Legal Aid for Children: Some Reflections

1979 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Brian Lucas
Keyword(s):  
United States Of America ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Juvenile Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Court System ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
The Supreme Court

In its Second Main Report, Law and Poverty in Australia, the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty expressed the view that “legal representation for children appearing before the children's court, whether in the criminal or protective jurisdiction, is necessary if justice is to be done.”This view coincides with the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in In re Gault. It has been said that this decision “unleashed a frontal assault on the juvenile court system.” It confirmed that juveniles were entitled to “due process” and the same protection which the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights afforded to adults.

Constitutional Law in 1917–1918. II: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1917

1919 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Thomas Reed Powell
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eminent Domain ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Turn On ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process Of Law ◽  
Pennsylvania Hospital ◽  
Constitutional Decisions ◽  
Proper Interpretation

There is little or no homogeneity to the questions to be considered under the head of retroactive legislation. A dispute whether a state has passed a law impairing the obligation of contracts may turn on a question as to the proper interpretation or application of language, or on opposing views of what is sufficient consideration or what agreements are against public policy. It was under the obligation-of-contracts clause that the Pennsylvania Hospital case decided that the power of governmental authorities to exercise eminent domain could not be bargained away. The crucial question is more often whether alleged rights existed than whether undoubted rights have been impaired. The Fourteenth Amendment and the doctrine of vested rights combine to make the obligation-of-contracts clause almost superfluous, as it is difficult to think of any impairment of the obligation of contracts which that clause inhibits which could not equally well be held deprivations of liberty or property without due process of law.This is apparent from the fact that retroactive legislation by Congress is questioned under the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment, a contract being regarded as a property right that can be interfered with only when there is sufficient justification for what is done.

Constitutional Law in 1918–1919. II: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1918

1920 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
Thomas Reed Powell
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
The State ◽  
Personal Property ◽  
Commerce Clause ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Decisions ◽  
Extra State ◽  
Foreign Corporation

Several of the cases already considered under the commerce clause involved further questions under the Fourteenth Amendment. Georgia's misuse of the mileage ratio in applying the unit rule to the taxation of wandering cars was found so arbitrary as to violate the requirement of due process. The minority insisted that “the case presents no question of taxing a foreign corporation with respect to personal property that never has come within the borders of the state.” This was not specifically denied by the majority who seem to base their decision on excessive valuation of property within the jurisdiction rather than on taxation of property outside the jurisdiction. Yet in substance the case is one of taxing extra-state values though not extra-state tangible objects.Missouri's excessive fee for certificates authorizing the issue of bonds secured by railroad property within the state, which was held an unconstitutional regulation of interstate commerce, was alleged by complainant to be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment as well. The opinion of the court did not pass on the due-process question, but the cases cited under the commerce clause relied also on the Fourteenth Amendment.

Constitutional Safeguards for the Juvenile Offender

1968 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyell Henry Carver ◽  
Paul Anthony White
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Court ◽  
Juvenile Offender ◽  
The United States ◽  
Direct Application ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Juvenile Courts ◽  
State Action ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Right

The United States Supreme Court's concern for the juvenile's Constitutional safeguards has resulted in two historic decisions (Kent and Gault) affecting juvenile court procedures. Despite certain ambiguities, the ramifications and implications of these cases may bring order out of the procedural chaos plaguing thousands of juvenile courts. The Supreme Court has affirmed that in state proceedings which could lead to loss of liberty, juveniles have the right of due notice, the right of counsel, the right to remain silent, and the right to confront and cross- examine witnesses. Only time will tell whether the Bill of Rights will apply to state action in dealing with juveniles or whether such direct application must undergo a time-consuming meta morphosis, as was the case with adult criminal procedure.

scholarly journals The Emperor’s New Clothes

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Schehr
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
The Supreme Court

United States Supreme Court and jurisprudential rationalizations for the constitutionality, centrality, and finality of plea-bargaining signify intellectual dishonesty, ignorance of human behavior and decision-making, and a statesanctioned threat to personhood and liberty in the United States of America. It is the Author’s purpose to expose the imperious practice of plea-bargaining for what it is—a cynical and intellectually dishonest institutional remedy for an unwieldy judicial system that has knowingly rationalized the practice to facilitate expedient resolution of ever-increasing caseloads. In order to establish plea practice as constitutional, the Supreme Court was forced to employ a jurisprudential discourse that shifted from the due-process language found in criminal law, especially the protections afforded by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, towards contract law where defendants personifying homo economicus are “free” to negotiate away their rights. Beginning in 1930, and again in 1970, the Supreme Court applied an entirely novel standard to the adjudication of criminal cases, and it rationalized its decision on the need for efficiency. What is at stake is nothing less than the integrity of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and whatever still remains of an American sense of personhood under the law. The erosion of our rights that are so intimately associated with freedom due to plea-bargaining is an unprecedented injustice that cannot continue.

Legalism versus Welfarism in Israel's Juvenile Justice System

1981 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Sebba
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Justice ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Juvenile Justice System ◽  
Juvenile Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Appropriate Treatment ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
A Minor

In its landmark decisionIn re Gault(1967), the Supreme Court of the United States held that a minor brought before the juvenile court was in principle entitled to the guarantees of due process available to adult defendants in criminal trials. That momentous decision sparked off a debate which has continued ever since in academic and policy-making circles, both on the national and international levels. In essence, the controversy relates to the question of the nature of social control measures to be adopted by the legal system to deal with errant juveniles. Should these be essentially criminal and punitive in character, or are they better considered as welfare proceedings, the essential purpose of which is to determine the appropriate treatment? Thus, the legal, or punitive, model of juvenile justice may be juxtaposed to the welfare or treatment (or even “therapeutic”) model.

