Law Commons^™

How Should Justice Policy Treat Young Offenders?, Owen D. Jones, B. J. Casey, Richard J. Bonnie, Et Al .

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The justice system in the United States has long recognized that juvenile offenders are not the same as adults, and has tried to incorporate those differences into law and policy. But only in recent decades have behavioral scientists and neuroscientists, along with policymakers, looked rigorously at developmental differences, seeking answers to two overarching questions: Are young offenders, purely by virtue of their immaturity, different from older individuals who commit crimes? And, if they are, how should justice policy take this into account?

A growing body of research on adolescent development now confirms that teenagers are indeed inherently different from adults, …

Treating Juveniles Like Juveniles: Getting Rid Of Transfer And Expanded Adult Court Jurisdiction, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The number of juveniles transferred to adult court has skyrocketed in the past two decades and has only recently begun to level off. This symposium article argues that, because it wastes resources, damages juveniles, and decreases public safety, transfer should be abolished. It also argues that the diminished culpability rationale that has had much-deserved success at eliminating the juvenile death penalty and mandatory life without parole for juveniles is not likely to have a major impact on the much more prevalent practices of transferring mid- and older-adolescents to adult court and expanding adult court jurisdiction to adolescents; neither the law …

Adolescent Brain Science After Graham V. Florida, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits a sentence of life without possibility of parole for a non-homicide crime committed when the offender was under the age of eighteen. In an earlier Article, The False Promise of Adolescent Brain Science in Juvenile Justice, this author noted the pendency of Graham and its companion case, in which petitioners and their amici offered neuroscientific arguments closely paralleling those made by the defendant in Roper v. Simmons. Kennedy’s opinion in Graham clarified what his opinion in Roper had left ambiguous: the Court believes neuroscience relevant to general …

The False Promise Of Adolescent Brain Science In Juvenile Justice, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Recent scientific findings about the developing teen brain have both captured public attention and begun to percolate through legal theory and practice. Indeed, many believe that developmental neuroscience contributed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s elimination of the juvenile death penalty in Roper v. Simmons. Post-Roper, scholars assert that the developmentally normal attributes of the teen brain counsel differential treatment of young offenders, and advocates increasingly make such arguments before the courts. The success of any theory, though, depends in large part on implementation, and challenges that emerge through implementation illuminate problematic aspects of the theory. This Article tests the legal …

Juvenile Justice: The Fourth Option, Christopher Slobogin, Mark R. Fondacaro

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The current eclectic mix of solutions to the juvenile-crime problem is insufficiently conceptualized and too beholden to myths about youth, the crimes they commit, and effective means of responding to their problems. The dominant punitive approach to juvenile justice, modeled on the adult criminal justice system, either ignores or misapplies current knowledge about the causes of juvenile crime and the means of reducing it. But the rehabilitative vision that motivated the progenitors of the juvenile court errs in the other direction, by allowing the state to assert its police power even over those who are innocent of crime. The most …

Reconceptualizing Due Process In Juvenile Justice: Contributions From Law And Social Science, Christopher Slobogin, Mark R. Fondacaro, Tricia Cross

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article challenges the accepted wisdom, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in Gault, that procedures in juvenile delinquency court should mimic the adult criminal process. The legal basis for this challenge is Gault itself, as well as the other Supreme Court cases that triggered the juvenile justice revolution of the past decades, for all of these cases relied on the due process clause, not the provisions of the Constitution that form the foundation for adult criminal procedure. That means that the central goal in juvenile justice is fundamental fairness, which does not have to be congruent with the …

A Prevention Model Of Juvenile Justice: The Promise Of Kansas V. Hendricks For Children, Christopher Slobogin, Mark R. Fondacaro, Jennifer L. Woolard

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The traditional juvenile court, focused on rehabilitation and "childsaving," was premised primarily on a parens patriae notion of State power. " Because of juveniles' immaturity and greater treatability, this theory posited, the State could forego the substantive and procedural requirements associated with the adult system of criminal punishment. As an historical and conceptual matter, however, the parens patriae power justifies intervention only for the good of the subject, not for society as a whole. " From the outset, then, the image of the juvenile delinquency system as a manifestation of the State acting as "parent" was an implausible one. This …

Treating Kids Right, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The concept of amenability to treatment is, in theory, at the core of juvenile delinquency jurisprudence. From its inception as an entity separate from the adult criminal court, the juvenile court was meant to focus on the rehabilitative potential of children. On this premise, the central inquiry in a juvenile delinquency proceeding should be whether the child found delinquent is amenable to treatment. Disposition should depend upon the rehabilitative potential and needs of the juvenile, and only if no treatment is available in the juvenile system should transfer to adult court be considered. In practice, amenability to treatment may never …

Guardians: A Research Note, Chris Guthrie, Lawrence M. Friedman, Joanna L. Grossman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Guardianship goes back quite far in legal history; it has been a feature of American law since the colonial period. Something like guardianship is a necessity in a system that recognizes private ownership of property, while dividing the world into those who are, and those who are not, sui juris-that is, fully capable of acting on their own. The boundaries between these two domains can be quite indistinct. Defining who is insane or incompetent can be especially problematic because these categories are socially and culturally variable. Most people committed in 1900, for example, would hardly be considered insane today; they …