infante

[Spanish and Portuguese, both from Latin īnfāns, īnfant-, infant. See infant.]

Persons who are under the age of legal majority — at common law, twenty-one years, now generally 18 years. According to the sense in which this term is used, it may denote the age of the person, the contractual disabilities that nonage entails, or his or her status with regard to other powers or relations.

Modern laws respecting the rights, obligations, and incapacities of children are rooted in ancient customs and practices. In 1765,Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, wrote that parents owe their children three duties: maintenance, protection, and education. Today, these three duties continue, and have been expanded by judicial and legislative advancements. The notion of children's rights has evolved into a highly controversial and dynamic area of law.

Common law held an infant, also called a minor or child, to be a person less than twenty-one years old. Currently, most state statutes define the age of majority to be eighteen. Although a person must attain the age of majority to vote, make a will, or hold public office, children are increasingly being recognized by society, legislatures, and the courts as requiring greater protections and deserving greater rights than they were afforded under common law. The law is caught in a tug-of-war between two equally compelling and worthy societal interests: the desire to protect children from harmful situations and from their own immaturity and lack of experience, and the desire to give children as much autonomy as they can bear as soon as they can bear it.

Children do have the right to own and acquire property by sale, gift, or inheritance. Often property is given to a child as a beneficiary of a trust. In the trust situation, a trustee manages the trust assets for the child until the child reaches majority or otherwise meets the requirements specified in the trust for managing the property for herself or himself.

Children also have the right to enter into contracts. Because the law seeks to protect children from adverse consequences due to their lack of knowledge, experience, and maturity, an adult who enters into a contract with a child may be unable to enforce the contract against the child, whereas the child can enforce the contract against the adult if the adult breaches it. However, when a child enters into a contract for necessities (i.e., food, shelter, clothing, and medical attention) or with a bank, the child is legally bound and cannot later disaffirm or negate the contract. In addition, some state statutes provide that all contracts relating to a child's business are enforceable. This allows a child the opportunity to begin a business. Aside from these limited exceptions, a child may negate a contract before, and even sometimes soon after, reaching the age of majority.

Children have the right to bring lawsuits seeking legal redress for injuries they have suffered or for rights that have been violated. Most jurisdictions require a child to have a representative during the litigation process. This representative, called a guardian ad litem, or next friend, advises and guides the child.

The right of a child to sue for personal injuries has been extended to cover prenatal injuries. A child may maintain an action for injuries that occurred during the early weeks in utero, before the child, then an embryo, was viable, or able to sustain life outside the womb. If an injured fetus is born alive and then dies as a result of her or his prenatal injuries, the child's parents may sue for the wrongful death of the child.

Although all states recognize a child's right to sue for prenatal injuries, the vast majority of states do not allow "wrongful life" actions. In a wrongful life lawsuit, the child sues a doctor for negligence or malpractice for failing to diagnose the child's mother with a disease that injured the child before birth or for failing to diagnose a severe, disabling condition of the child before birth. The argument continues that if the doctor had informed the child's parents of the child's condition, the mother would have had an abortion rather than delivering a child with such a debilitating condition. The child's theory in a wrongful life lawsuit is that life with the injury or debilitating condition is worse than no life at all and that he or she would have been better off having not been born.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has denied wrongful life claims, stating that "there is no precedent in appellate judicial pronouncements that holds a child has a fundamental right to be born as a whole, functional human being," and that it is almost impossible to calculate the damages in such a case (Gleitman v. Cosgrove, 49 N.J. 22, 227 A.2d 689 [1967]). In contrast, in Curlender v. Bio-Science Laboratory, 106 Cal. App. 3d 811, 165 Cal. Rptr. 477 (1980), a California court allowed a child with Tay-Sachs disease to recover for wrongful life, stating that to deny such a claim "permits a wrong with serious consequential injury to go wholly unaddressed." This court would not accept the "impossibility of measuring damages" as the sole reason to deny the child's claim.

