English Lawyer and Solicitor General to Her Majesty, William Blackstone, explained the English Common Law Doctrine of malice supplies the age; in Book IV of his Commentaries on the Laws of England.
The Society for the prevention of Juvenile Delinquency opened the New York House of Refuge in New York to rehabilitate troubled youth and keep them separate from adults for their own protection.
Eglantyne Jebb founded the Save the Children International Union to alleviate the suffering of children who had experienced hunger and deprivation due to the events of World War I.
The League of Nations adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (also known as the Declaration of Geneva) which was written by the Save the Children International Union.
The White House Conference on Child Health and Protection conducted research regarding issues of concern to children and released a report on their findings entitled The Children’s Charter.
Office for Juveniles opens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to provide indigent children who are accused of crimes with attorneys. Attorney Lois G. Forer applied for a grant to facilitate the opening of the office.
The U.S. Supreme Court held that juveniles have the right to notice of the charges, the right to an attorney, the right to remain silent, and the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses.
In holding that students who wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War were exercising their freedom of speech, the US Supreme Court noted that “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
Lois G. Forer’s book, No One Will Lissen: How Our Legal System Brutalizes the Youthful Poor, about her work with the Office for Juveniles is published.
The Youth Law Center was founded in San Francisco, California to meet the legal needs of indigent children, especially those in foster care and in juvenile detention.
The Street Law program to teach high school students practical legal principles is founded by law students of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC. The law students began the program in two high schools. By the 1974-1975 academic year, the program had been adopted by all Washington, DC high schools and several prisons and juvenile detention centers.
Marian Wright Edelman founded the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) in Washington, DC. CDF advocates for laws and policies that protect children’s rights and well-being at both the local and national level.
On September 7th, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act became a law and under this law, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention was established as part of the United States Department of Justice.
The textbook, Street Law: A Course in Practical Law, was published for schools across the nation. Other editions followed and the book continues to be updated until this day. There are state supplements for the text book and Street Law has expanded the program to other countries.
The Juvenile Law Center was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to advocate for laws, policies, and practices that benefit youth between the ages of 10-21 in foster care and the court system.
The first issue of Update on Law-Related Education was published by the American Bar Association. Publication continues until the year 2000, when the ABA begins publishing Insights on Law and Society in its place.
Motivated to improve social studies and civics education, organizers held the first National Law-Related Education Leadership Conference in Chicago, Illinois.
A conference was held in Warsaw, Poland in honor of the International Year of the Child (1979). At this conference, 21 principles on the legal protection of the rights of the child were produced.
Sociologists Grant Johnson and Robert Hunter published a report entitled Law-Related Education as a Delinquency Prevention Strategy: A Three-Year Evaluation of the Impact of LRE on Students.
