WAS IT FAIR? In 1964, in Globe, Arizona, 15 n year-old Gerald Gault was charged with making an obscene telephone call to a female neighbor. He was convicted by a juvenile court in Arizona and committed to a juvenile correctional facility for an indeterminate period not to extend beyond his 21st birthday. Justice Fortas again wrote the opinion for the court and ruled that youth are also protected under the 14th amendment. He also stated that Gault’s constitutional rights had been violated and that Gault was entitled to:
Adequate notice of the precise nature of the charges brought against him. Notice of the right to counsel and, if indigent, the right to have counsel appointed. The right to confront witnesses and have them cross-examined. The privilege against self-incrimination, which applies to juvenile and adult proceedings. The court also concluded that, because the non-criminal label attached to juvenile proceedings did not dictate the scope of the juvenile’s rights, calling such matter “civil” would not dictate the parameter of the rights prescribed.
Gault marked the constitutional domestication of the parens patriae juvenile court, and a new era dawned based on a more criminal due process model contrasted with the historic informality of juvenile court proceedings. It decision affected the way all juveniles are treated in court today. In re Gault, focused on children’s due process rights, and, in the 1990’s, to one focused on accountability and punishment. None of these, alone, is enough.
Today, the court must somehow simultaneously afford children due process, deliver swift and appropriate punishment, and endeavor to rehabilitate and meet the therapeutic needs of juvenile offenders and their families. Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier n Student Censorship The Hazelwood vs. kuhlmeier case deals with the first Amendment rights of students to free expression. The controversy began in the Spring of 1983 when Robert E. Reynolds, the principal of Hazelwood East High School, refused to permit the publication of two articles in the Spectrum, a school newspaper.
Principal Reynolds said he deleted the two articles dealing with divorce and teenage pregnancy because they described families and students in such a way that even though their names were going to tread on the rights of privacy of students and their parents. ” School Officials further said that the newspaper was an extension of classroom instruction and did not enjoy first Amendment protection.
8 A district court judge agreed with the school board’s lawyer who said that schools would be in trouble if people could change curriculum at the drop of a lawsuit. A court of appeals disagreed, however, and by a 2 n 1 decision overturned the judge’s decision saying the Hazelwood’s spectrum was, in fact, a public forum. ” When the case finally reached the Supreme Court on January 13,1988, the court ruled 5-3 that school officials have broad power To censor school newspaper, plays and other “school sponsored expressive activities.
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