1. Rodham, H. (1973) Children under the law. Harvard Educational Review, 43, 487–514.
2. The American Supreme Court case of Re Gault, 387, US 1 (1967) ruled in the mid-1960s that children qualified as persons under the US Constitution and were therefore capable of possessing fundamental rights. Various writers on both sides of the Atlantic have, of course, been writing about the rights of children for decades; see e.g. Foster and Freed (1972) A bill of rights for children. Family Law Quarterly, 6, 343; Farson, R. (1978) Birthrights. Penguin, Harmondsworth; and Mnookin, R. (1981) Thinking about children ’s rights -beyond kiddie libbers and child savers. Stanford Lawyer, 24; see also Freeman, M. D. A. (1983) The Rights and Wrongs of Children. Frances Pinter, London; and MacCormick, N. (1982) Children ’s Rights: a Test-case for Theories of Rights in Legal Right and Social Democracy. Oxford University Press.
3. Gillick v. West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority (1986) FLR 224; [1986] AC 112; [1985] FLR 224; ironically this case was initiated in order to clarify the scope of parental rights.
4. This Convention came into force in the UK on 15 January 1992.
5. See the classic exposition by Hohfeld, W. N. (1964) Fundamental Legal Conceptions. Yale University Press.