In Re Gault

387 U.S. 1 (1967), argued 6 Dec. 1966, decided 15 May 1967 by vote of 8 to 1; Fortas for the Court, black and White concurring, Harlan concurring in part and dissenting in part; Stewart in dissent. From the turn of the century until the 1960s, the assumptions of juvenile justice had drawn inspiration from the reform ideology of the Progressives. State intervention into the juvenile's life was justified as parens patriae, that is, a protective, paternal interest in the welfare of a wayward or otherwise distressed child. This approach led to a nationwide institutional distinction between the adversary process of adult criminal adjudication and the flexible and informal decision making created for juvenile proceedings. Separate legislative codes and correctional alternatives were established for juveniles whose behavior would have been considered criminal if they were adults.

The growing problem of juvenile misconduct and a popular perception that the juvenile justice system was failing both society and its clientele called into question the assumptions of that system and attracted the attention of both scholars and government officials. Following the Supreme Court's landmark rulings that brought unprecedented procedural reforms to federal and state criminal justice systems, it seemed inevitable that the justices would also place the nation's juvenile justice system under the scrutiny of constitutional due process.

The Court first signaled its interest in the area in Kent v. United States (1966), a 5‐to‐4 decision that rejected a cursory waiver of Kent's juvenile status so that he might be tried as an adult. The majority used the occasion to speculate that a juvenile—faced with incarceration in an informal juvenile proceeding, yet unprotected by the due process guarantees afforded adults under the Constitution—might encounter “the worst of both worlds” (p. 556). Developing this theme boldly a year later, Justice Abe Fortas's opinion in Gault attacked the entire juvenile justice system, with only Justice Potter Stewart disagreeing on the merits of the case.

At issue was the commitment of fifteen‐year‐old Gerald Gault to Arizona's State Industrial School until his majority (a maximum of six years), following his adjudication as a “delinquent child” for making an obscene phone call to a neighbor while on probation for another juvenile offense. Had Gault been tried as an adult, his maximum punishment would have been a fifty‐dollar fine or two months incarceration. What made Gault's case significant was that, despite the severity of his punishment, Arizona law afforded him virtually no “due process” at all—no official notice of his precipitous hearings (he was committed within a week of the offense), no notification that counsel could be present at the hearings, no opportunity to confront or cross‐examine the woman who complained about the phone call, and no protection against self‐incrimination. His questionable admission about taking part in the phone call became the primary basis for the commitment.

Fortas took the opportunity to question broadly the wisdom of parens patriae as the guiding principle of juvenile adjudication. He then tailored a careful holding that extended many (but not all) of the rights of adult criminal defendants, under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to those juveniles subject to a deprivation of liberty upon adjudication of delinquency. Included were adequate and timely notice of charges and hearings, notice of the right to counsel at adjudication, the right to confront and cross‐examine witnesses, and the protection against self‐incrimination. Justice Fortas argued that the extension of these protections would not interfere fundamentally with the distinctive informality and flexibility of juvenile adjudication.

The majority opinion was controversial both on the Court and off. Justices Hugo Black and John M. Harlan used the case as an occasion to continue their ongoing debate about the proper interpretation of “due process” as it applied to the states—a debate that grew more heated in a subsequent juvenile justice case, In re Winship (1970). Justice Stewart dissented primarily on the ground that the majority's decision ran the risk of making the juvenile process identical to the adult criminal process, thus recreating the problem that the Progressives had attacked at the turn of the century.

Gault and its practical consequences for juvenile justice (particularly the decision's emphasis on procedural compliance and its injection of defense counsel into the system) have produced considerable controversy, although the case remains the constitutional landmark for juvenile adjudication. Critics have attacked the decision as part of the larger “due process revolution” of the 1960s, charging that the Warren Court majority placed too much faith in the efficacy of procedural remedies to accomplish substantive reforms in criminal justice. Particularly with regard to Gault, critics complain that an overemphasis on due process, on the one hand, diverts attention from the larger substantive issue of the system's fundamental capacity to develop appropriate remedies for delinquent behavior and, on the other hand, adds to the case management woes of the already overburdened juvenile courts.

See also Due Process, Procedural; Juvenile Justice.

