Juvenile Law Commons^™

Predicting Less, Understanding More: Shifting The Use Of Machine Learning From Individual Prediction To Structural Insights In Systems That Affect Children And Families, Amanda J. Fairchild, Joshua Gupta-Kagan, Andrew Barclay

Faculty Scholarship

Machine learning algorithms have been deeply embedded across domains, valued for their capacity to analyze large-scale data and to support a range of descriptive and predictive tasks. Despite their versatility, most applications to date have focused on individual-level prediction at the expense of broader structural insights. This paper shifts that focus by using comprehensive demographic, juvenile justice, and other key data from child-serving agencies in one southern state to examine how juvenile and family court intake structures shape case outcomes in delinquency referrals. Specifically, we combine machine learning algorithms with a doubly robust, potential outcomes-based modeling procedure to estimate the …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars For The Advancement Of Children’S Constitutional Rights In Support Of Respondents: St. Mary Catholic Parish V. Roy, Catherine Smith, Tanya Washington, Robin Walker Sterling, Suzette Malveaux, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, Sara S. Hildebrand, Abigail L. Fleming, Jeremiah Chin

Scholarly Articles

This Court should consider those most directly impacted by the decision in this case: the intended beneficiaries of Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program (“UPK”), Colorado’s children. To paraphrase Shakespeare, though they be but little, they are constitutional rights-bearers and are thus entitled to be free from state-funded discrimination.

Amici are scholars of children and the law, education law, family law, and anti-discrimination law. Amici draw this Court’s attention to the significant harms children in the LGBT community would bear should Colorado be compelled to allow state-funded religious schools to discriminate against preschoolers. Exempting religious schools from the State’s equal-opportunity and antidiscrimination …

Brief Of Public Health And Health Law Scholars As Amici Curiae Urging Affirmance In Support Of Plaintiffs-Appellees, Rachel L. Zacharias, Zeinab Bakhet, Kevin Costello, Maya Manian

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

INTRODUCTION: Physicians’ use of their judgment and expertise to prescribe drugs and devices for purposes other than those approved by the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”)—colloquially known as off-label use—is an indispensable feature of modern medicine. The FDA approves drugs as “safe and effective for specific indications.” Christopher M. Wittich, Christopher M. Burkle & William L. Lanier, Ten Common Questions (and Their Answers) About OffLabel Drug Use, 87 Mayo Clinic Procs. 982, 982 (2012). Federal law then generally leaves prescribing decisions, including off-label use of FDA-approved drugs and devices for a patient’s particular indication, to physicians acting under state law …

Reforming Funding To Better Defend Families: Holistic Preventive Legal Advocacy That Checks Cps Agency Power, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

The federal government has provided funds to support legal representation of parents facing allegations of child neglect or abuse since 2019, across administrations of both parties. That funding illustrates the field’s recognition of parent defense’s importance to improving outcomes and reducing harms from the family regulation system, especially once CPS agencies file petitions against parents. Federal Title IV-E funding supports parent representation in those family court cases and for parents at risk of facing such cases. That funding has been an essential boon to parent representation and the benefits that flow from it. It is nonetheless time to take a …

Law-Related Education: An Alternative To School Suspension, Tammy Thurman, Huma Zia

Justice, Law, and Public Safety Studies Department Faculty Conferences

This session explores the intersection of law-related education and youth courts through a demonstration from the presenter's 'Legal Literacy' program, which was implemented in a school district as an alternative to out-of-school suspension.  The program exposes students to practical and relevant legal principles and promotes student accountability and skill-building.

Social Bonds And Dynamic Risk In Predicting Juvenile Recidivism Among Florida Probation Youth, Shadrach Sackey

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Juvenile recidivism remains a persistent challenge within the United States juvenile justice system, particularly among youth supervised in community-based probation programs. This study examines how family context, school engagement, peer associations, antisocial beliefs, and overall dynamic risk are associated with recidivism among juvenile probation youth in Florida. Drawing on social bond theory and social learning theory, the analysis uses administrative data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ) Juvenile Justice Information System, including 6,215 youth who completed community-based probation supervision between 2015 and 2018. Recidivism was measured using two outcomes within a 365-day follow-up period: rearrest and readjudication. Descriptive …

2025 Annual Report, University Of Maine School Of Law

Clinic Annual Report

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4 2025: YEAR IN REVIEW

6 GENERAL PRACTICE CLINIC

8 PRISONER ASSISTANCE CLINIC

10 PROTECTION FROM ABUSE PROGRAM

12 REFUGEE AND HUMAN RIGHTS CLINIC

14 RURAL PRACTICE CLINIC

16 YOUTH JUSTICE CLINIC

18 CENTER FOR YOUTH POLICY & LAW

20 BUSINESS & LAW CLINIC

22 ALUMNI SPOTLIGHTS

24 DONORS AND FUNDING

26 FACULTY AND STAFF

Detention Before Adjudication: Evaluating Its Role In Juvenile Justice Outcomes, Ella Morrow

