Juvenile Law Commons^™

The Effects Of The Lubanga Case On Understanding And Preventing Child Soldiering, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

On March 14, 2012, a trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) convicted Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a rebel leader from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for child-soldier-related crimes. Some months later, Lubanga was sentenced to a prison term of fourteen years. On August 7, 2012, an ICC trial chamber issued its decision regarding the principles and procedures to be applied to reparations in the Lubanga case. This Article unpacks the relationships between the Lubanga proceedings and how the international community conceptualizes, and strives to prevent, child soldiering. This Article contends that the Lubanga proceedings reinforce, and incubate, a …

The True Legacy Of Atkins And Roper: The Unreliability Principle, Mentally Ill Defendants, And The Death Penalty's Unraveling, Scott E. Sundby

Articles

No abstract provided.

Bio Family 2.0: Can The American Child Welfare System Finally Find Permanency For 'Legal Orphans' With A Statute To Reinstate Parental Rights?, Meredith L. Schalick

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The American child welfare system terminates parental rights for thousands of children each year even though adoptive families have not yet been identified for the children. Every year, there are more than 100,000 of these “legal orphans” waiting for new families. Given the lower rates of adoptions for children of color and older children, and the poor outcomes for most youth who age out of the foster care system, the American child welfare system must start to think differently about permanency options for children. This Article proposes a model statutory provision to reinstate parental rights under certain circumstances to give …

Twilight: The Unveiling Of Victims, Stalking, And Domestic Violence, 21 Cardozo J. L. & Gender 39 (2014), Susan L. Brody

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Justice Policy Reform For High-Risk Juveniles: Using Science To Achieve Large-Scale Crime Reduction, Jennifer L. Skeem, Elizabeth S. Scott, Edward Mulvey

Faculty Scholarship

After a distinctly punitive era, a period of remarkable reform in juvenile crime regulation has begun. Practical urgency has fueled interest in both crime reduction and research on the prediction and malleability of criminal behavior. In this rapidly changing context, high-risk youth – the small proportion of the population where crime is concentrated – present a conundrum. Research indicates that these are precisely the individuals to intensively treat to maximize crime reduction, but there are both real and imagined barriers to doing so. Institutional placement or criminal court processing can exclude these youths from interventions that would better protect public …

Judicial Leadership In Family Court: A Cautionary Tale, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

For the past 35 years I have been practicing in, teaching, and writing about the Family Court. The problem-solving court movement in the last two decades – with its proliferation of drug courts, mental health courts, and veterans courts, to name a few – renewed my interest in the historical roots of the family court because of the parallels between the original juvenile court and the recent problem solving court movement. One of the key elements – perhaps the defining element – in both is the role of the judge as the leader of the court. That is what I …

Are Mothers Hazardous To Their Children’S Health?: Law, Culture, And The Framing Of Risk, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines the psychosocial processes of risk construction and explores how these processes intersect with core principles of Anglo-American law. It does so by critiquing current cultural and legal perceptions that mothers, especially pregnant women, pose a risk to their children’s health. The Article’s core argument is that during the last four decades, both American society and American law have increasingly come to view mothers as a primary source of risk to children. This intense focus on the threat of maternal harm ignores significant environmental sources of injury, including fathers and other men, as well as exposure to toxic …

Zero Tolerance Policies: Criminalizing Childhood And Disenfranchising The Next Generation Of Citizens, S. David Mitchell

Faculty Publications

A juvenile adjudication of guilt has far more drastic consequences than existed just ten years ago ... Some of these consequences may not be apparent for a number of years, but their possibility should be anticipated, fully considered, and planned for, wherever possible. Under zero tolerance, students are suspended, expelled, or referred to juvenile authorities or some combination thereof for specified offenses. Zero tolerance policies punish students harshly regardless of the severity of the infraction, the existence of mitigating circumstances, or the context in which the conduct occurred. Part II discusses the origin and evolution of zero tolerance policies, as …

Review For Release: Juvenile Offenders, State Parole Practices, And The Eighth Amendment, Sarah F. Russell

Indiana Law Journal

State parole boards have historically operated free from constitutional constraints when making decisions about whether to release prisoners. Recent Supreme Court decisions subject states to a new constitutional requirement to provide a “meaningful opportunity to obtain release” for at least some categories of juvenile offenders. Using original data collected through a survey, this Article provides the first comprehensive description of existing parole board release procedures nationwide and explores whether these practices comply with the Court’s Eighth Amendment mandate.

