JUVENILE PROCEEDINGS

In a juvenile proceeding, a state court is asked to decide whether and how to intervene in the life of a child who may need supervision or protection. These proceedings often take place in a juvenile or family court and usually have two distinct phases: a "jurisdictional" stage, at which the judge must decide whether there are grounds for intervention; and a "dispositional" phase, in which the judge decides how to intervene. Juvenile court statutes typically provide for jurisdiction in three types of cases: the delinquency case, where a young person is found to have violated a criminal law; the case where the child's conduct is not criminal, but the child is found to be beyond parental control, or in need of supervision because of improper or protocriminal conduct, such as truancy, or running away; and the dependency case, where by reason of parental neglect or abuse the child is in need of protection. Once jurisdiction is established, the court typically has broad discretionary authority in the "dispositional phase" of juvenile proceedings to intervene into the child's life through supervision, or out-of-home placement in foster care or a residential institution.

At common law, there were neither special courts nor separate proceedings for minors accused of violating the law. "Infancy" provided a defense, somewhat akin to insanity, in a case where because of immaturity a child lacked the capacity to form the requisite criminal intent. Presumptions made it impossible to find the requisite intent in children under seven, and difficult to find it in those between seven and fourteen. Youths over fourteen were presumed capable. Except for this possible defense, a child could be arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted just like an adult. Minors were regularly charged with crimes, tried like adults, and jailed and imprisoned with adult offenders.

In the nineteenth century, reformers began questioning the appropriateness of treating youthful and adult offenders alike. A revolution began in 1899, when Illinois established the first juvenile court. Hailed as a more humane and effective way of helping children in trouble get back on the track to good citizenship, the Illinois court became a model; by 1925 nearly every state had adopted legislation providing for some sort of juvenile proceedings. For these new juvenile proceedings, the implicit model of authority was not the traditional criminal trial with adversarial procedures but the family itself, with the state as parens patriae.

The philosophy of the early juvenile court emphasized four tenets. The first was rehabilitation, rather than deterrence or punishment. The state's goal was to save the wayward child through appropriate treatment. The second was individualization: justice for children was to be personalized. The court's primary goal was to determine whether a child needed help, and then to prescribe on an individualized basis the appropriate treatment. The third was separation: children were to be kept away from adult criminals who might physically brutalize minors or teach them criminal habits. Finally, juvenile procedure emphasized procedural informality. Although the adversarial determination of facts might be appropriate for a criminal trial where the purpose was punishment, legalistic formalities were thought to be counterproductive in a juvenile proceeding where the purpose was rehabilitation.

Before 1967, because of the philosophy of the juvenile court and its traditions of procedural informality, juvenile proceedings typically offered none of the safeguards afforded adults in criminal trials. Juvenile court practices were virtually unaffected by the recent decisions of the Supreme Court interpreting due process to impose increasingly high procedural standards imposed on state criminal proceedings. Except in a few states, a young person accused of delinquency would not be assigned counsel, had no broad right against self-incrimination, was judged by a preponderance of the evidence standard (not proof beyond a reasonable doubt), had no right to trial by jury, and often faced hearsay evidence.

The Supreme Court had hinted that due process might demand more. Haley v. Ohio (1948) held that a confession given by a fifteen-year-old boy and used in a criminal trial was involuntary. Justice william o. douglas wrote that "[n]either man nor child can be allowed to stand condemned by methods that flout constitutional requirements of due process of law." More pointed doubts about the procedural informality of juvenile proceedings were expressed in Kent v. United States (1966). The Court's holding could be read narrowly: the District of Columbia must use fair procedures to transfer minors from juvenile to adult courts. But in Justice abe fortas's opinion the landmark ruling that was to come the next year was foreshadowed in two respects: first, in the suggestion that the parens patriae doctrine of the juvenile court is not "an invitation to procedural arbitrariness"; and second, in the expression of the fear that notwithstanding the paternalistic philosophy of juvenile proceedings, the child may in fact receive "the worst of both worlds: that he gets neither the protections accorded to adults, nor the solicitous care and regenerative treatment postulated for children."

The constitutional watershed came in in re gault (1967), which held that due process required the states to apply various procedural safeguards to the guilt (or jurisdictional) phase of delinquency proceedings. The Court found that fifteen-year-old Gerald Gault, who had been committed for up to six years at an Arizona Industrial School for making an obscene telephone call, had been deprived of his constitutional rights to adequate written notice of the charges, notice of his right to counsel, including assigned counsel, and of his right to confront and cross-examine witnesses; and advice of his privilege against self-incrimination. In a broad opinion rejecting the claim that parens patriae and the rehabilitative ideal justified procedural informality, Fortas declared that "unbridled discretion, however benevolently motivated, is frequently a poor substitute for principle and procedure." Although the holdings of Gault were expressly limited to the guilt phase of delinquency proceedings, Gault broadly declared a principle that children have constitutional rights of their own: "Whatever may be their precise impact, neither the fourteenth amendment nor the bill of rights is for adults alone."

During the years following Gault, the Supreme Court decided several cases that expanded the constitutional rights of children in delinquency proceedings. in re winship (1970) held that the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof was constitutionally mandated in the adjudicatory stage of delinquency proceedings. Breed v. Jones (1975) held that the protections of the double jeopardy clause were applicable to minors. The juvenile in Breed had been put in jeopardy by the original adjudicatory hearing where jurisdiction was established, and the Court found that the juvenile's subsequent criminal trial for the same offense constituted double jeopardy. But in Swisher v. Brady (1978) the Court held that the double jeopardy clause did not prohibit Maryland officials from taking exceptions to a special master's nondelinquency findings.