2026 Spring Honors Capstones Projects

Pre-adjudication detention involves confining juveniles while they await a hearing, aimed at ensuring court appearance and upholding public safety. However, the use of pre-adjudication detention has expanded significantly, which has raised concerns regarding the impact on juvenile justice outcomes. This study reviews established peer-reviewed research and observational data from internships to evaluate how this type of detention influences legal outcomes and juvenile development. The research findings demonstrate that detention is associated with harsher dispositions, higher recidivism rates, and long-term consequences. For example, a 38% reduction in high school graduation rates is attributed to pre-adjudication detention. Research has also shown that …

Students' Rights In School, Gator Team Child Clinic

Gator Team Child Juvenile Law Clinic

An informational flyer that gives an overview of important students' rights cases in your pocket. The three cases in the flyer that are summarized are, New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985), Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) and In Re Gault (1967).

Child Support Factory: Racist History, Harm, And Unconstitutionality Of The Child Support System's Contractual Operations, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

Within America’s justice institutions, the child support system has become a business. The intended mission of aid has been traded and abdicated through contractual deals to churn vulnerable families into factory-like revenue operations. Juvenile and family courts across the country have partnered through countless intertwined interagency contracts with human service agencies, prosecutors, attorneys general’s offices, probation departments, and policing offices—all aimed at generating revenue from impoverished children and parents rather than serving their best interests. The resulting child support factory is vast, harmful, unconstitutional, unethical, and grew from a racist history that devastated Black families, and still operates with starkly …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Children's Rights Scholars And Advocates In Support Of Appellants' Opening Brief: Lighthiser V. Trump, Abigail L. Fleming, Douglas A. Ruley, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

For decades, constitutional doctrine has recognized that children possess enforceable constitutional rights and that their developmental, physical, and social differences from adults are important considerations in constitutional analysis. Courts may not impute adult capacities, privileges, or political agency to children when determining whether their rights may be vindicated, leaving them no democratic mechanism to alleviate their injuries.

The district court’s dismissal of the youth plaintiffs’ claims rests on precisely that error. Although the court recognized that the children alleged concrete, severe, and escalating harms caused by the challenged executive actions, it concluded that relief must come from the political branches …

More Than “Just A Misdemeanor”: Why Diversion Is Critical For Low Level Youth Offenders, Lynn Williams, Ariana M. Ellis

Akron Law Student Publications

Over the past two decades, juvenile arrests have declined sharply nationwide. Yet, during this same period, policies and penalties governing youth have grown increasingly punitive. Many lawmakers continue to advance “tough on crime” legislation that subjects all youth in the juvenile justice system to the same level of sanction, regardless of the seriousness of their offense or prior legal history. This article argues that juvenile delinquency should be addressed through individualized assessments of both risk and needs, rather than through uniform punitive measures. Unnecessary or disproportionate court involvement, particularly for low-risk youth, can produce significant short- and long-term harms, disrupt …

System Disparities: Racial Criminalization And The Risk Of Coerced And False Confessions In Youth, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Black youth may be even more vulnerable than other youth to admitting to crimes they did not commit in the context of police interrogations. In support, analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations indicates that 65% of people who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of false confessions they gave when under 18 years old are Black, whereas only 14% of the U.S. population is Black. In this chapter, I seek to understand the overrepresentation of Black youth in samples of juvenile false confessors by examining the cultural stereotype about Black criminality in relation to both investigators and …

Bridging The Gap: Predictors Of Alignment Of Parent And Caseworker Perceptions Of Engagement, Jianchao Lai, Michelle I. Graef

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

This study examined predictors of alignment between parents’ and caseworkers’ perceptions of family engagement in child welfare services. Using data from 2,274 Alternative Response (AR)–eligible families randomized to AR or Traditional Response, engagement was assessed across the domains of Receptivity, Buy-in, Worker-family Relationship, and Mistrust using a modified Yatchmenoff (2005) scale. Multinomial logistic regression models identified factors associated with agreement and discrepancy between ratings of family engagement within the parent and worker dyad. While both parents and workers valued engagement, workers were more likely to provide higher overall engagement ratings, although the direction of discrepancy varied across specific subscales. Greater …

3l Jayden Boudreau Earns Prestigious Skadden Fellowship, Maurer School Of Law - Indiana University

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Skadden Fellowship Foundation announced this week that 3L Jayden Boudreau is one of only 34 law students from across the country—and the only one from an Indiana law school— that has been selected as a 2026 Skadden Fellow, one of the most prestigious honors in public interest law.

