Juvenile Court Case Summary

Question #2: Summarize at least three landmark cases made by the US Supreme Court and discuss their impact on the Juvenile Justice system. The practices of early America resulted in harsher punishments for juveniles than adults who may have committed the same crime. By the nineteenth century, these practices began to change through campaigns advocating rights for children, as they were becoming aware that children might not be as responsible for their crimes as adults, like previously believed. This eventually led to the nation’s first juvenile court that was established in Cook County, Chicago in 1899. Since then, there have been many court decisions that have assisted with the way the juvenile justice system practices today. I will …show more content…
United States, 383 U.S. 541 (1966) was a landmark opinion in which the U.S. Supreme Court evaluated juvenile court proceedings and the guaranteed constitutional rights of the juvenile. The court determined the juvenile had been deprived of constitutional rights during certain juvenile court proceedings. With this decision, the court’s attempt was to institute due process for juveniles as in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. This entitled every juvenile in court proceedings to receive all the protections for due process. These protections included; to have a judicial hearing, be represented by an attorney during the hearing, access to documents being considered by the juvenile court, and a statement of the reasons in support of the waiver order. In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967) was the first decision by the U.S. Supreme Court for juvenile delinquency procedures. The ruling extended due process rights to juveniles. Specifically, in the areas of; right to a notice of charges in order to prepare for defense, right to legal counsel even if they cannot afford one, right to hear sworn testimony and to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the right against