Joseph A. Butt, S.J. College of Business, Loyola University, New Orleans, USA.
120 Pulpit Hill Road, Amherst, USA.
Int J Health Policy Manag. 2014 Feb 24;2(2):85-9. doi: 10.15171/ijhpm.2014.20. eCollection 2014 Feb.
What does libertarian theory, Murray Rothbard's theory in particular, tell us about the rights of children? The two foundational principles of Rothbardian libertarianism are the sanctity of private property and the rule of non-aggression. Persons, including children, are "self-owners". Yet children, at a young age, are not yet capable of functioning fully as "self-owners." They must be cared for, and the caring will necessarily involve some degree of aggression in the form of supervision and restraint. Parents and other caregivers play the role of trustees; and just as the beneficiary of a trust has the right to petition a court to change trustees or terminate the trustee relationship, so a child, able to express his preferences when it comes to the nature and degree of supervision and restraint to which he will be subjected, should equally enjoy that right while, in terms of property rights, a biological caregiver may have better "title" than an adoptive caregiver to be the child's "trustee" given the child's inability to express a preference for one or the other. What may seem to a contemporary sensibility as an extreme degree of childhood independence in the choice of caregivers and other freedom from supervision and restraint was common in pre-industrial America and continues to be the rule in some native cultures.
自由意志主义理论，尤其是默里·罗斯巴德的理论，告诉我们关于儿童权利的哪些内容？罗斯巴德自由意志主义的两个基本原则是私有财产的神圣性和非侵犯原则。个人，包括儿童，都是“自我所有者”。然而，年幼的孩子还没有能力完全作为“自我所有者”发挥作用。他们需要被照顾，而照顾必然会涉及到一定程度的以监督和限制形式的侵犯。父母和其他照顾者扮演着受托人的角色；正如信托受益人有权向法院申请更换受托人或终止受托关系一样，当涉及到他将受到的监督和限制的性质和程度时，一个能够表达自己偏好的孩子，应该同样享有这项权利，而在财产权方面，鉴于孩子无法表达对某一照顾者的偏好，生物性照顾者可能比收养照顾者更有“资格”成为孩子的“受托人”。在选择照顾者和其他免受监督和限制方面，当代人认为是极端程度的儿童独立性，在美国前工业化时期很常见，在一些本土文化中仍然是惯例。