The award will support Boudreau’s innovative ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, focused on protecting the rights of queer and transgender youth in school settings through legal advocacy and systemic policy engagement. He will spend two years in New York City, working at the national headquarters of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Assessing The Relationship Between Treatment Quality, Matching And Dosage And Juvenile Justice Outcomes Among Youth With Co-Occurring Substance Abuse And Mental Health Disorders, Kevin T. Wolff, Michael T. Baglivio, Joshua A. Lang

Publications and Research

This study examined differences among youth in deep-end juvenile justice residential placement who did, and did not, present with co-occurring disorders. The prevalence of cooccurring mental health and substance use/abuse issues was found to be 19%, far lower than that of prior work. Researchers demonstrated more similarities than differences between youth with and without co-occurring disorders, both in terms of their criminal histories and the prevalence of their criminogenic needs. Additionally, the residential programs across Florida appear to provide treatment at similarly high levels of integrity, as measured by 1) matching treatment services to the highest three dynamic risk assessed …

Missing Children Discrimination, Itay Ravid, Tanisha Brown

Faculty Publications

The problem of missing children in America—many of whom are victims of crime—has haunted society for decades. In response, a range of laws and policies have emerged, culminating in the nationwide adoption of the AMBER Alert system in the early 2000s. While often hailed as a success, this Article reveals a sad truth: Not all children benefit equally from AMBER. In particular, missing Black children are systematically underserved by the system, which ultimately contributes to the disproportionate impact of the missing children crisis on Black communities. While this issue received limited scholarly attention, states have recently started recognizing it. In …

Freedom Clinic Faculty And Students Win Clemency Case Through New Jersey Second Chance Initiative, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

The Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law secured clemency for LaShawn Fitch through New Jersey's Second Chance Initiative. Cardozo Freedom Clinic faculty and students helped prepare Mr. Fitch's clemency petition, highlighting issues surrounding felony-murder sentencing, the trial penalty, and juvenile justice.

Benchmarking Age-Gates, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines how legal actors—particularly legislators, judges, and attorneys—invoke chronological age to justify the application of legal rules to adolescents. In doing so, they often rely on comparisons to existing “age-gates,” treating these thresholds (such as ages 18 or 21) as self-justifying reference points. Age 18, marking the legal transition from childhood to adulthood, and age 21, the former age of majority and current sales age for certain controlled substances, serve as especially powerful rhetorical anchors in age-based legal reasoning. These anchor points shape how legal actors advocate for or against particular age thresholds, often substituting analogy for substantive …

The Sports Parent's Predicament, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

Youth sport enjoys a favored status in American culture, encouraged by policymakers and local communities, pursued by parents, and remembered through rose-colored lenses by adults. Most lawyers are familiar with Justice Harry Blackmun’s ode to the magical qualities of baseball in Flood v. Kuhn, in which he took the liberty of running through his own memories of scores of baseball legends.¹ Congress and presidents want children to continue in sport.² Many in the health field argue that sport is important because exercise is important, and sport is treated as the natural manifestation of exercise.³ An enormous number—perhaps …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars For The Advancement Of Children’S Constitutional Rights In Support Of Defendants-Appellants: Roy V. Darren Patterson Christian Academy, Catherine Smith, Tanya M. Washington, Robin Walker Sterling, Jeremiah Chin, Sara S. Hildebrand

Scholarly Articles

Amici are scholars of children and the law, education law, family law, and anti-discrimination law. Amici draw this Court’s attention to the harms that four-year-olds in the LGBT community – LGBT children and children with LGBT parents – would bear should state-funded religious schools be granted a license to discriminate against them. An exemption to the Colorado Universal Preschool Program’s equal opportunity requirement would allow plaintiffs to discriminate against these children and raise unfair barriers in their paths to a high-quality education. An exemption would also inflict dignitary, psychological, and familial harms upon an entire class of young people – …

Listening Suppers At The Landing Place: Talking With Rockland-Area Youth About School, Work, & Life, Jillian Foley Mppm, Swathi Sivasubramanian, Timothy Atkinson, Olivia Eckert, Emma Schwartz

Justice Policy

This piece (June 2025) is a collaboration with our partners at The Landing Place to amplify youth voices and ideas for systems change that came out of a series of conversations with youth in Rockland, called Listening Suppers which aimed to inspire conversations about school, work, family, community supports, relationships, and more. This short brief highlights the themes that came out of these conversations including community strengths and assets, gaps and youth needs, and youth informed recommendations for change. While much of the conversations were specific to the local Rockland community, the challenges and solutions highlighted are similar to what …

