Boxer Pushes U.N. Treaty to Supplant Parental Autonomy

"Best Interests" Evidentiary Standard Now Applied in Divorce and Child Custody Determinations would be broadened to all American parents.


(CHICAGO) -- California Senator Barbara Boxer wants Big Brother to be the father of your children. Or so it would seem, given her remarks at a recent Senate confirmation hearing for UN Ambassador-designate Susan Rice held on January 15, 2009.

Boxer alleged that passage of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), would protect "the most vulnerable people of society," under the context of the "Best Interests of the Child" evidentiary standard, which is now utilized only in Juvenile and Domestic Relations cases.

Parental rights advocates say it is the kiss of death for American parents.

"Application of the Best Interests standard is part of what has proven to be so egregiously harmful to parent-child bonds within the context of divorce and child custody determinations, and is the primary catalyst for enabling the courts to over-step their bounds when it comes to making harmful and long-lasting determinations, even when the state lacks a compelling interest to do so," says Michael Burns, President and Co-founder of the Illinois Alliance for Parents and Children, a non-partisan public interest group located in Chicago.

"Support for UNCRC demonstrates a long-standing desire of social service agencies and the feminist movement to marginalize parental involvement and autonomy in the name of protecting their best interests, which flies in the face of more than 60 years of U.S. Supreme Court precedent," says Burns, who has advocated against use of the Best Interests standard for cases that do not contain actual findings of harm or neglect.

Opponents such as Burns say passage of UNCRC could destroy parental autonomy and state sovereignty by imposing Marxist doctrine into American law within the first 6 months of the Obama Presidency.

"Ratified UN treaties preempt state law under the Supremacy Clause. With most of our existing statutes concerning parental rights held under state law, this new initiative would neutralize nearly all existing American family law. Moreover, it would grant the government even more latitude to override parental autonomy and decision-making by applying an unsound standard now used against those convicted of parental neglect or child abuse,” says Burns.

Boxer says she wants a 60-day time-frame for the State Department to complete its review in order to allow the Senate to move toward ratification of the UNCRC, and will ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for U.S. support.

“This is a sordid ambition of Boxer and anyone else that supports it to virtually re-classify good parents as potential criminals, and would enable public schools and state agencies such as DCFS to intervene in parent-child relationships under the pre-text of protecting their "best interests." In other words, the sky’s the limit on what the state can do with your kids if this treaty is ratified by Congress, even if the parents have done nothing wrong,” says Burns, who promises a legal challenge to the measure if it is ratified.

Referring to it as a "complicated treaty," Rice expressed her commitment to the objectives of UNCRC, but stated that she could not meet the Senator's strict timeframe. Rice promised to review the treaty, but noted "challenges of domestic implementation," in her confirmation hearing. She also resisted a strict timeframe: "I don't have a sense of how long it will take us, in light of the many different things on our plate," she said.



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Michael Burns is the President and Co-founder of the Illinois Alliance for Parents and Children, located in Chicago, Illinois. He can be reached at info(at)illinoisparentsandchildren(dot)org