This paper applies Durkheim's social theory to a consideration of how the principle of juvenile court law, i.e. the respect for the criminals' individual rights, has been established and of to what extent the principle survives in the modern society. Contrary to our expectations, the idea of “children's rights”, currently of great concern, is increasingly undermining the principle of juvenile court law. The author concludes that the present respect for the criminals' individual rights has the latent function to strengthen rather than to weaken sanctions against juvenile offenders. The paradox of rehabilitation and punishment inherent in modern criminal theories will be sublated only by relativizing the myth of humanism which has been believed to be a priori for modernism.