lobbying and big money are endemic in the political sphere. How do you make that argument in that kind of environment? Well, you know, I think business law is an area that we also need to prioritize kids.

And I think when I talk to people in the business community, I argue that this is actually not sort of contra profitability. I think child primacy is just a different pathway to making great profits. And I think it's because so much money ends up wasted with lobbyists, right? So instead of trying to make a pesticide, I mean, instead of hiring lobbyists so that the pesticide that you made that causes cancer stays on the market,

put your effort into making pesticides that don't cause cancer. I mean, it's like, well, that'll be less profitable. I don't think that that is at all borne out by the economics of it. I think doing things, making products that are good for kids and good for families is incredibly profitable.

It's just we've gotten lazy. We've gotten focused on liability waivers and hiring lobbyists and crafting legislation and the revolving door of regulatory agencies as opposed to making good products and delivering good services that are safe for kids. We still have the question of how the legal system might actually be reconstructed to put children first. And I want to give you a brief sense of what that application might look like with three examples. So example one, imagine for a moment that the dominant approach to interpreting the

Constitution was not originalism, asking what reasonable people living in the 18th century would have thought the text meant, but asking what the text ought to mean in light of the best interests of children. Why, ask yourself, is originalism any more legitimate than a child first perspective when deciding whether prohibiting gun ownership by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order violates the Second Amendment? To add some context to Adam's references here, the Second Amendment contains that famous phrase, the right to bear arms. And originalism is basically a school of legal thought that laws should be interpreted the

way they would have been when they were originally written. In Adam's view, originalism has been harmful to children in the United States. The Constitution does not come with an interpretation guide. It's up to us today to decide how we should interpret it. Does it really make sense to construe the right of the people to keep and bear arms based on the understanding of folks who lived in a time of muskets and cartouche boxes, than to read it in light of the experience of children

exposed to the threat of gun violence today and in the years to come. Firearms are the number one cause of death of children and teens in the United States. So example two, what if before federal agencies pursued new policies, they first had to consider the impact on children? That's already being done in countries like New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Finland, and Sweden. And one of the great benefits of these assessments

is that they can allow lawmakers and regulators to notice and prioritize children's interests in areas where the effect on children is large but hidden. Sometimes the driest, most adult sounding things, preemption rules, zoning provisions, intellectual property guidelines, can have visceral implications on our youngest citizens. So example three. In making this a reality, I believe we should strongly consider creating a new federal agency focused on the whole child to stand alongside the Department of Transportation, Homeland Security, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

We need a single entity promoting children's interests and consolidating efforts currently spread thinly across the government. Such an agency could also oversee the most ambitious set of youth first reforms, recasting every field of law in terms of maximizing the welfare of children. Given the overwhelming evidence on the importance of attachment between primary caregivers and young children and the crushing lifelong toll of parental incarceration,

in criminal law, we might end the incarceration of fit parents of minor children in most cases, relying instead on other correctional tools like monitoring that do not take kids away from their parents. In corporate law, the shareholder primacy norm might be recast in terms of a new child primacy norm. In trusts and estates, we might strive to eliminate rules and doctrines allowing those long departed to control property in ways that were detrimental to young people and future generations, while permitting so-called dead-hand restrictions that protect the interests of young people and future generations, like conservation trusts. In the end, this all might feel radical, perhaps even dangerous. the United States. The United States is a country

that has a lot of conservation trusts. In the end, this might feel radical, perhaps even dangerous. But it is the status quo which merits our suspicion. How can America be the only on the rights of the child. There is nothing to fear in doing hard things that are right. You need only roll up your sleeves and get to work. In the last excerpt of your talk, you ask the following question.

How can America be the only UN member state not to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child? So let me ask you that same question. How can it be? How can it be that the US is the Rights of the Child. So let me ask you that same question. How can it be? How can it be that the U.S. is the only country not to sign that convention? I think it is this treaty was one of the high points of what we have done as a world community. It is kind of, I think, the high point of children's rights.

And we did not sign it. We are the sole holdout here. And I think that has a lot to do with where we started in this conversation, talking about the shift to the notion that the project of raising children is the prerogative of parents alone. It is not the role of the US government, and it certainly is not the role of the UN or international forces. And I think what is so frustrating to me is that I think the way this was framed back

in 1989 and the way it's framed often today on the right is that children's rights are opposed to parents' rights. When it's exactly the opposite, children's rights make your life easier and better. When your child has healthcare, you don't have to pay for that or worry about that when you lose your job. When your child has a good free education, you don't have to worry about the fact that you didn't buy a house in the right neighborhood.

