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Parens Patria: Fiction Of The Juvenile Court, David M. Featherstone

LLM Theses and Essays

This paper briefly examines two functions of the juvenile court, contrasting theory and practice. It will be shown that in handling juvenile delinquency cases the parens patriae concept has been virtually discarded. The second area examined, that involving abused children, has to some extent functioned within the original theoretical framework. This paper presents the following basic question: Could the parens patriae concept be better implemented through a social rather than legal institution?