A child may bring a lawsuit seeking emancipation from his or her parents. Emancipation is an ancient doctrine based on Roman law. An emancipated minor is a child who is entirely self-supporting and who has the legal right and duty to oversee his or her own behavior. An emancipated minor's parents surrender the right to the care, custody, and earnings of the child. Once emancipated, the child is precluded from demanding that his or her parents continue to support him or her. Historically, an express agreement between the parent and child, the marriage of the child, the entry of the child into the armed forces, or responsible conduct on the part of the child were all sufficient factors in seeking emancipation. Today, the doctrine is seen as a mechanism for ending troubled parent-child relationships and a way to alleviate the difficult task of finding foster families for older teenagers who have been taking care of themselves.

A child is permitted to testify in court if the judge believes that the child comprehends the meaning and importance of telling the truth, is sufficiently mature, and is able to recall and communicate her or his thoughts effectively. Most states do not have a specific age at which children are allowed to testify; consequently, even very young children are allowed to be placed under oath and testify in court if the judge determines that these requirements have been met.

Although children do not have a constitutional right to a safe home, a permanent, stable family, or quality care, significant strides have been made to better the lives of children. The right of a state to ensure the welfare of the children within its boundaries stems from the ancient concept of parens patriae, which means "the father of his country" and was used to describe the relationship between a king and his subjects. Today, this right is limited by the parents' legal right to be free from government intrusion in the raising and rearing of their children. The state's intervention is justified, however, if a parent is not living up to his or her responsibilities or when a child is endangered, neglected, or abused. The courts may then place the child in temporary foster care and require the parent to get assistance to remedy the problem, or may terminate the parent's rights to the child if that is found to be in the best interests of the child.

In 1960, the federal government spent only a few million dollars on child protective services. By 1980, this expenditure had risen to over $325 million. This dramatic increase probably does not reflect an actual increase in the incidence of child abuse but rather the effects of laws requiring health care and social workers to report any suspicions of child abuse, an increase in public awareness of the problem, and a broadening of the definition of child abuse. Given this increase in reported cases and the fiscal limitations of child welfare agencies, children are increasingly "falling through the cracks" and not receiving timely or effective protection from the state. For example, in 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause did not impose an affirmative duty on the state to protect a four-year-old boy from his father's violence (DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 103 L. Ed. 2d 249, 109 S. Ct. 998). In that case, a young boy named Joshua was beaten so severely that half of his brain was destroyed and he now is permanently brain-damaged and profoundly retarded. A social worker assigned to the family had noted signs of past abuse and several trips to the emergency room, but had taken no action to remove Joshua from his family home. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist stated that the Due Process Clause "is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security."

State and federal funds are allotted for children whose parents are financially unable to provide for their basic needs, such as food, shelter, and medical attention. Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) is federal money given to financially needy parents to provide these basics for their children. Legislation has also been enacted to go after "deadbeat parents" — parents who are financially able to provide for their children but do not. These laws enable the government to garnish a parent's paycheck for past support owed and allow for the suspension of professional licenses until money owing is paid.

Although the Constitution does not in any way mention the right of children to an education, every state has adopted compulsory education laws. Traditionally, it was assumed that students would behave and express themselves in acceptable ways, and thus their rights did not need to be recognized or protected in any official manner. Since the 1960s, this notion has gone by the wayside. The Supreme Court has recognized that students do not shed their constitutional rights upon crossing the schoolhouse threshold. The Court has recognized that schools function as a "market-place of ideas" and that First Amendment rights must receive "scrupulous protection if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes" (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 21 L. Ed. 2d 731, 89 S. Ct. 733 [1969]). The rights of students to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War, to dance, and to use obscene and vulgar language on campus are but a few of the many First Amendment issues that have been litigated. In addition, debates over school prayer, religion in a public school curriculum, and government aid to parochial schools all affect the education children receive. Many court decisions limit the Fourth Amendment rights of students with regard to searches for drugs, to drug testing, and to searches of their lockers.