Bibliography

• John R. Sutton, Stubborn Children: Controlling Delinquency in the United States, 1640–1981 (1988).
• Stanton Wheeler and Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr., Juvenile Delinquency: Its Prevention and Control (1966)

— Albert R. Matheny

• 387 U.S. 1 (1967)
• Vote: 8–1
• For the Court: Fortas
• Concurring: Black, White, and Harlan
• Dissenting: Stewart

Gerald Gault, a 15-year-old boy, made obscene telephone calls to a neighbor. At the time, he was on court-ordered probation for a different act of juvenile delinquency.

As a juvenile, Gault did not have the standard constitutional guarantees of due process, such as the right to counsel, the right to confront or cross-examine one's accuser, the privilege of protection from self-incrimination, and the right to notice of a legal hearing. The juvenile justice system was separated from the usual criminal processes applied to adults. The intention had been to protect juvenile offenders from the harshness of adult criminal law. But these good intentions could in some cases lead to injustice, which is what Gault's advocates claimed.

If Gault had been tried as an adult, his punishment would have been a $50 fine or two months in jail. As a juvenile offender, he was sentenced to the Arizona State Industrial School until the age of 21, a six-year sentence. Further, Arizona law provided juvenile offenders virtually no due process rights, such as those set out in the 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

A state juvenile court judge convicted and sentenced Gerald Gault after two hearings. Gault's father sought his son's release from state-imposed detention on the grounds that he had been denied due process rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The Issue

Do the due process rights of individuals, specified in the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments, apply to juveniles, just as they do to adults accused of crimes?

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court decided that Gerald Gault had been denied his constitutional rights of due process. Justice Abe Fortas declared that “neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Bill of Rights is for adults alone…. Under our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court…. The essential difference between Gerald's case and a normal criminal case is that safeguards available to adults were discarded in Gerald's case.”

Justice Fortas held that due process of law for juveniles required at least four procedural protections of individual rights: written notification of specific charges to the juvenile and his parents, assistance of a lawyer, confrontation and cross-examination of witnesses, and protection against self-incrimination.

Justice Fortas argued that the guarantee of these four due process rights for juveniles would not require the state to treat a juvenile accused of delinquency exactly like an adult accused of crime. Rather, these safeguards would protect a juvenile against injustices that otherwise might occur.

Significance

This is the Court's most important decision about the rights of juveniles accused of illegal actions. It established that juveniles have certain constitutional rights that cannot be taken away solely because of age. However, the Gault decision did not abolish distinctive qualities of a separate juvenile court system. In particular, the due process requirements of Gault apply only to the adjudication (hearing and deciding) phase of legal proceedings and not to the conviction phase. Thus, Gault does not interfere with the emphasis that juvenile courts have traditionally placed on personalized treatment for rehabilitation of the individual.

See also Due process of law; Juvenile justice

Sources

• Thomas J. Bernard, The Cycle of Juvenile Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)

In Re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967), addressed the question of whether the criminal justice provisions of the Bill of Rights applied to minors. Chief Justice Earl Warren predicted this decision would become the Magna Carta for juveniles. The case involved Gerald Gault, a fifteen-year-old probationer, who had been arrested for making an obscene telephone call. Gault was held by the police while he was interrogated for several days, and, following the sort of informal proceeding then typical in juvenile courts, was sentenced to a state school until he turned twenty-one.

Justice Abe Fortas viewed Gault's case as a vehicle for reforming what he regarded as a failed juvenile justice system. The way to improve a system that simply bred criminals, Fortas believed, was to insist that juveniles be given many of the same rights that the Constitution guaranteed to adults. His Gault opinion declared that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment required giving juveniles written notice of the charges against them, allowing them to confront their accusers, and informing them that they had a privilege against self-incrimination and a right to be represented by an attorney (an appointed one if they were indigent). The effect of Gault was to affirm that children have constitutional rights, although their rights are somewhat more limited than the rights of adults.

Bibliography

Kalman, Laura. Abe Fortas: A Biography. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990.

Walker, Nancy E., Catherine M. Brooks, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman. Children's Rights in the United States: In Search of a National Policy. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1999

Originally, juvenile court was a place for the informal resolution of a broad range of matters concerning children. The hearings were not adversarial. Instead, they focused on the juvenile's best interests. A juvenile was brought to the juvenile court, the prosecution presented evidence, the juvenile and other witnesses gave testimony, and the juvenile court judge made a decision based on the perceived best interests of the juvenile.

In the same spirit of informality, juvenile courts provided fewer procedural protections than did adult courts. Juveniles did not have the right to a court-appointed attorney or to notice of charges of criminal behavior. They did not have the right to confront accusers and cross-examine witnesses. They did not have the right to a written record of the proceedings or to appeal the juvenile court judgment.

