Family Law Isolationism and 'Church, State, and Family'

Abstract

The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (“CRC”) turns 30 this year. Adopted by the UN and opened for signatures on November 20, 1989, the CRC met a warm embrace by the international community: within a year, 20 nations had ratified it and it entered into force in September 1990. When the United States signed the CRC in 1995, nearly all of the world’s nations had already ratified it. By the mid-2000s, a common refrain among academics and activists was that the United States was joined only by Somalia and South Sudan in failing to ratify the CRC. That changed in 2015 when Somalia and South Sudan ratified the CRC. Now, the United States stands alone. To understand the United States’ committed and deliberate family law isolationism, one need look no further than John Witte’s latest book, “Church, State, and Family,” and especially its chapter on “Why Suffer the Children? Overcoming the Modern Church’s Opposition to Children’s Rights.” The book charts the centrality of the marital family, even as the law allows couples to privatize their marital and intimate arrangements, as Brian Bix discusses at length in a companion reflection. Throughout, Professor Witte conveys the thick shield erected by states laws around the family, which have allowed the family to serve, in his words, as a “cradle of conscience, chrysalis of care, and cornerstone of ordered liberty.