The strides in securing education for children occurred at the same time that child labor laws were beginning to eradicate the exploitation of children in sweatshops. By the mid-1800s, several states had passed laws restricting the number of hours children could work and requiring children who worked to also attend school for a minimum number of months each year. However, because each state had different laws and competition was fierce among states eager to attract industry, many of the laws regarding child labor went unenforced. After several unsuccessful attempts at passing effective child labor laws, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq., which places restrictions on the hours children may work and age limitations for children performing particular jobs and employed in certain hazardous occupations. Today, every state has child labor laws — most of which are patterned after the FLSA, although some differences do exist.

The same concern for children that brought about these protections was responsible for the creation of the juvenile justice system. From the founding of the United States until the end of the nineteenth century, children who were charged with a crime were treated the same as adults. The juvenile justice system arose from an emerging conviction that rehabilitation, not punishment, would better serve the child and the state. Today, juvenile court systems have been adopted by every state. These courts hear cases involving status offenses, abuse, dependency, neglect, and termination of parental rights. Status offenses are legal infractions based solely on the age of the person, such as truancy and curfew violations. Children in the juvenile justice system have the constitutional rights of notice, counsel, privilege against self-incrimination, determination of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and protection against double jeopardy. However, juveniles still do not have a federal constitutional right to a jury trial and are not generally afforded bail.

All state juvenile codes provide for a juvenile to be removed from the juvenile justice system and transferred to the adult criminal courts, depending on the offense the juvenile allegedly committed or the juvenile's prior history of delinquent behavior. Once this move is made, the juvenile is entitled to all the constitutional protections afforded adults accused of crimes, such as bail and the right to a trial by jury, which may be more sympathetic and less likely to convict than would a juvenile court judge.

Traditionally, children have been deemed legally incapable of consenting to their own medical care or treatment. In general, parents have the authority to decide whether their minor children will receive medical treatment. Common law recognized an exception to the need for parental consent in cases of emergency. Statutory law has created more exceptions to this requirement, namely in cases where a child is emancipated, married, pregnant, or a parent. In addition, several states have enacted "minor treatment statutes," which typically provide that from fourteen to seventeen years old, a minor may consent to ordinary medical treatment. Owing to a high incidence of venereal diseases among teenagers, all states have adopted statutes authorizing minors to consent to the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Similarly, most states have laws allowing a child to seek treatment for alcohol or drug abuse without parental consent. Constitutional guarantees of the right to abortion extend to minors, as does the right to privacy. The Supreme Court has upheld state statutes that require the consent of only one parent if the statutes also offer an expeditious judicial bypass procedure (a hearing before a judge in which the minor requests that parental consent be waived). States can no longer absolutely require two-parent notification or consent before a minor may undergo an abortion. When a parent refuses to consent to medical attention for a seriously ill or dying child, even if on religious grounds, the states may act according to their parens patriae power and obtain a court order to secure the necessary medical treatment.

See: Adoption; Child Custody; Children's Rights; Child Support; Family Law; Fetal Rights; In Loco Parentis; Juvenile Law; Parent and Child; Schools and School Districts; Welfare; Wrongful Birth; Wrongful Pregnancy.

"Infanta" redirects here. For other uses, see Infanta (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Infante (disambiguation).

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Spanish Infante Crown.

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Infante (masculine) or infanta (feminine), also anglicised as infant, was the title and rank given in the European kingdoms of Spain (includings the predecessor kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Navarre and León) and Portugal to a son or daughter of the king, or to a grandson or granddaughter in the male line of a reigning monarch (and also to a princess's children if she was the heir apparent to the throne). Female consorts of princes of the blood when married automatically gained the title Infanta, while male consorts did not have an inherent right to the title, style and rank of Infante upon marriage to a princess of the blood.

The name derives from the same root as "infant," but this means simply "child" in Romance languages (cfr. French Enfants de France), and in this case indicates that the Infante or Infanta is the child of the monarch. Like the Enfants de France, all Infantes in the different kingdoms were and are always royal princes, in the general meaning of the word.

Contents 1 Portuguese infantes 2 Brazilian infantes 3 Spanish infantes 4 See also 5 Footnotes

Portuguese infantes

Infante had no feminine form at first in Portugal, and may be related in Portuguese to the Portuguese lower nobility, the infanções, who were also the younger children with no prospects of heritage in the noble houses they were born to, just distinguished in law by some prerogatives, but almost no patrimony.

