The Text

The legislature may establish children’s courts, and courts of domestic relations, as separate courts, or as parts of existing courts or courts hereafter created, and may confer upon them such jurisdiction as may be necessary for the correction, protection, guardianship and disposition of delinquent, neglected or dependent minors, and for the punishment and correction of adults responsible for or contributing to such delinquency, neglect or dependency, and to compel the support of a spouse, child, or poor relative by persons legally chargeable therewith who abandon or neglect to support any of them. In conferring such jurisdiction the legislature shall provide that whenever a child is committed to an institution or is placed in the custody of any person by parole, placing out, or guardianship, it shall be committed, when practicable, to an institution governed by persons, or placed in the custody of a person of the same religious persuasion as the child. In the exercise of their jurisdiction such courts may hear and determine such causes with or without a jury, except those involving a felony. The compensation of a judge or justice of such a court shall not be diminished during his term of office, nor shall the office of any judge or justice of such a court he abolished or the term thereof diminished so as to abridge the term of any judge or justice then in office, unless the court of which such judge or justice is a member is abolished simultaneously. No person shall hold the office of judge or justice of any such court longer than until and including the last day of December next after he shall be seventy years of age, except that a judge or justice in office or elected or appointed to office at the effective date of this article, as to whom no provision limiting his right to hold office to the close of the year following his attaining the age of seventy years was applicable prior to the effective date of this article may continue in office during the term for which he was elected or appointed.