The problem with this lack of procedural protections was that a juvenile risked losing his or her liberty for several years. The best interests of the child usually involved placement in a secure reformatory or some other secure facility until the age of eighteen or, in some states, twenty-one. This amounted to a deprivation of liberty similar to that resulting from a prison sentence.

In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision that would change dramatically the character of juvenile courts. In In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1428, 18 L. Ed. 2d 527, fifteen-year-old Gerald Gault was committed to a reform school until age twenty-one for allegedly making an obscene phone call to a neighbor. Gault had been found delinquent without receiving notice of the charges or the assistance of an attorney. In addition, Gault had been interviewed by a probation officer without having an attorney present, and the statements made in this interview were submitted as proof that Gault had made the obscene phone call.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Gault's commitment to the reformatory constituted a deprivation of liberty. This meant that Gault should have been provided with most of the procedural protections afforded to adults in criminal prosecutions. According to the Court in Gault, "[U]nbridled discretion, however benevolently motivated, is frequently a poor substitute for principle and procedure."

The purpose of the Gault decision was to make juvenile proceedings more fair to the juvenile. The decision accomplished this, but it also made juvenile proceedings more adversarial. With the increased procedural protections, juveniles became more capable of resisting commitment to secure reformatories, and it became more difficult for the juvenile courts summarily to obtain control over juveniles.

The adversarial tenor in contemporary juvenile courts is thus an unfortunate by-product of the decision in Gault. Prosecutors must now work harder to persuade the juvenile court to find in favor of the state so that the system may take control of the juvenile. They must shift the focus of juvenile court proceedings away from the needs of the juvenile and onto the offense. This shifted focus is similar to the focus of proceedings in adult criminal court, and it amounts to a reversal of the traditional emphasis in juvenile court.

See: Adversary System; Children's Rights; Criminal Procedure; Juvenile Law.

In re Gault
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 16, 1966 Decided May 15, 1967
Full case name: In re Gault et al. Citations: 387 U.S. 1 Prior history: Appeal from the Supreme Court of Arizona
Holding
Juveniles tried for crimes in delinquency proceedings should have the right of due process protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice: Earl Warren Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Abe Fortas
Case opinions
Majority by: Fortas Joined by: Warren, Douglas, Clark, Brennan Concurrence by: Black Concurrence by: White Concurrence/dissent by: Harlan Dissent by: Stewart
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Amend. XIV

In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967) was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision which established that under the Fourteenth Amendment, juveniles accused of crimes in a delinquency proceeding must be accorded many of the same due process rights as adults such as the right to timely notification of charges, the right to confront witnesses, the right against self-incrimination, and the right to counsel. The court's opinion was written by Justice Abe Fortas, a noted proponent of children's rights.

Case Background

The mother of Arizona resident Gerald Francis Gault, aged 15, returned home one day to find him missing and sent his older brother to look for him. The brother discovered that Gerald had been taken into custody by the local police, following a complaint by a neighbor named Mrs. Cook that someone, whom they believed was Gerald and his friend, had made obscene and threatening phone calls.

Under the juvenile code at that time, Gault was not entitled to certain constitutional rights, such as the right to be informed of the charges, right to counsel, right to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and protection against self-incrimination.

Gault was arrested, tried, and found a delinquent by the juvenile court and committed to the state industrial school until he reached the age of 21. However, had Gault been 18 or older and committed the same offense, he would have only faced a fine of between $5.00 and $50.00 or a maximum of two months jail time.

His parents petitioned for his release in the Arizona Supreme Court because Gault had no right to appeal under Arizona law. The constitutional questions presented in this case included whether the juvenile code violated the Fourteenth Amendment protection of due process, and whether minors enjoyed the same rights as adults in judicial procedure.

Decision

In an 8-1 decision the Supreme Court ruled that Gault’s commitment to the State Industrial School "was a clear violation of his 14th Amendment due process rights, since he had been denied the right to legal counsel, had not been formally notified of the charges against him, had not been informed of his right against self-incrimination, had no opportunity to confront his accusers and had been given no right to appeal his sentence to a higher court." Justice Potter Stewart was the sole dissenter. He argued that the purpose of juvenile court was correction, not punishment, and the constitutional procedural safeguards for criminal trials should not apply to such juvenile trials.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 387

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