Handbook Of Children In The Legal System

This handbook brings together the relevant literature on children and their developmental characteristics, the legal venues in which they may appear, and the systemic issues practitioners must consider to provide a thorough guide to working with children in the legal system. Featuring contributions from leading mental health and legal experts, chapters start with an overview and history of the juvenile justice system along with discussion of critical developmental areas imperative to consider for work with children, and idiosyncratic issues that arise. The book ends with a case presentation section that illustrates the varied roles and venues in which children appear in the legal system. An extended bibliography provides additional resources and literature to investigate specific topics in greater length. This accessible and useable guide is designed to appeal to a broad range of people encountering children in the legal system, including social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, attorneys, and judges. It will also benefit professions such as law enforcement as well as probation officers, child protective workers, school personnel, and medical personnel.

The Oxford Handbook of Children and the Law presents cutting-edge scholarship on a broad range of topics covering the life course of humans from before birth to adulthood, by leading scholars in law, medicine, social work, sociology, education, and philosophy, and by practitioners in law and medicine. An international collection of authors presents and analyzes the law and science pertaining to reproduction; prenatal life (including fetal exposure to toxic substances and abortion); parentage (including biology-based rights, background checks on birth parents, adoption, the status of gamete donors, and surrogacy); infant development and vulnerability; child maltreatment (including corporal punishment and religious defences to abuse and neglect); child protection policy and systems; foster care; child custody disputes between parents or between parents and other caregivers; schooling (including financing, resegregation, religious expression in public schools, at-risk students, special education, regulation of private schools, and homeschooling); delinquency; minimum-age laws; and child advocacy. Most chapters follow a format wherein they first describe the most debated or dynamic issues in each topical area, then explain in depth the law and/or science pertaining to the author's particular focus, and finally offer arguments and recommendations as to law and policy in that area. The normative component aims to advance discussions and debates in vital areas of contemporary child welfare law and policy. The Handbook is an essential resource for scholars and professionals interested in the intersection of children and the law.

This handbook brings together the relevant literature on children and their developmental characteristics, the legal venues in which they may appear, and the systemic issues practitioners must consider to provide a thorough guide to working with children in the legal system. Featuring contributions from leading mental health and legal experts, chapters start with an overview and history of the juvenile justice system along with discussion of critical developmental areas imperative to consider for work with children, and idiosyncratic issues that arise. The book ends with a case presentation section that illustrates the varied roles and venues in which children appear in the legal system. An extended bibliography provides additional resources and literature to investigate specific topics in greater length. This accessible and useable guide is designed to appeal to a broad range of people encountering children in the legal system, including social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, attorneys, and judges. It will also benefit professions such as law enforcement as well as probation officers, child protective workers, school personnel, and medical personnel.

Children's rights law is a relatively young but rapidly developing discipline. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the field's core legal instrument, is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Yet, like children themselves, children's rights are often relegated to the margins in mainstream legal, political, and other discourses, despite their application to approximately one-third of the world's population and every human being's first stages of life. Now thirty years old, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) signalled a definitive shift in the way that children are viewed and understood--from passive objects subsumed within the family to full human beings with a distinct set of rights. Although the CRC and other children's rights law have spurred positive changes in law, policies, and attitudes toward children in numerous countries, implementation remains a work in progress. We have reached a state in the evolution of children's rights in which we need more critical evaluation and assessment of the CRC and the large body of children's rights law and policy that this treaty has inspired. We have moved from conceptualizing and adopting legislation to focusing on implementation and making the content of children's rights meaningful in the lives of all children. This book provides a critical evaluation and assessment of children's rights law, including the CRC. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners from around the world, it aims to elucidate the content of children's rights law, explore the complexities of implementation, and identify critical challenges and opportunities for children's rights law.