法律翻譯|《芝加哥大學法律評論》第91.2卷第12篇

譯者 | 王佳穎對外經濟貿易大學

一審 | 富揚北京師範大學法學院

二審 | 田昕琪英國布里斯托大學

編輯 | 鍾翼飛國際關係學院

lzzy 美國西北大學 LL.M.

責編 | 劉一賢國際關係學院

The University of Chicago Law Review Volume 91.2, Number 12 | March 2024

《芝加哥大學法律評論》

第91.2卷第12篇

Beyond Home and School

在家庭與學校之外

Anne C. Dailey

Laura A. Rosenbury

引言

In the tradition of American Law Institute (ALI) restatement projects, the Restatement of Children and the Law aspires to describe and unify the wide array of laws governing children in the United States. This ambitious project is a bold and welcome affirmation that the law governing children is more than a bundle of disparate doctrines but a substantial field in its own right. And the Restatement of Children and the Law lives up to its promise: the reporters have given us a comprehensive and richly detailed compendium of laws touching upon the lives of children in the United States.

正如美國法律研究所（ALI）所作的其他重述專案一樣，《兒童與法律重述》旨在對美國有關兒童的各種法律進行闡述與統一。這一雄心勃勃的專案是一個大膽且受人歡迎的肯定，它表明了兒童法不僅僅是各種不同理論的組合，而是一個重要的法領域。而《兒童與法律重述》亦不負眾望：編撰者為我們提供了一個涉及美國兒童生活全面且豐富的法律彙編。

Restatement projects deliberately do not aim to break new ground. Instead, restatements aim to describe the world as it is, and the Restatement of Children and the Law is no exception. In the first three parts of the Restatement, the reporters have adopted the traditional three-part framework for organizing laws governing children: parental rights and responsibilities, schools’ educational aims and authority, and the workings of the juvenile justice system. In each of these three domains, the Restatement focuses on drawing the classic lines of authority between parents and the state. The Restatement’s adoption of this three-part schema––family, school, and juvenile justice––reflects an organizational structure long familiar to scholars and teachers of children and law. Moreover, that the Restatement begins with the children in the family highlights the primacy of the parent-child relationship, and in particular the importance of parental rights within existing law.

重述專案本身並不意在開闢新徑，相反，其旨在如實陳述現狀，《兒童與法律重述》（以下簡稱為《重述》）也是如此。在《重述》的前三部分中，編者採用了傳統的三段式框架來彙編和兒童相關的法律：父母的法定權責、學校的教育目標與職能，以及青少年司法制度的執行。在上述的三個方向中，《重述》著重描述了父母與國家之間的權責界限。《重述》採取了——家庭、學校和青少年司法制度——這一長期為兒童和法學領域的學者及教師所熟知的三段式結構。此外，《重述》以家庭中的兒童作為開篇，再次強調了親子關係，尤其是父母權利在現行法律體系中的重要性。

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Yet, restatement projects are not devoid of all normative content, and Part 4 of the Restatement of Children and the Law in fact steers us in a new and exciting direction. Entitled “Children in Society,” this final section addresses a diverse range of doctrines: children’s medical decision-making, sexual activity, expressive activities outside school, curfews, and tort and contract liability. The Introduction to Part 4 suggests that children’s decision-making autonomy is an important thread that ties many of these doctrines together. As the Introduction to Part 4 states, these doctrines relate to children “mostly as they increasingly engage with the wider world as adolescents.” At that point, the reporters tell us, the “traditional paternalistic assumptions” no longer serve children’s interests as persons capable of exercising greater control over their own lives.

