Balancing autonomy and protection in children's rights : a South African account

Abstract

The good news of Roper v. Simmons1 reached South Africa immediately after the decision was handed down in 2005. Child justice advocates in South Africa read the judgment with great interest and saw the judicial nod of acknowledgment toward neuroscience and its validation of what Americans already instinctively knew and shared with the world more than a century before: that children are different from adults. We joined the virtual celebration with the United States and other juvenile justice advocates around the globe. Capital punishment for those who committed crimes while still under the age of eighteen years was finally dead in the country that sentenced more children to death than any other in the years leading up to Roper.