Three principles concerning children's intellectual rights are proposed and discussed. The principles are: (1) intellectual rights of children include access to ideas and freedom of expression; (2) denial of rights on the basis of lack of competence requires empirical justification; and (3) denial of rights on the basis of lack of competence yields an obligation to facilitate intellectual development. The analysis is both legal and psychological. The legal analysis focuses on the intellectual rights that are guaranteed by the First Amendment and the extent to which the First Amendment applies to children. Although the analysis is consistent with a number of judicial decisions, the emphasis is not on rights children have been legally granted but on rights children have in principle as U.S. citizens protected by the Bill of Rights. Similarly, the psychological analysis attempts to show what sort of empirical evidence is relevant to children's intellectual rights and how such evidence can be brought to bear on specific issues. The principles developed are applied to four major educational controversies of the 1980s: censorship and indoctrination, "scientific" creationism, state regulation of private education, and the Equal Access Act of 1984. (RH)