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Full-Text Articles in Juvenile Law

Young And Dangerous: The Role Of Youth In Risk Assessment Instruments, Ingrid Yin Dec 2021

Young And Dangerous: The Role Of Youth In Risk Assessment Instruments, Ingrid Yin

Michigan Law Review

States are increasingly adopting risk assessment instruments (RAIs) to help judges determine the appropriate type and length of punishment for an offender. Although this sentencing practice has been met with a wide variety of scholarly criticism, there has been virtually no discussion of how RAIs treat youth as a strong factor contributing to a high risk score. This silence is puzzling. Not only is youth undoubtedly the most powerful risk factor in most RAIs, but youth also holds a special place in the criminal justice system as a “mitigating factor of great weight.” This Comment presents the first in-depth critique …


Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott May 2020

Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott

Michigan Law Review

The law governing children is complex, sometimes appearing almost incoherent. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children, subject to limited state oversight, has broken down over the past few decades. Lawmakers started granting children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, and legally incompetent beings. As children emerged as legal persons, children’s rights advocates challenged the rationale for parental authority, contending that robust parental rights often harm children. And a wave of punitive reforms in response to juvenile crime in the 1990s undermined …


The New Unconstitutionality Of Juvenile Sex Offender Registration: Suspending The Presumption Of Constitutionality For Laws That Burden Juvenile Offenders, Spencer Klein Jun 2017

The New Unconstitutionality Of Juvenile Sex Offender Registration: Suspending The Presumption Of Constitutionality For Laws That Burden Juvenile Offenders, Spencer Klein

Michigan Law Review

In Smith v. Doe, the Supreme Court held that Alaska’s sex offender registration and notification statute did not constitute punishment and was therefore not susceptible to challenge under the Ex Post Facto Clause. In reaching that conclusion, the Court looked to the seven factors articulated in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez. To evaluate those factors, the Court applied a presumption of constitutionality, conducting the sort of narrow factual inquiry characteristic of rational basis review. Since Smith, courts have disagreed as to whether sex offender laws are punitive when applied to juveniles, and the Supreme Court has not yet addressed …


Rethinking Special Education's "Least Restrictive Environment" Requirement, Cari Carson Jun 2015

Rethinking Special Education's "Least Restrictive Environment" Requirement, Cari Carson

Michigan Law Review

The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act promotes the education of students with disabilities together with their nondisabled peers, requiring education in the “least restrictive environment” (“LRE”). This requirement has long been subject to competing interpretations. This Note contends that the dominant interpretation—requiring education in the least restrictive environment available—is deficient and allows students to be placed in unnecessarily restrictive settings. Drawing from child mental health law, this Note proposes an alternative LRE approach that requires education in the least restrictive environment needed and argues that this alternative approach is a better reading of the law.


Toward A Child-Centered Approach To Evaluating Claims Of Alienation In High-Conflict Custody Disputes, Allison M. Nichols Feb 2014

Toward A Child-Centered Approach To Evaluating Claims Of Alienation In High-Conflict Custody Disputes, Allison M. Nichols

Michigan Law Review

Theories of parental alienation abound in high-conflict custody cases. The image of one parent brainwashing a child against the other parent fits with what we think we know about family dynamics during divorce. The concept of a diagnosable “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (“PAS”) developed as an attempt to explain this phenomenon, but it has been widely discredited by mental health professionals and thus fails the standard for evidentiary admissibility. Nevertheless, PAS and related theories continue to influence the decisions of family courts, and even in jurisdictions that explicitly reject such theories, judges still face the daunting task of resolving these volatile …


Misplaced Misrepresentations: Why Misrepresentation-Of-Age Statutes Must Be Reinterpreted As They Apply To Children’S Online Contracts, Michelle A. Sargent Nov 2013

Misplaced Misrepresentations: Why Misrepresentation-Of-Age Statutes Must Be Reinterpreted As They Apply To Children’S Online Contracts, Michelle A. Sargent