Building Youth Hope: Assessing Community Assets And Opportunities For Supporting Youth Well-Being In The Sagadahoc County Area, Emma Schwartz, Jillian Foley, Timothy Atkinson

Justice Policy

This report aims to build upon previous research and provides updated information on community assets to support youth in the Sagadahoc County area. The report examines the strengths, challenges, and opportunities for community investment with the goal of improving outcomes related to youth hopefulness, belonging, and well-being. The project team engaged community members in a variety of asset mapping and data collection activities which are summarized in this report. The report authors also make recommendations related to expanding youth connections to informal supports and third places, ensuring access to a variety of assets that are responsive to their holistic needs, …

(De)Funding Family Separations, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Federal foster care funding exists in tension with foundational family law principles. The law protects family integrity: the state may only separate parents and children in extreme cases, and, when it does, the state must work to reunify families. Yet the federal funding system directs billions of federal dollars to support CPS agencies and pay subsidies to foster parents, adoptive parents, and guardians. It does so via an open-ended entitlement, so that the more families a state separates, the more federal funds it receives. This system makes it relatively cheaper for CPS agencies to take custody of children, incentivizes states …

Constraining The Family Regulation System: The Contribution Of The Restatement Of The Law, Children And The Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Advocates, policymakers, and scholars have argued for years that the family regulation system (also known as the child welfare system) fails families. Critics rightly note that the system does far too little to support families proactively and does not address the poverty and structural racism underlying many allegations of child abuse and neglect. The overrepresentation of Black, Native American, and Native Alaskan children in foster care is a stark and disturbing manifestation of these failings.

In response to these concerns, there is an active debate about abolishing or radically reforming the family regulation system to direct government funding to proactive …

Restating The Law Of Children And Youth: The Evolution Of Reform, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

A brief roadmap of this article may be helpful. Part I describes the emergence of the Child Wellbeing framework and its powerful role in shaping twenty-first-century youth justice reforms captured by the Restatement. Part II shows how this framework has begun to have a far broader influence on the law affecting children and how the framework and the developmental approach embodied in the Restatement can guide courts and shape the trajectory of the law in the future. Part III explores potential challenges to the Restatement’s effectiveness in attaining a fully integrated system based on the Child Wellbeing framework.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars For The Advancement Of Children's Constitutional Rights And Students Engaged In Advancing Texas In Support Of Respondents, Mahmoud V. Taylor, U.S. Supreme Court (No. 24-297), Tanya Washington, Jeremiah Chin, Sarah Medina Camiscoli, Travis F. Chance, Amalia Y. Sax-Bolder, Catherine E. Smith

Court Briefs

Amici are members of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas and United States legal scholars of children and the law, education law, family law, and anti-discrimination law.

Students Engaged in Advancing Texas is a nonprofit organization founded by young people to develop civic leadership and belonging and represents students of various faiths and identities who have an interest in the outcome of this case.

Amici draw this Court’s attention to the constitutional harms that public school students and LGBTQ+ students and students with LGBTQ+ parents would bear should the Court grant Petitioners’ injunctive relief.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars For The Advancement Of Children’S Constitutional Rights And Students Engaged In Advancing Texas In Support Of Respondents: Mahmoud V. Taylor, Catherine E. Smith, Tanya Washington, Jeremiah Chin, Sarah Medina Camiscoli, Travis F. Chance

Scholarly Articles

Amici are members of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas and United States legal scholars of children and the law, education law, family law, and anti-discrimination law.

Students Engaged in Advancing Texas is a nonprofit organization founded by young people to develop civic leadership and belonging and represents students of various faiths and identities who have an interest in the outcome of this case.

Amici draw this Court’s attention to the constitutional harms that public school students and LGBTQ+ students and students with LGBTQ+ parents would bear should the Court grant Petitioners’ injunctive relief.

Roger Williams University Law Review Symposium: Trauma-Informed Lawyering: Approaches To Advocating For Diverse Populations 11-15-2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Trauma-Informed Judicial Practice Meets Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Compassionate Written Judgments In Child Protection Cases, Shelley Kierstead

Articles & Book Chapters

Trauma arises from profoundly distressing life events, and manifests in a range of often overwhelming physical and psychological symptoms. The legal community is increasingly recognizing that clients living with trauma need trauma-informed services—that is, services that “recognize, understand and minimize” the long-term impact of trauma. A trauma-informed approach acknowledges that “effective interventions with people require both the avoidance of retraumatization and the presence of respectful and supportive interventions that help people rebuild their lives.”