The "Child and Juvenile Law" is not an area of law in the traditional sense, but rather a cross-sectional matter that often intertwines regulations of civil law with those of public law. It is embedded in a special way in constantly changing social conditions and norms, which it simultaneously reflects and shapes. An understanding of the child and juvenile law that can be translated into reflected everyday action therefore requires sensitivity to the theoretical and empirical social sciences and a socio-political awareness in addition to the pure application of the law. Access to the child and juvenile law in this section is shaped by criminal law, criminal law, however, always understood as one of numerous possible means of state control among other partly functionally equivalent means, whose practical effects and side effects must be kept in mind. Interest is directed at both the legal constructions and the individuals and institutions involved. Social law and social policy play a very central role, not only in the von Liszt rather preventive sense that the best criminal policy is a good social policy, but also in the sense of the practical organization of criminal law, which would be incapable of acting in many areas without other disciplines.
Two topics are of special interest to the section: on the one hand, juvenile criminal law in all its facets, especially the interfaces to SGB VIII, and on the other hand, child protection, also legally located in criminal law, but primarily in SGB VIII and family law.