The Court’s recent decisions in Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama prohibit sentences of life without the possibility of release (LWOP) …

Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry And The Potential For Abuse, Ira Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Strangers come into a child's room in the middle of the night, drag her kicking and screaming into a van, apply handcuffs, and drive her to a behavior modification facility at a distant location. What sounds like a clear-cut case of kidnapping is complicated by the fact that the child's parents not only authorized this intervention, but also paid for it. This scarcely publicized practice-known as the youth-transportation industry-operates on the fringes of existing law. The law generally presumes that parents have almost unlimited authority over their children, but the youth-transportation industry has never been closely examined regarding exactly what …

Brown's Dream Deferred: Lessons On Democracy And Identity From Cooper V. Arron To The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Lia Epperson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

From Third Parties To Parents: The Case Of Lesbian Couples And Their Children, Nancy Polikoff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Montana’S Rural Version Of The School-To-Prison Pipeline: School Discipline And Tragedy On American Indian Reservations, Melina A. Healey

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Sex, Science, And The Age Of Anxiety, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the question of whether the HPV vaccine should be mandated (for girls and/or boys) in the context of declining rates of childhood immunization, and the potential threat to public health that this decline poses. The article addresses two interconnected legal issues: first, is mandating vaccines to prevent the spread of disease constitutional under substantive due process and equal protection principles, and second, should parents be permitted to “opt out” of mandatory vaccination on their children’s behalf, either for all vaccines or those which prevent particular diseases. The article addresses these issues in the context of America’s growing …

Commercial Sexual Exploitation Of Teens, Tamieka Meadows, Alexis Kennedy

McNair Poster Presentations

This research explores whether commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC) abuse drugs or face greater histories of abuse than their delinquent peers. This research will evaluate whether girls who are CSEC victims experience more abuse of drugs or experience more physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. The study also explores whether CSEC victims witnessed more abuse than non-CSEC victims. A survey of needs and issues facing delinquent girls was given to 130 girls between the ages of 13 to 18. Questions asked about their drug use, abuse history, and whether they witnessed abuse. This research found that many girls who are CSEC …

Pursuing Justice For The Child: The Forgotten Women Of In Re Gault, David S. Tanenhaus

Scholarly Works

In this article, I first draw on my recent book The Constitutional Rights of Children to introduce the facts of the case and place the case in the larger context of the history of American juvenile justice. I then focus specifically on the role of four remarkable women in the history of this landmark decision: Marjorie Gault, Gerald's mother; Amelia Lewis, Gerald's lawyer; Lorna Lockwood, an Arizona lawyer who became the first woman to serve as the Chief Justice of a State Supreme Court; and Getrude "Traute" Mainzer, who assisted in the litigation of Gerald's case before the U.S. Supreme …

Kids Can Change: Reforming South Dakota’S Juvenile Transfer Law To Rehabilitate Children And Protect Public Safety, Wendy Hess

Faculty Publications

South Dakota, like many other states, permits adult criminal prosecution, sentencing, and imprisonment of certain minors who commit a crime. The mechanism which allows prosecution of a child as an adult is referred to as “juvenile transfer,” because the juvenile court’s jurisdiction over the child is transferred to the adult criminal court. The article discusses how the juvenile transfer mechanism developed — both generally and in South Dakota — as well as how it operates today. The author summarizes research findings about the efficacy and fairness of juvenile transfer. Harsh criminal consequences for juveniles are increasingly disfavored as we learn …

Jailing Black Babies, James G. Dwyer

Utah Law Review

Children-in-prison programs reflect a commendable sympathy for the lifelong disadvantage and deprivation that most prison inmates have suffered and a wish to transform their lives. But acting primarily on the basis of that sympathy and wish, rather than focusing realistically on what is truly best for children, is a moral and policy mistake. Available evidence suggests that the extreme form of connecting incarcerated birth parents with their offspring, prison nurseries, harms the great majority of those children, especially when the impact is compared to the life the children might have had if adopted immediately after birth. Advocacy for this practice …

Changes To The Illinois Juvenile Justice Laws Focus On Rehabilitation And Sentencing Of Youth, Alexandra Hunstein

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

A Closer Look At A Child Offender: Illinois To Review All Juvenile Life Without Parole Sentences, Michelle Corda

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.