Degrees

LL.M. 2009, New York University School of Law; J.D. 1999, Emory University (with Honors, Order of the Coif); B.A. 1995, Boston College

Short Bio

Professor Dillard served as an Honors Program attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and as a legal advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in the National Security Law Division. He later joined the Humane Society of the United States (“HSUS”), serving as Director of Farm Animal Litigation. Professor Dillard is currently Of Counsel to HSUS, and a Research Fellow for the Optimum Population Trust. He holds a B.A. from Boston College, J.D., with honors, from Emory University, and an LL.M. from New York University.

The following outlines Professor Dillard’s current work:
What do the seemingly distinct areas of law dealing with reproductive rights, immigration, biological carrying capacity, infant and child welfare, municipal growth management, and vote dilution have in common? These areas tend to be more concerned with, or determined by, the introduction, presence, or number of persons in legal systems (a sort of primary law) than law that subsequently (or secondarily) directs those persons’ behavior. My current work focuses on this distinction, as well as the different levels of interest individuals – through the state – have in each of them. In Antecedent Law: The Law of People-Making, 79 MISS. L. J. _ (forthcoming 2009), I explore the logical distinction between law that creates persons and law that directs persons, and the uniquely compelling interest we have in the former.

The notion that the state has an interest in and might influence the creation of persons immediately raises questions about the limits of that influence, and thus the right to procreate. In Rethinking the Procreative Right, 10 YALE HUM. RTS. & DEV. L.J. 1 (2007) and Valuing Having Children, 12 J.L. & FAM. STUD. _ (forthcoming 2009), I reexamine the dominant conception of the moral and legal rights to procreate, first arguing that both rights are narrower than commonly understood, and secondly, that the moral right protects a unique and satiable objective value – the value of self-replacement. In my current work in progress, Future Children as Property, I argue that the most common conception of the legal right to procreate, the one believed to be protected by the U.S. Constitution, tends to treat future children largely as a class of property that is assigned to prospective parents. I am particularly interested in defining the moral and legal rights to procreate - not because of their role in limiting state interference, but because of their role as norms that effectively guide behavior. For example, an inaccurately broad and vaguely defined right to procreate might encourage what we may view as irresponsible procreation.

Assuming the state can justifiably influence the creation of persons, or its literal future constituency, and thus remake itself, what specific actions can it take in this regard? In Child Welfare and Future Persons, 43 GA. L. REV. 367 (2008) I argue that a prospective parent can have a moral and legal duty to be fit when he or she has a child, that the duty arises from or creates correlative claim-rights shared by the state and prospective children, and that this duty could be codified by statutorily authorizing courts to issue temporary no-procreation orders. In Prospective Parents and the Children’s Rights Convention, 25 AM. U. INT. L. REV. _ (forthcoming 2009), I explore whether states parties can successfully implement the Children’s Rights Convention by placing legal obligations on prospective parents, and pursue policies that heighten prospective parents’ perceptions of the duties they owe their prospective children.

In my future work – again focusing on the law’s primary role in bringing persons into the legal systems that they then make up – I plan to explore the constitutionality of no-growth land use legislation and, following up on a paper I presented at the UN’s World Civic Forum in 2009, to examine whether states can use reasonable access to wilderness, as opposed to sustainable levels of water or food supplies, or the amount of total carbon emissions, as a baseline for establishing optimal population ranges.
 

Courses Taught

• Moot Court
• Reproductive Rights and the U.S. Constitution

Learn more about Carter Dillard

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