In Re Gault

IN RE GAULT,

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

Michal R. Belknap

See also Due Process of Law ; Juvenile Courts .