Michigan Law Review

The information age revolutionized the relationship between individuals and the internet. Today, children are the targets of online advertisements that lure them into accepting terms of service, thus entering into online agreements. While children may feel comfortable navigating websites, they are psychologically predisposed to be unsophisticated and impulsive actors online. Children lack the digital literacy to understand the implications of accepting website terms of service. Meanwhile, several states have misrepresentation-of-age statutes that prevent children from using the infancy doctrine to disaffirm online contracts because, in accepting the terms of service, children often represent that they are old enough to enter …


Neither Sad Nor Strange: Recovering The Logic Of Anticruelty Organizations In Gilded Age America, Bryn Resser Pallesen Apr 2013

Neither Sad Nor Strange: Recovering The Logic Of Anticruelty Organizations In Gilded Age America, Bryn Resser Pallesen

Michigan Law Review

In 1877, the American Humane Association ("AHA") incorporated as one of the first national organizations dedicated to the protection of animals. Nine years later, it amended its constitution to include the protection of children in its chartered mission. By 1908, there were 354 anticruelty organizations in the United States, 185 of which were, like the AHA, humane societies invested in the welfare of both animals and children (pp. 2-3). As primary source documents reveal, Gilded Age humanitarians viewed the joint pursuit of child and animal protection as entirely sensible (p. 5). One of the Illinois Humane Society's founding directors, for …


Section 2259 Restitution Claims And Child Pornography Possession, Dina Mcleod Jan 2011

Section 2259 Restitution Claims And Child Pornography Possession, Dina Mcleod

Michigan Law Review

In 2009, a child pornography victim brought a criminal restitution claim against a defendant who possessed images of her abuse. The statutory provision authorizing restitution, 18 U.S.C. § 2259, had never before been used to bring a claim against a defendant who had only possessed, rather than produced or distributed, child pornography ("child pornography possession defendants"). The federal courts have not developed a consistent approach to resolving Section 2259 claims involving such defendants. This Note argues that two conceptions of traditional proximate cause doctrine can provide a framework for analyzing such claims. It examines Section 2259 claims using both a …


Rationalizing Juvenile Justice, Carolyn J. Frantz May 2000

Rationalizing Juvenile Justice, Carolyn J. Frantz

Michigan Law Review

Few issues have occupied the public mind so much in recent years as the problem of youth violence. Due to sensational school shootings and public paranoia about the violence of youth gangs, America is concerned - very concerned - about the growing criminality of its children. In our concern, we find ourselves caught in the classic conundrum of criminal responsibility: reconciling the unavoidable knowledge that much of human behavior is determined with our strong instincts about free will. We blame violent television and video games, we blame single mothers, we blame low church attendance, but when all is said and …


Judicial Review & The Policy Of Federal Abstention: A Juvenile's Right To Ensure The Existence Of A "Substantial Federal Interest", Matthew Drexler Feb 2000

Judicial Review & The Policy Of Federal Abstention: A Juvenile's Right To Ensure The Existence Of A "Substantial Federal Interest", Matthew Drexler

Michigan Law Review

The problem of juvenile delinquency must be dealt with in an effective and meaningful manner if we are to reduce the ever increasing levels of crime and improve the quality of life in America. With these words, the United States Senate opened its report in support of the first major federal juvenile delinquency statute in almost forty years. The goal of the statute and of federal involvement in juvenile delinquency proceedings was to give the highest attention to preventing juvenile crime and to minimizing the involvement of juveniles in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Until 1974, the federal government …


The Offense: Interpreting The Indictment Requirement In 21 U.S.C. § 851, Christopher Serkin Dec 1999

The Offense: Interpreting The Indictment Requirement In 21 U.S.C. § 851, Christopher Serkin

Michigan Law Review

Congress enacted the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 ("the Act") to unify and rationalize its treatment of drug offenses. The Act was an enormous piece of legislation, requiring months of congressional hearings before it was passed. Today, the Act encompasses over 150 sections of title 21 of the U.S. Code and regulates behavior ranging from manufacturing and mislabeling to prescribing controlled substances. Like any piece of complex legislation, the Act has spawned its share of litigation. One controversy has defied satisfactory resolution: the meaning of the innocuous phrase, "the offense," in section 851(a)(2). The statute's structure …


