In re Gault

Appellants
Paul L. Gault and Marjorie Gault, parents of Gerald Francis Gault, a minor
Appellee
State of Arizona
Appellants' Claim
That the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to accord juvenile criminal defendants the same due process rights given to adults accused of criminal offenses.
Chief Lawyer for Appellants
Norman Dorsen
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Frank A. Parks, Attorney General of Arizona
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., Tom C. Clark, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas (writing for the Court), John Marshall Harlan II, Earl Warren,Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Potter Stewart
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
15 May 1967
Decision
Most of the guarantees of procedural due process given to adult defendants atstate criminal trials were extended to juveniles.
Significance
In re Gault was an important part of the "due process revolution" thattook place during the 1960s, during which many of the rights guaranteed by the first ten amendments to the Constitution--the Bill of Rights--were seen toapply at the state as well as the federal level.
Gerald Gault had his first serious brush with the law early in 1964 when he was picked up by police for having been in the company of another boy who hadstolen a wallet from a woman's purse. As a result of this incident, a six-month order of probation was entered against him on 25 February 1964. It was still in effect on 8 June 1964, when Gault was taken into custody by Gila County, Arizona, police for having, together with a friend, made an allegedly obscene phone call to a neighbor.
Both of Gerald Gault's parents were at work when he was taken into custody. They were not notified of his detention. Nor were they served with the petition for a preliminary hearing filed by a probation officer. At the hearing, which was held the next day, Gerald Gault was accompanied by his mother and older brother, but was not represented by counsel. He was still without a lawyerwhen, a week later, he appeared at a hastily scheduled sentencing hearing. Without an attorney and deprived of an opportunity to confront or cross-examinehis accuser, who was not present at either hearing, Gault was convicted almost entirely on the basis of his admission that he had taken part in the phonecall. At 15, he was declared a juvenile delinquent and committed to the State Industrial School for a period of up to six years. Arizona permitted no appeals in juvenile cases.
A petition for habeas corpus, requesting that Gault be released on grounds that he had been illegally detained, was filed in the state supreme court, which referred it to the trial court. When Gault's petition was rejected,this decision was appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court, which likewise declined to release Gault. His parents then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which considered the matter "in re," that is, in a nonadversarial proceeding requiring only a legal decision, not full litigation.
From the beginning of the twentieth century, juvenile defenders had been subjected to parens patriae, that is, a paternalistic, ostensibly protective attitude towards unruly children. As a result, an entirely separate juvenile justice system had developed. Aiming for flexibility and informality, toooften this system resulted in a failure of due process for the defendants whowere subjected to it. The Supreme Court first addressed this problem in Kent v. United States (1966), in which the legal process for juvenile offenders--who were often handed lengthy sentences in informal proceedings wherethey were deprived of due process guarantees--faced what the Court called "the worst of both worlds."
Supreme Court Declares Juvenile Justice System Delinquent as to Due Process
Gerald Gault had clearly been victimized by this system. Had he been an adult, his maximum punishment would have been a $50 fine or two months in jail. Instead, he faced the prospect of 6 years of incarceration. Writing for the Court, Justice Fortas attacked the whole notion of parens patriae:

The right of the state, as parens patriae, to deny to the child procedural rights available to his elders was elaborated by the assertion thata child, unlike an adult, had a right "not to liberty but to custody" . . .On this basis, proceedings involving juveniles were described as "civil" not"criminal" and therefore not subject to the requirements which restrict the state when it seeks to deprive a person of his liberty . . . The constitutional and theoretical basis for this peculiar system is--to say the least--debatable . . . Juvenile Court history has again demonstrated that unbridled discretion, however benevolently motivated, is frequently a poor substitute for principle and procedure.

Seven other justices agreed with Fortas that most of the rights guaranteed adult criminal defendants by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendmentshould be extended to juvenile delinquents facing the prospect of losing their liberty. The only dissenter was Justice Stewart, who voiced the concern that soon the rules governing juvenile and adult criminal procedures would be indistinguishable, with the effect that children would be accorded no specialtreatment by a harsh and adversarial justice system. In fact, juvenile courtscontinued to function, although their job was made more difficult by Gault, which did not provide any real guidelines as to how a special--but nottoo special--justice was to be meted out to juvenile defendants. Like many of the landmark cases that constituted part of the Court's "due process revolution," Gault attempted to resolve difficult substantive problems in the criminal justice system with not always adequate procedural remedies.
Related Cases

• Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 541 (1966).
  
• McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, In re Burrus, 403 U.S. 528 (1971).
  
• Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975).