ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the modern structural role of the welfare principle as a determinant of how the legal system relates to children. It sets out to establish, as a baseline, a picture of this legal system as it stood at the close of the twentieth century, formed by a cluster of laws – primarily the Children Act 1989, the Family Law Act 1996 and the Human Rights Act 1998 – from which the twenty-first-century developments can later be measured. It primarily considers the impact made by the 1989 Act in terms of organisational change to the legal system and concentrates on outlining and examining the changes made to the consequential interpretation and application of the welfare principle. In so doing, it introduces the post-1989 era and the subject matter of subsequent chapters.