I think, you know, by abandoning this, we've shot ourselves in the foot. And that's one of the reasons that I have been opposed to some of the well-meaning folks on the left who have tried to be pushing for a robust liberal parents' rights movement to sort of combat the parents' rights movement on the right in the United States. I want to talk about children's rights. Let's create that movement because I think that is the path that will be best for kids and the way that will be best for kids and the way that will be best for parents. How far do you think the US is from lowering the age of voting to allow children to have a bigger say in their future?

I think this is something that we are going to see significant moves happening in the next two or three decades. We are already seeing at the local level some movement. A few years ago, I went down and spoke to some Democratic members of Congress right after they'd had the first vote in the US House, in which more than 100 members of Congress voted to lower the voting age to 16. And I see that as a real openness. Now speaking with these members of Congress, they really were not familiar with a lot of the arguments in favor of lowering the voting age.

They were fearful of some of the implications, which I think we don't have to be fearful of. So one of the fears is as soon as we lower the voting age, we'll also have to lower the voting age when we execute people in the United States. And to me, the answer is, well, actually, you can both extend voting rights and abolish the death penalty. Like, that's a completely consistent perspective.

You can dismantle some of our punitive criminal justice system that tries children as adults and extend empowerment rights. And so this is an area where I think what we're going to initially see is changes at the municipal and state level, followed by some changes at the national level. This is an area where I'm incredibly optimistic, in part because we have models around the world of other countries that have already lowered their voting age. You know, this may seem like going too far in the imagination, but it isn't because it actually happened previously. But how do you ensure that child-centered legislation or action will actually benefit

children and not perpetuate discrimination in the 20th century for indigenous people who were forced into residential schools that ended up actually being, you know, hubs of abuse. So I'm just curious, again, writ large, when you're talking about this topic, how do you allay any fears that people might have that the state's involvement or these bigger changes might lead to this kind of problem? Yeah. So, I think it's a genuine worry, as you suggest. Children are often in policy debates used as pawns to advance the interests of adults. And so, I think the best way to combat this is to actually include children always in the actual decision-makers, in actual decisions.

I think when we are talking about something that we're concerned with, we think this is bad for kids or we think we need something, well, let's actually talk to young people. Let's learn from them. Let's incorporate their ideas and let's incorporate their ideas, and let's give them real power in the world. I think that is the best check on whether we are doing things correctly that benefit children's interests or doing things incorrectly that harm children's interests,

ask children, include children in decision-making. Putting children first would fundamentally, as we've discussed, you know, it would be a radical, it would be a fundamental change, let's call it that, in the way we live and how we do things today. And you do acknowledge that, you know, the proposal writ large might feel radical or dangerous to people.

So what's one concrete experience that you've had that makes you think we can actually get there? Well, I think it happens when I talk to young people and in my book, A Minor Revolution, a conversation that I talked to with an 11-year-old in Philadelphia. And I just asked him, you know, it was an open-ended conversation. I said, you said, what do you think about young people voting? And he says, you know what? I've been thinking a bunch about that, actually. And I was thinking that our next-door neighbors

are like in their 70s or 80s, and there are two of that, and they get two votes. And my family, there's two kids and two parents, and we get two votes too, but we should get four votes, one person, one vote. We should have four votes. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is an 11 year old. This is someone who's in fifth or sixth grade who sees it so clearly.

That's exactly right. And every law student in Con con law learns these principles. And somehow, though, it gets all clouded. And so I think, again, it comes back to listening to kids and seeing, right, they are up for it. They are up for asserting their rights. They're up for the challenge of participating in our civic society. And I see my responsibility as assisting in that process. Adam Benferato, thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure. You've been listening to my conversation with Adam Benferato and to excerpts of a talk

he delivered at Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy. Adam Benferato teaches law at Drexel University in Philadelphia and is the author of A Minor Revolution, How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All. Special thanks to Carol Jackson at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. This episode was produced by Debbie Pacheco. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Our technical producer is Danielle Duvall. The senior producer is Nicola Lukcic.

The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly. And I'm Nala Ayed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.