Despite the decisions in Gault, Breed, and Winship, the Court's decision in mckeiver v. pennsylvania (1971) reflects the Court's continued commitment to a separate system of justice for children and adults. In McKeiver the Court held that jury trials are not constitutionally required in delinquency proceedings. The Court reasoned that because a jury is not "a necessary component of accurate factfinding," denying a juvenile a jury trial would not violate the fundamental fairness component of the due process clause. In addition, the Court pointed out that "the jury trial, if required as a matter of constitutional precept, will remake the juvenile proceeding into a fully adversary process and will put an effective end to what has been the idealistic prospect of an intimate, informal protective proceeding."

Since Gault, juvenile proceedings involving noncriminal misbehavior, or juveniles thought to be beyond parental control, have been questioned on both procedural and substantive grounds. What does Gault imply about appropriate procedural safeguards? To what extent may a state restrain the liberty of a minor on the basis of acts that if committed by adults would not be criminal? The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the due process requirements applicable to these proceedings, and most states do not provide the procedural safeguards now applicable in delinquency proceedings. In addition to voicing procedural concerns, critics have also criticized as vague and overly broad the language defining these "status offenses": running away from home, sexual promiscuity, truancy, and the like. With few exceptions, however, appellate courts have upheld the constitutional validity of these statutes against such attacks. The Supreme Court, which has written no opinion dealing with such proceedings, has sent mixed signals in summary opinions.

Today every state has juvenile proceedings that allow a court, typically a juvenile or family court, to assume jurisdiction over a neglected or abused child and remove the child from the parents' care. Although not protected by explicit language in the Constitution, the interest of parents in their children's upbringing plainly carries great constitutional weight. Beginning with meyer v. nebraska (1923), the Supreme Court has recognized the constitutional right of parents to direct the rearing of their children. The parents' claim to authority, however, is not absolute. Since the early nineteenth century, the parens patriae power has been held sufficient to empower courts of equity to remove a child requiring protection from parental custody and to appoint a suitable person as guardian.

Statutes authorizing state intervention have been criticized on substantive and procedural grounds. Vague substantive standards of abuse and neglect often leave judges to base their determinations on their own subjective values. As the Supreme Court noted in Santosky v. Kramer (1982), the Court has not precisely determined what forms of parental conduct justify state intrusion.

The Court has, however, decided several cases with respect to the procedural requirements where parental rights are terminated on grounds of abuse or neglect. In Stanley v. Illinois (1972) the Court relied on the doctrine of irrebuttable presumptions to hold that it is a denial of due process for unwed fathers to be disqualified from custody of their children without individualized hearings on their fitness. In Santosky the Court decided that the "fair preponderance of the evidence" standard, applied in New York parental rights termination proceedings, violated due process: "Before a State may sever completely and irrevocably the rights of parents in their natural child, due process requires that the State support its allegations by at least clear and convincing evidence." In lassiter v. department of social services (1981), however, the Court held that due process does not require assignment of counsel in every case involving the termination of parental rights. Although most jurisdictions do provide counsel for parents in such cases, few provide separate counsel for the children.

Gault has forced revolutionary changes in delinquency proceedings, but the requirements imposed in other sorts of juvenile proceedings have been modest. In the twenty years since that landmark, Supreme Court decisions have extended to young people accused of crime those procedural safeguards essential to an accurate determination of their guilt. To that extent, the Constitution no longer permits the procedural informality that characterized juvenile proceedings for over half a century. Gault and its progeny have substantially narrowed but not obliterated the differences between the adult criminal justice process and the juvenile justice process for delinquents. McKeiver underlines the conclusion that the Constitution does not require identical procedures for delinquents and adults. The Court has never held that equal protection requires the legal system to treat all those accused of crime the same, whether adults or minors.

Outside the guilt phase of delinquency proceedings, the Court has shown substantial caution, notwithstanding the potentially expansive announcement in Gault that children have rights, and that juvenile proceedings will be judged by their performance, not their promise. A number of factors probably underlie this caution. For one thing, the protective and rehabilitative aspirations of the juvenile court have never been rejected by the Court. As McKeiver suggests, the traditions of the juvenile court and the values of informality, flexibility, and protection still may carry some weight in constitutional adjudication. More fundamentally, decisions affecting children are special in two important respects that must affect constitutional analysis. First, defining constitutional rights in juvenile proceedings implicates defining parental rights, particularly in cases involving noncriminal misbehavior where the state may be reinforcing parental prerogatives, and in abuse and neglect proceedings, where the state directly challenges parental adequacy. Second, by reason of immaturity, young people may be more susceptible to coercion, and less able to make informed and responsible decisions. Whether considering the voluntariness of a confession, the "knowing" waiver of constitutional rights, or the need for supervision and control, it would be foolish for the courts to conclude that age is irrelevant.

Robert H. Mnookin
(1986)

(see also: Children's Rights; Schall v. Martin.)

Bibliography

Flicker, Barbara 1982 Standards for Juvenile Justice: A Summary and Analysis. Juvenile Justice Standards Project. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publications.

Fox, Sanford J. 1970 Juvenile Justice Reform: An Historical Perspective. Stanford Law Review 22:1187–1239.

Mack, Julian W. 1925 The Chancery Procedure in the Juvenile Court. Pages 310–319 in Jane Addams, ed., The Child, the Clinic, and the Court. New York: New Republic, Inc., and the Wieboldt Foundation.

Platt, Anthony M. 1977 The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

President ' s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administra -tion of Justice 1967 Task Force Report: Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Stapleton, W. Vaughan and Teitelbaum, Lee E. 1972 In Defense of Youth: A Study of the Role of Counsel in American Juvenile Courts. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.