The Children Act 1989 in the highest courts Available to Purchase

This article gives an account of the cases in which the Children Act 1989 has been interpreted and applied by the highest courts in the UK, the appellate committee of the House of Lords until October 2009 when their jurisdiction was taken over by the new Supreme Court of the UK. It explains the reasoning behind those decisions and how they did, or did not, reflect the thinking of the original framers of the Act. It concludes that, by and large, the Act has stood up well to judicial scrutiny but that the Human Rights Act 1998 has brought new challenges to which it must respond.