Court Decisions that Influence Juvenile Justice System

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The juvenile justice system of the United States has been shaped by several court decisions. As a rule, both scholars and lawyers pay attention to the following ones: 1) In re Gault; 2) In re Winship, and 3) McKeiver v. Pennsylvania (Whitehead & Lab, 2010). The judicial decisions are important to the extent that they forced legislators and judicial officials to pay more attention to the civil rights of the juveniles, particularly the right to due legal process.

The famous In re Gault is the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that postulated that an underage person is eligible to the rights of due process, namely the right to obtain counsel, the right to be notified about the charges, and the right to encounter the witnesses¹. It should be noted that this case attracted so much attention because the police put a teenage boy into custody without notifying his parents and explaining what were the grounds for the arrest. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of this decision because it delineated the rights of a juvenile and forced the government to focus on the needs of this population. One should also speak about such Supreme Court cases as In re Winship². It changed the procedures for the evaluation of evidence and proving the guilt of the suspect ( Whitehead & Lab, 2010). The Supreme Court ruled that the guilt of an underage person has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt and not by a preponderance of the evidence as it was before. In other words, the court must present indisputable evidence in order to convict a juvenile. Additionally, it is important to mention McKeiver v. Pennsylvania³. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the juveniles were not eligible for a jury trial and that it was not a constitutional requirement. Despite the fact that it did not directly affect the juvenile justice system, it attracted the public’s attention to the fact that underage people are often put into underprivileged positions by modern courts.