與此同時，重述專案並非不包含任何規範性內容，在《重述》的第四部分實際上將我們引向了一個令人興奮的新方向。這一部分以 “社會中的兒童”為題，論述了一系列不同領域的司法原則：兒童的醫療決策、性活動、校外表達活動、宵禁以及侵權和合同責任。如第4部分的序言所指出的那樣，兒童的自主決策權是將許多司法原則相聯絡的重要線索；這些司法原則與兒童有關，“主要是因為他們作為青少年越來越多地接觸到更廣闊的世界”。《重述》編者指出，在這個時候，由於兒童能夠對其生活行使更大的控制權，“傳統的家長式觀念 ”已不再符合兒童的權益。

The Restatement’s focus on children in society encourages us to move beyond a merely descriptive project toward a new way of envisioning children’s place in law as full persons in the present. In our view, Part 4 does much more than identify the situations where the law does or should treat children like adult decision-makers. Instead, Part 4 illuminates the possibilities for a new law of the child that understands children as developing persons deeply connected to but also distinct from the adults in their lives. We focus on § 18.11––“Minors’ Right to Gain Access to Information and Other Expressive Content”––to illustrate how the subtle transformation in Part 4 of the Restatement points toward potentially pathbreaking changes for the law of children generally.

《重述》著重關注了兒童的社會地位，在此意義上，《重述》不僅是一項單純的描述性工作，更提供了一種新的視角，即視兒童為存在於當下社會及法律中的完全個體。在筆者看來，《重述》第四部分不僅載明瞭在何種情況下從法律上可將兒童視為具有成年人決策能力的個體。此外，第四部分還揭示了一種新兒童法的可能性，這種法律把兒童視為與其生活中成年人有深刻聯絡且兼具其獨特性而不斷發展的個體。我們在下文中也將透過第18.11條——“未成年人獲取資訊和其他表達內容的權利”——來進一步說明《重述》第四部分中的轉變將如何指向未來兒童法的開創性變革。

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The invitation to comment upon Part 4 has given us a welcome opportunity to reflect upon work that we have done in this area, both separately and together. In her article Between Home and School, President Laura Rosenbury examines the law’s failure to address the “fundamental reality” that “[m]uch of childhood takes place in spaces between home and school,” such as playgrounds, parks, religious sites, after-school programs, and, significantly, the internet. In exploring what it would mean for law to take account of these spaces where children interact with a variety of people who are neither their parents nor teachers, Rosenbury invites family law to recognize children’s interests in exposure to diverse ways of life.

《重述》第四部分的徵求意見稿提供了一個寶貴機會，讓我們一起或分別反思在這一領域所做的工作。勞拉•羅森伯裡（Laura Rosenbury）的《家與學校之間》一文探討了法律未能解決的“基本現實”，即“大部分童年時光在家庭和學校之外的空間度過”，例如遊樂場、公園、宗教場所、課後專案，以及難以忽視的網際網路上。在探究法律將如何涵蓋到兒童與（非其父母、老師）其他各種人群互動的空間時，羅森伯裡呼籲家庭法應考慮到兒童在多樣化生活方式中的權益。

In a recent article entitled In Loco Reipublicae, Professor Anne Dailey offers a new framework in constitutional law that identifies and furthers children’s distinct rights as developing citizens, most importantly their right to access the world of ideas outside the home. And together, we have called for a new law of the child that fosters children’s agency within dependency by acknowledging the ways in which children are full persons in their own right even as they are dependent on their parents and others for caregiving and guidance.

在最新一篇名為《In Loco Reipublicae》的文章中，安妮•戴利（Anne Dailey）教授提供了一個新的憲法框架，該框架可識別並推進兒童作為發展中公民的獨特權利，尤其是他們接觸家庭以外的思想世界的權利。與此同時，我們共同呼喚新兒童法的誕生，即透過承認兒童本身具有完全的主體地位，儘管他們依賴父母和他人的照顧和指導，也要培養兒童在依賴關係中的能動性。

This Essay draws upon our prior work in order to illuminate the major contributions––but also shortcomings––of Part 4 of the Restatement of Children and Law. In the first Part of this Essay, we examine the Restatement’s focus on children’s interests in accessing ideas and the Restatement’s endorsement of parental authority to control that access. We applaud the Restatement’s important discussion of the background and rationale for recognizing children’s right to access information and expressive materials. Yet we note that the Restatement undermines its own commitment to children’s free speech interests by expressly endorsing parents’ broad authority to limit children’s access to ideas. In the second Part, we explore what it would mean to respect children’s right to access ideas on their own, free from parental control. We focus on the example of social media because of its importance in children’s lives today and note that broad parental authority to limit this access, as set forth in the Restatement and in recent legislation in Utah and Arkansas, potentially harms children’s interests. The third Part proposes alternative black-letter law designed to better promote children’s interests in accessing ideas.

