In re Gault

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 that a 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 Amendment should 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 special treatment by a harsh and adversarial justice system. In fact, juvenile courts continued to function, although their job was made more difficult by Gault, which did not provide any real guidelines as to how a special--but not too 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.