Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

All fifty states and the District of Columbia have specialized laws to deal with juvenile offenders outside the criminal justice system for adult offenders.1 Juvenile justice systems handle both offenses that would be criminal if committed by an adult and delinquent behavior not recognizable under laws dealing with adults, such as habitual truancy, conduct endangering the morals or health of the juvenile or others, or disobedience making the juvenile uncontrollable by his parents. Reforms during the early part of the twentieth century provided for separating juveniles from adult offenders in adjudication, detention, and correctional facilities, but they also dispensed with the substantive and procedural rules that due process required in criminal trials. The justification for this lack of constitutional protections was that juvenile courts were deemed to be civil, not criminal, and that the state was acting as parens patriae for juvenile offenders and was not their adversary.2

In the 1960s, however, the Supreme Court imposed substantial restriction of these elements of juvenile jurisprudence. After tracing in much detail this history of juvenile courts, the Court held in In re Gault that the application of due process to juvenile proceedings would not endanger the good intentions vested in the system nor diminish the beneficial features of the system—emphasis upon rehabilitation rather than punishment, a measure of informality, avoidance of the stigma of criminal conviction, and low visibility of the process—but that the consequences of the absence of due process standards made their application necessary.3

Thus, the Court in Gault required notice of charges in time for the juvenile to prepare a defense, a hearing in which the juvenile could be represented by retained or appointed counsel, observance of the rights of confrontation and cross-examination, and protections against self-incrimination.4 The Court also held that before a juvenile could be “waived” to an adult court for trial, there had to be a hearing and findings of reasons.5 Subsequently, the Court held that the “essentials of due process and fair treatment” required that a juvenile could be adjudged delinquent only on evidence beyond a reasonable doubt when the offense charged would be a crime if committed by an adult.6 However, the Court has also held that jury trials are not constitutionally required in juvenile proceedings.7

On a few occasions, the Court has considered whether juveniles must be afforded the rights guaranteed to adults during investigation of crimes. In one such case, the Court ruled that a juvenile undergoing custodial interrogation by police had not invoked a Miranda right to remain silent by requesting permission to consult with his probation officer, since a probation officer could not be equated with an attorney, but also indicated that a juvenile’s waiver of Miranda rights was to be evaluated under the same totality-of-the-circumstances approach applicable to adults. That approach requires “inquiry into all the circumstances surrounding the interrogation . . . includ[ing] evaluation of the juvenile’s age, experience, education, background, and intelligence, and into whether he has the capacity to understand the warnings given him.” 8 In another case, the Court ruled that, although the Fourth Amendment applies to searches of students by public school authorities, neither the warrant requirement nor the probable cause standard is appropriate.9 Instead, a simple reasonableness standard governs searches of students’ persons and effects by school authorities.10

In Schall v. Martin, the Court ruled that preventive detention of juveniles does not offend due process when it serves the legitimate state purpose of protecting society and the juvenile from potential consequences of pretrial crime, the terms of confinement serve those legitimate purposes and are nonpunitive, and applicable procedures provide sufficient protection against erroneous and unnecessary detentions.11 The Court found that a statute authorizing pretrial detention of accused juvenile delinquents upon a finding of “serious risk” that the juvenile would commit crimes prior to trial, providing for expedited hearings, and guaranteeing a formal, adversarial probable cause hearing satisfied those requirements.

Footnotes

1

For analysis of the state laws and application of constitutional principles to juveniles, see Samuel M. Davis, Rights of Juveniles: The Juvenile Justice System (2d ed. 2006).

2

In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 12–29 (1967).

3

387 U.S. 1.

4

387 U.S. at 31–35.

5

An earlier case had reached the same result based on statutory interpretation; the Gault Court apparently reached it on constitutional grounds. Gault, 387 U.S. at 30–31 (citing Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 541 (1966)). The Gault Court did not rule on the right of appeal or the failure to make transcripts of hearings.

6

In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970).

7

McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528 (1971). No opinion won the support of a majority of the Justices. Justice Harry Blackmun’s opinion of the Court, which was joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices Potter Stewart and Byron White, reasoned that a juvenile proceeding was not “a criminal prosecution” within the terms of the Sixth Amendment, so jury trials were not automatically required; instead, the prior cases had proceeded on a “fundamental fairness” approach and in that regard a jury was not a necessary component of fair fact-finding and its use would have serious repercussions on the rehabilitative and protection functions of the juvenile court. Justice White also submitted a brief concurrence emphasizing the differences between adult criminal trials and juvenile adjudications. Id. at 551. Justice William Brennan concurred in one case and dissented in another because, in his view, open proceedings would operate to protect juveniles from oppression in much the same way a jury would. Id. at 553. Justice John Marshall Harlan concurred because he did not believe jury trials were constitutionally mandated in state courts. Id. at 557. Justices William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, and Thurgood Marshall dissented. Id. at 557.

8

Fare v. Michael C., 442 U.S. 707, 725 (1979).

9

New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985) (upholding the search of a student’s purse to determine whether the student possessed cigarettes in violation of school rule; evidence of drug activity held admissible in a prosecution under the juvenile laws). In Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364 (2009), the Court found unreasonable a strip search of a thirteen-year-old girl suspected of possessing ibuprofen. See also Amdt4.6.6.6 School Searches.

10

This single rule, the Court explained, permits school authorities “to regulate their conduct according to the dictates of reason and common sense.” 469 U.S. at 343. Rejecting the suggestion of dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court was “unwilling to adopt a standard under which the legality of a search is dependent upon a judge’s evaluation of the relative importance of various school rules.” 469 U.S. at 342 n.9.

11

467 U.S. 253 (1984).