FAMILY LAW ISOLATIONISM AND CHURCH, STATE, AND FAMILY.

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, twenty nations had ratified it, and it entered into force in September 1990.[1] When the United States signed the CRC in 1995, nearly all of the world's nations had already ratified it. To understand the United States' committed and deliberate family law isolationism, one need look no further than John Witte's latest book, I Church, State, and Family i , and especially the chapter "Why Suffer the Children? Although tempered by "the strong presumption of the CRC, stated in Articles 5 and 27, that the state must respect the rights and duties of parents to provide direction to their children in exercising all of their rights, including freedom rights", critics worry that "categorically stated children's rights" will not bend to that presumption over time (249). He admirably argues for sensitivity and charity in a realm dominated by rights language - rights of parents and rights of children and rights of the state.