Afterwards, the word Infanta emerged in Portugal as a feminised form applied to the Portuguese princesses after the 16th and 17th centuries. Also, after Edward of Portugal, in the 15th century, the heir apparent and his older son, or daughter, were styled just as "Prince" and "Princess". The first Prince in Portugal was the future Afonso V, his eldest son, maybe adopting the French royal style by an English influence brought by queen Philippa of England.

After the ascension of the House of Braganza to the royalty, it was added the title "Most Serene" (Sereníssimo) to the title of Infante - as well as Sereníssima to Infanta -, since the complete name of this house was "Most Serene House of Braganza" (Sereníssima Casa de Bragança), a style granted by the Pope. The style, however, does not seem to be used with the title of Prince Royal.

The current Infantes of Portugal (presently a republic) are close relatives of Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza, head of the Portuguese Royal House:

• Maria Francisca, Infanta de Portugal - Duarte Pio 2nd child;
• Infante Dinis, Duke of Porto - Duarte Pio 3rd child;
• Infante Miguel, Duke of Viseu - Duarte Pio 2nd brother;
• Infante Henrique, Duke of Coimbra - Duarte Pio 3rd brother;
• Infanta Maria Adelaide - Duarte Pio aunt;

Afonso de Santa Maria, Prince of Beira, Duarte Pio eldest son, as heir apparent to the Portuguese Royal House, is styled Prince of Beira, not Infante.

Brazilian infantes

After its independence from Portugal (1822), Brazilian monarchy kept the use of Infante to indicate the siblings of the heir apparent. However, its use was gradually decreased since the official style for them was Princes of Brazil, distinguishing the Brazilian Infantes from the Imperial Prince of Brazil, the heir apparent, and the Prince of Grão-Pará, his/her eldest born son (or daughter). It should be noted that the Brazilian title of Prince of Brazil must not be confused with the former Portuguese homonym title.

Spanish infantes

In contemporary Spain, distantly related princes of the blood of the Spanish royal family are also granted the title. Note that infante is also used for a hereditary title of nobility, as in los infantes de Carrión in The Lay of the Cid. In the Royal Family the style of Infante is reserved for the children of the Monarch and the heir apparent (Infantes by birth). A second category of Infantes received the style by Royal Decree (Infantes by grace).^[1]

The current Infantas of Spain (by birth). are:

• Infanta Leonor of Spain (eldest daughter of Felipe and Letizia, Princes of Asturias);
• Infanta Sofia of Spain (younger daughter of Felipe and Letizia, Princes of Asturias);
• Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo (eldest daughter of Juan Carlos and Sofía, Kings of Spain);
• Infanta Cristina, Duchess of Palma de Mallorca (youngest daughter of Juan Carlos and Sofía, Kings of Spain);
• Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz (eldest sister of King Juan Carlos of Spain);
• Infanta Margarita, Duchess of Soria (younger sister of King Juan Carlos of Spain);

Carlos de Borbón, Duke of Calabria and King Juan Carlos' cousin, also holds the title of Infante of Spain (by grace).

Alicia of Bourbon-Parma, mother of Infante Carlos, Infanta of Spain (by grace) from her marriage with Infante Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.^[2]

Prince Felipe, son of King Juan Carlos, as heir apparent to the Spanish throne, is styled Prince of Asturias, not Infante.

See also

• Cardinal-Infante
• Infanta de Castile
• Portuguese monarchy
• Prince Royal of Portugal
• Prince of Beira
• Prince of Brazil
• Prince of Asturias
• Spanish monarchy
• Crown Prince

Footnotes

1. ^ Spanish: [1] The Spanish Royal Decree 1368/1987, the regulation of Titles, Styles and Honors of the Royal Family BOE, Spanish Official Journal (accessed on October 27, 2008)
2. ^ http://www.borbone-due-sicilie.org/english/genealogy.html Genealogy of the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Real Casa de Borbón de las Dos Sicilias website.]

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