Counseling Counsel For Children, Martin Guggenheim Jan 1999

Counseling Counsel For Children, Martin Guggenheim

Michigan Law Review

You are a lawyer working in juvenile court, representing children in proceedings in which their parents are accused of being unfit. Your clients range in age from newborns to seventeen-yearolds. At any one time you have 125 active cases on your docket. You work hard at your job, and you believe deeply in the rights of the children you represent. Occasionally, it occurs to you that you don't really have as good a sense as perhaps you should of your precise role and how you ought to discharge your responsibilities to your clients. But you don't ever seem to have …


Divorce, Custody, Gender, And The Limits Of Law: On Dividing The Child, Lee E. Teitelbaum May 1994

Divorce, Custody, Gender, And The Limits Of Law: On Dividing The Child, Lee E. Teitelbaum

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Dividing the Child: Social and Legal Dilemmas of Custody by Elanor E. Maccoby and Robert H. Mnookin


Black Identity And Child Placement: The Best Interests Of Black And Biracial Children, Kim Forde-Mazrui Feb 1994

Black Identity And Child Placement: The Best Interests Of Black And Biracial Children, Kim Forde-Mazrui

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this Note is to question whether racial matching by courts and child-placement agencies serves the best interests of Black children. The principle that guides this Note's analysis is that racial matching is justified only if such a policy better serves the interests of Black children than a policy in which race is not a factor in a child-placement determination. This Note also questions whether racial matching serves the interests of biracial children and those of Black people as a cultural group.


The Sexual Innocence Inference Theory As A Basis For The Admissibility Of A Child Molestation Victim's Prior Sexual Conduct, Christopher B. Reid Feb 1993

The Sexual Innocence Inference Theory As A Basis For The Admissibility Of A Child Molestation Victim's Prior Sexual Conduct, Christopher B. Reid

Michigan Law Review

The sexual innocence inference refers to the thought process a jury follows when it hears a young child testify about sexual acts and matters that reveal an understanding of such acts beyond the capacity likely at his or her age. A jury is likely to assume that because the child is so young, he or she must be innocent of sexual matters. Shocked by the child's display on the witness stand, the jury may then infer that the child could have acquired such knowledge only if the charged offense of child molestation is true. To rebut this inference, a defendant …


Discretion, Rules, And Law: Child Custody And The Umda's Best-Interest Standard, Carl E. Schneider Aug 1991

Discretion, Rules, And Law: Child Custody And The Umda's Best-Interest Standard, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

One barrier facing any attempt to devise a uniform law for diverse jurisdictions is the occasional - perhaps even frequent - difficulty of writing rules that will accurately guide judges. The law's ordinary solution to that difficulty is to give judges some measure of discretion. This article inquires into the nature and legitimacy of that technique. It does so by analyzing a particularly controversial provision of the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act (UMDA). Section 402 of that Act states: "The court shall determine custody in accordance with the best interest of the child." It then instructs the court to "consider …


Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide For The Concerned, Denise Esposito May 1991

Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide For The Concerned, Denise Esposito

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide for the Concerned by Douglas J. Besharov


The Child Sexual Abuse Literature: A Call For Greater Objectivity, John E.B. Myers May 1990

The Child Sexual Abuse Literature: A Call For Greater Objectivity, John E.B. Myers

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse by Hollida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager., The Battle and the Backlash: The Child Sexual Abuse War by David Hechler., On Trial: America's Courts and Their Treatment of Sexually Abused Children by Billie Wright Dziech and Chales B. Schudson.


At A Tender Age: Violent Youth And Juvenile Justice, Patrick Gallagher May 1989

At A Tender Age: Violent Youth And Juvenile Justice, Patrick Gallagher

Michigan Law Review

A Review of At a Tender Age: Violent Youth and Juvenile Justice by Rita Kramer


Law, Science, And History: Reflections Upon In The Best Interests Of The Child, Peggy C. Davis May 1988

Law, Science, And History: Reflections Upon In The Best Interests Of The Child, Peggy C. Davis

Michigan Law Review

A Review of In the Best Interests of the Child by Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, Albert J. Solnit, and Sonja Goldstein


Families In Peril, Nellie Pappas May 1988

Families In Peril, Nellie Pappas

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Families in Peril by Marian Wright Edelman


Videotaping Children's Testimony: An Empirical View, Paula E. Hill, Samuel M. Hill Feb 1987

