Recent Book: Children and Young Persons: Child Legislation
| Published date | 01 January 1971 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7104400120 |
| Date | 01 January 1971 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSONS
D. A.
HOLDEN
and Butterworth's Legal Staff: Child Legislation, 1969. Butter-
worths Casebound edition, £4.4.0; limp edition, £3.10.0. Despatch charge, 5s.
Those concerned in their several
capacities with the law relating to
deprived and delinquent children will
find it convenient to have at hand a
volume such as this, which covers the
relevant legislation enacted by Parli-
ament in 1969. The most extensive
of these measures is the Children and
Young Persons Act, which, as Mr. E.
P. Brown (Hon. Sec. Association of
Children's Officers) points out in a
foreword, should be regarded not as
an entity in itself but as the culmina-
tion of a protracted train of legislative
thought which found its earliest ex-
pression in the establishment of the
juvenile courts. With its 73 sections
and
seven schedules the new Act is a
formidable piece of work and one
which makes correspondingly heavy
demands upon those who must master
it. Short guides providing a general
treatment of the Act have their part to
play in this matter, but in the long
run there is no substitute (even for
those who are not professional
lawyers) for the full treatment ac-
corded in a work such as this, with its
annotated text of the Acts, preceded
by a general introduction which
enables the reader to place the new
material in the context furnished by
the earlier law and the need for its
reform, as indicated, in this case, by
the White Paper (Cmnd. 3601) of
1968 entitled Children in Trouble.
Much of the present Act combines
and consolidates earlier law, to be
found scattered over a number of
statutes-this
will, of course, simplify
the task of
assimilation-and
it has
been said that the essentials of the Act
are contained in only five
sections-
those relating to care proceedings in
juvenile courts (s. I), prohibition
and
restriction of criminal proceedings
against children and young persons
(ss.4
and 5), supervision orders (s. 12)
and regional planning of accommoda-
tion for children in care of local
authorities (s. 35). The annotations of
these sections are particularly full and
helpful.
The other principal measure covered
by the volume is the Family Law
Reform Act, which lowers the age of
majority from 21 to 18, deals with
property rights of illegitimate children,
provides for the use of blood tests in
determining paternity and substitutes
proof
beyond reasonable
doubt
for the
former presumptions
of
legitimacy.
The volume also embraces the Tattoo-
ing of Minors Act and the portions of
the Representation of the People Act
which relate to the lowering of the
voting age. There are five appendices,
of which those setting
out
the histori-
cal background of the age of majority
and the nature of blood group evidence
are of part icular interest. Reference to
the contents of the volume is facilitated
by the provision of a good index.
This is a competent piece of work
which, while clearly planned to meet
the needs of the practising lawyer,
should prove to be of real assistance to
those concerned with the law relating
to children in
other
capacities.
F.
GRAHAM
GLOVER
THE JUVENILE COURT
L. G.
BANWELL:
Juvenile Court Law. Justice of the Peace and Local Govern-
ment Review. 7s. 6d
Banwell's notes on Juvenile
Court
Law is a pocket-sized booklet of thirty
pages setting
out
many important
aspects
of
the law affecting children
and
young persons and the juvenile
courts. An extremely successful at-
tempt has been
made
to summarise the
main statutory provisions and to
arrange them in such a way as to
facilitate quick reference.
88
The work is by no means a new-
comer, having now reached its seventh
edition. There are no marked changes
in the law of recent origin since the last
edition, hence it follows the line
of
its
predecessors.
Juvenile Court Law sets
out
the law
relating to juvenile courts, offenders
and care cases. In addition, school
attendance,
adoption
and
other
mat-
January
/97/
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