Constitutional Law in 1909-1910: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1909

1910 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-497
Author(s):  
Eugene Wambaugh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Successful Attempt ◽  
Commerce Clause ◽  
State Statutes ◽  
The Supreme Court

It is indeed a substantial grist that the Supreme Court of the United States at the last term of court has ground for students of political science. The first opinion was delivered on November 1, 1909, and the last on May 31, 1910, and the court decided no less than sixty-five constitutional cases. Notice that with caution it is merely said that the court decided no less than that number; for it is often somewhat a matter of opinion whether a case should be classed as constitutional, and it may well be that there are readers who will find that the court exceeded sixty-five. And how were those sixty-five divided? Many turned on more constitutional points than one, and thus an enumeration of the cases bearing on the several clauses of the Constitution will reveal a total exceeding sixty-five. The enumeration, subject to amendment in accordance with each student's views, gives the following results: The Fourteenth Amendment, twenty-four cases; the Commerce Clause, twenty-one; the Obligation of Contracts Clause, eight; whether cases arise “under the laws of the United States,” eight; Full Faith and Credit Clause, five; and sixteen other clauses, from one to four cases each, aggregating twenty-seven.Through these dull figures some important facts shine distinctly. The Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause clearly took a vast part of the court's energy, and each of these provisions has to do with the curtailment of functions which prima facie belong to the several states. In other words, the chief feature of this term, as of every recent term, has been a more or less successful attempt of litigants to overthrow state statutes as denials of due process and equal protection or as interferences with interstate commerce.

Text and Textualism

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-34
Author(s):  
George Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
The Supreme Court

This chapter focuses on Justice Hugo Black, the most prominent modern advocate of constitutional textualism to sit on the Supreme Court, revealing the unwritten understandings that drive Black’s textualist jurisprudence. Justice Black was most famous for advocating that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to the Bill of Rights to the states. Black argued that the liberty protected by the due process clause included, and only included, rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Black was famous for his constitutional literalism, pointing to his pocket Constitution to ask where a right like “privacy” was found in the Constitution. Yet Black’s own interpretation relied on his desire to cabin and limit judicial will much more than on constitutional text. It was Black’s understanding of the role of the judiciary in a democracy—and not constitutional text—that drove his jurisprudence of incorporation.

How Trains Became People: Southern Pacific Railroad Co.’s Networked Rhetorical Culture and the Dawn of Corporate Personhood

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-213
Author(s):  
Nicholas S. Paliewicz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Corporate Personhood ◽  
Legal Discourses ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Pacific Railroad ◽  
Southern Pacific Railroad

This essay analyzes how a rhetorical culture emerged in which the Supreme Court of the United States assumed corporations were constitutional persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. Approaching rhetorical culture from a networked standpoint, I argue that corporate personhood emerged from Southern Pacific Railroad Co.’s networks and alliances with environmental preservationists, politicians, publics, lawyers, judges, and immigrants in the late 19th century. Contributing to literatures on rhetorical culture and agency, this study shows how Southern Pacific Railroad Co., through networks of influence and force, was a rhetorical subject that shaped a networked rhetorical culture that expanded the boundaries of the Fourteenth Amendment even though the Supreme Court of the United States had not worked out the philosophical underpinnings of corporate personhood. Corporate personhood remains theoretically restrained by legal discourses that reduce subjectivity to a singular, speaking, human subject.

scholarly journals Discarding Dariano: The Heckler's Veto and a New School Speech Doctrine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien M. Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
New School ◽  
The Press ◽  
Spoken Words

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy: Vol. 26 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Of all of the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, perhaps none inspire the level of interest and debate among both scholars and laypersons as the freedom of speech. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” and it has long been held that “speech” encompasses not merely spoken words butany conduct which is “sufficiently imbued with elements of communication to fall within the scope of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”

Plessy’s Long Shadow

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Bell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Race Riots ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Law

The supreme court’s 1896 Decision in Plessy v. Ferguson served to bring the law into a dismal harmony with the nation’s view of race in life. The Court decided that segregation in public facilities through “separate but equal” accommodations for black citizens would satisfy the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. The years since the sporadically enforced policies of Reconstruction ended in 1876 had been hard for those former slaves and their offspring whose slavery had legally ended with the passage of the Thir­teenth Amendment in 1865. To ensure their rights to due process and the equal protection of the law, the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, . . . are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Despite legislation intended to provide enforcement of these rights, the laws were poorly enforced and most were subsequently declared unconstitutional. Corrupting law but relying on intimidation and violence, southern governments stripped blacks of political power. Given meaningful if unspoken assurances that the federal government would not protect black civil rights, conservative southerners regained power utilizing racial fear and hatred to break up competing populist groups of poor black and white farmers. In addition to the disenfranchisement of blacks, whites sought to secure their power through intensive anti-Negro propaganda campaigns championing white supremacy. Literary and scientific leaders published tracts and books intended to “prove” the inhumanity of the Negro. In this hostile climate, segregation laws that had made a brief appearance during Reconstruction were revived across the South, accompanied by waves of violence punctuated by an increase in lynchings and race riots. In an effort both to protest the indignity of segregation and challenge its validity, Homer Plessy, acting for a New Orleans civil rights group, attempted to ride in a railroad car reserved for whites. He was arrested and convicted of violating Louisiana’s 1890 segregation law. On appeal, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment required absolute equality of the two races before the law, adding: “but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”

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