Videotaping Children's Testimony: An Empirical View, Paula E. Hill, Samuel M. Hill

Michigan Law Review

Increases in the number of reported incidents of child abuse and sexual molestation have resulted in more and younger children becoming courtroom participants. Some courts refuse to consider the special needs of the child in this adversarial environment. Relying on questionable precedent, these courts hold that the defendant's right to directly confront the child, as well as strict compliance with evidentiary rules, overrides that child's interest in freedom from embarrassment or psychological trauma. This Note focuses on pressures felt by the testifying child and the ways in which these pressures affect her testimony; it then proposes using videotaped testimony as …


Lawyers And Children: Wisdom And Legitimacy In Family Policy, Carl E. Schneider Apr 1986

Lawyers And Children: Wisdom And Legitimacy In Family Policy, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

A Review of In the Interest of Children: Advocacy, Law Reform, and Public Policy by Robert H. Mnookin, Robert A. Burt, David L. Chambers, Michael S. Wald, Stephen D. Sugarman, Franklin E. Zimring, and Rayman L. Solomon


An Examination Of Whether Incarcerated Juveniles Are Entitled By The Constitution To Rehabilitative Treatment, Andrew D. Roth Nov 1985

An Examination Of Whether Incarcerated Juveniles Are Entitled By The Constitution To Rehabilitative Treatment, Andrew D. Roth

Michigan Law Review

This Note attempts to resolve the arguments presented in the literature and the case law and determine whether the federal Constitution mandates a right to treatment for involuntarily incarcerated juveniles. Part I examines the varied situations that have given rise to right to treatment claims. Part II elucidates the three principal theories on which right to treatment claims have been based: (1) that because the purpose of incarcerating juveniles is to promote their welfare, rehabilitation is mandated by the due process requirement that the nature of the commitment "bear some reasonable relation to the purpose for which the individual is …


The Establishment Clause And Religion In Child Custody Disputes: Factoring Religion Into The Best Interest Equation, Michigan Law Review Jun 1984

The Establishment Clause And Religion In Child Custody Disputes: Factoring Religion Into The Best Interest Equation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines when judges deciding custody disputes may consider potential custodians' religious practices without violating the establishment clause of the first amendment to the Constitution. Although courts agree that they may not prefer one parent to another for religious reasons when both parents are religious and neither parent's religious practices threaten the child's health or safety, some courts believe that they may constitutionally prefer a religious parent to a nonreligious parent. Part I argues that courts violate the establishment clause by preferring religion to nonreligion when there is no showing that the child has personal religious convictions. Part II …


The Public Right Of Access To Juvenile Delinquency Hearings, Michigan Law Review May 1983

The Public Right Of Access To Juvenile Delinquency Hearings, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Despite the differences between the criminal and juvenile court systems, the Supreme Court has extended many criminal procedural safeguards to juvenile delinquency hearings. The Court does not, however, "automatically and preemptorily" apply every procedural safeguard to juvenile hearings; rather, it carefully examines the criminal trial standard in the context of delinquency hearings. Adopting a similar approach, this Note considers the implications of a constitutional right of access to juvenile delinquency hearings. Part I examines the right of access announced in Globe Newspaper and Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia. Part II looks at the juvenile justice system and argues that extension …


The Learning Years: A Review Of The Changing Legal World Of Adolescence, Bruce C. Hafen Mar 1983

The Learning Years: A Review Of The Changing Legal World Of Adolescence, Bruce C. Hafen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Changing Legal World of Adolescence by Franklin E. Zimring


Illegitimacy: An Examination Of Bastardy, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

Illegitimacy: An Examination Of Bastardy, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Illegitimacy: An Examination of Bastardy by Jenny Teichman


Who Speaks For The Child: The Problems Of Proxy Consent, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

Who Speaks For The Child: The Problems Of Proxy Consent, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Who Speaks for the Child: The Problems of Proxy Consent edited by Willard Gaylin and Ruth Macklin


Juveniles' Waiver Of Rights: Legal And Psychological Competence, Michigan Law Review Mar 1982

Juveniles' Waiver Of Rights: Legal And Psychological Competence, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Juveniles' Waiver of Rights: Legal and Psychological Competence by Thomas Grisso