Parens Patriae
Definition
A common-law doctrine under which the state acts as an ultimate guardian of persons who cannot fully protect their own legal interests, most often minors, giving courts and welfare bodies authority to intervene in a child's life without ordinary consent.
Related terms
- Child Abandonment
- The act of a parent or guardian permanently leaving a child without arranging for their care, treated in most jurisdictions as grounds...
- Child in Need of Care and Protection
- A child who has committed no offence but is abandoned, missing, abused, exploited, trafficked, or otherwise without a fit and willing caregiver,...
- Child Trafficking
- The recruitment, transport, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of a child for exploitation, including labour, sexual exploitation, or forced marriage, which does not...
- Due Process
- The constitutional or legal requirement that a person facing loss of liberty receive fair procedure, including notice, a hearing, and the chance...
- In Re Gault
- The 1967 United States Supreme Court decision holding that due process protections reach juvenile proceedings that can end in confinement, usually credited...
- Justice Model
- The view that a young person facing possible confinement is owed the same due process safeguards as an adult defendant, with disposition...
- Protective Custody
- The temporary removal and placement of a child in state or state-approved care, ordered to secure the child's immediate safety while their...
- Restorative Model
- A third strand that centres the victim and community, asking what harm was done and what would repair it, usually layered on...
- Vulnerability Factors
- Individual, family, or community characteristics statistically associated with a higher probability of harm to, or offending by, a child; cumulative and probabilistic...
- Welfare Model
- The view that a child who offends is a child in need of care, with disposition scaled to the child's needs rather...
- Hybrid Model
- A system that combines welfare-oriented rehabilitation goals with justice-model procedural safeguards, the pattern most contemporary juvenile justice systems actually follow.
Explained in these topics
- Child Vulnerability and Need of Care and Protection (Unit IX)The doctrine, literally parent of the nation, that gives the state authority to act in a child's best interest without the ordinary consent an adult legal rela...
- Children in Need of Care and Protection, and Youth Vulnerability
- Welfare Model vs Justice Model (Unit IX)A doctrine borrowed from English chancery courts under which the state acts as a substitute parent, used to justify the welfare model's informal, non-adversari...
- Welfare Versus Justice Models of Juvenile JusticeA doctrine under which the state acts as a substitute parent for a child who cannot or will not be adequately protected by their own family.