本文主要參考了我們先前工作的基礎以闡明《重述》第四部分的主要進步及不足之處。在第一部分，我們審視了《重述》對兒童獲取思想這一權益的關注，以及《重述》對父母控制該獲取權威的認可；我們肯定了《重述》對承認兒童獲取資訊和表達材料權益此背景與理由的重要討論。然而，我們注意到《重述》透過明確支援父母廣泛限制兒童獲取思想的權力，削弱了其自身對兒童言論自由權利的承諾。在第二部分，我們探討了尊重兒童獨立於父母控制獲取思想的權利意味著什麼。考慮到社交媒體在當今兒童生活中的重要性，我們以此為例注意到：正如《重述》以及猶他州和阿肯色州最近立法中所述，父母過度限制透過社交媒體獲取外界思想的行為可能會損害兒童的權益。第三部分則提出了旨在更好地促進兒童獲取思想權益的替代性成文法。

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We conclude this Essay with a provocation: What would a project on Children and Law look like if it began with Part 4? A legal regime governing children centered around the idea that children are persons in society and developing citizens with important interests beyond home and school would likely strengthen both our democracy and parent-child relationships. The Restatement provides a powerful starting point for reimagining a new framework that begins rather than ends with children as full members of the social order. We urge scholars to take up our call for a new vision that draws from but moves beyond the ALI’s immensely important description of the law as it is today to build a new law of the child encompassing the realm of the social beyond home and school.

在結尾部分，我們提出了一個頗具挑戰性的觀點，即若兒童與法律的專案從第四部分開始，它會是什麼樣子？一個將兒童作為具有家庭和學校之外重要權益的社會中的個體和發展中的公民為中心的法律體系，可能會進一步加強我們的民主和親子關係。《重述》為這一框架的重構提供了一個強有力的起點，這一框架並非以兒童作為社會秩序的完全參與者為終點，而是起點。我們期待並呼籲未來學者們能提出一個基於並超越美國法學會（ALI）現有重述的新願景，進而構建一個能涵蓋家庭和學校之外的社會領域新的兒童法。

結論

A provocation: What would a restatement project on Children and Law look like if we began with Part 4? In other words, if the Restatement began with children in society rather than, as it currently does, with children in the family? This reordering would alter the fundamental framework of the Restatement by structuring the field of children and law around the idea that children are persons in society at the same time that they are persons within the family and in school. Perhaps this reordering would suggest that, even as children develop, they are seen, first and foremost, as independent members of society.

一個挑戰性的問題指出：如果以第四部分作為開篇，那麼《重述》又將呈現如何面貌？換句話說，如果《重述》從關注社會中的兒童開始而非像現在從家庭中的兒童開始，這將會如何？這種重新排序將改變《重述》的基本框架，透過圍繞“兒童是社會參與者，同時也是家庭和學校參與者這一觀念”，進而構建兒童法相關理論體系。與此同時，這種重新排序亦暗示，處於不斷發展階段中的兒童首先應被視為獨立的社會成員。

In our newly restructured Restatement, “Children in Society” would come first. This new Part 1 would be expanded beyond the doctrines in the existing Part 4 to encompass all the laws that relate to children’s lives outside either the family or school: laws relating to what children can say and hear, of course, but also child labor laws, curfew laws, laws governing torts and contracts, religious rights, the mature minor doctrine, laws relating to reproduction and sexual activity, children’s political status, emancipation, and perhaps more. With that reordering, the Restatement would truly capture and affirm children’s place in a social world beyond home and school.

在新重組架構下的《重述》裡，“社會中的兒童”這一概念將首先出現。新《重述》的第一部分將擴充套件現有第四部分的司法原則，涵蓋所有與兒童在家庭或學校之外生活相關的法律：包括規範兒童可接觸視聽範圍的法律，但也包括童工法、宵禁法、涉及侵權行為和合同、以及有關宗教權利、成熟未成年人原則、與生殖和性行為、兒童的政治地位、成年禮等的法律法規。筆者認為，透過此種重新排序，《重述》將更明確並肯定兒童在家庭和學校之外的社會世界中的位置。