Informed consent of minors with a special focus on the Czech legal regulation

This article is focused on the examination of the law concerning medical treatment of minors, that is, persons under the age of 18. The first part of this article brings a short overview of the international documents regulating the rights of the child and specifically children’s rights within the area of health care provision. This article analyzes the issue of the maturity and competence of children and discusses whether persons under the age of 18 may be regarded as being capable of consenting to medical treatment. Furthermore this article brings a short comparative overview of the laws concerning medical treatment of minors in different countries and tries to extract the common features of the regulations in the different countries. Finally, the last and longest part of this article analyzes the issue of the capacity of minors to consent to medical treatment in the territory of the Czech Republic from the historical perspective and brings a structured overview of this issue under the current Czech laws.