In re Gault (387 U.S. 1)/Concurrence Black

by Hugo Black

United States Supreme Court

387 U.S. 1

In re Gault

 Argued: Dec. 6, 1966. --- Decided: May 15, 1967

Mr. Justice BLACK, concurring.

The juvenile court laws of Arizona and other States, as the Court points out, are the result of plans promoted by humane and forward-looking people to provide a system of courts, procedures, and sanctions deemed to be less harmful and more lenient to children than to adults. For this reason such state laws generally provide less formal and less public methods for the trial of children. In line with this policy, both courts and legislators have shrunk back from labeling these laws as 'criminal' and have preferred to call them 'civil.' This, in part, was to prevent the full application to juvenile court cases of the Bill of Rights safeguards, including notice as provided in the Sixth Amendment, ^[1] the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth, ^[2] the right against selfincrimination guaranteed by the Fifth, ^[3] and the right to confrontation guarantee b y the Sixth. ^[4] The Court here holds, however, that these four Bill of Rights safeguards apply to protect a juvenile accused in a juvenile court on a charge under which he can be imprisoned for a term of years. This holding strikes a well-nigh fatal blow to much that is unique about the juvenile courts in the Nation. For this reason, there is much to be said for the position of my Brother STEWART that we should not pass on all these issues until they are more squarely presented. But since the majority of the Court chooses to decide all of these questions, I must either do the same or leave my views unexpressed on the important issues determined. In these circumstances, I feel impelled to express my views.

The juvenile court planners envisaged a system that would practically immunize juveniles from 'punishment' for 'crimes' in an effort to save them from youthful indiscretions and stigmas due to criminal charges or convictions. I agree with the Court, however, that this exalted ideal has failed of achievement since the beginning of the system. Indeed, the state laws from the first one on contained provisions, written in emphatic terms, for arresting and charging juveniles with violations of state criminal laws, as well as for taking juveniles by force of law away from their parents and turning them over to different individuals or groups or for confinement within some state school or institution for a number of years. The latter occurred in this case. Young Gault was arrested and detained on a charge of violating an Arizona penal law by using vile and offensive language to a lady on the telephone. If an adult, he could only have been fined or imprisoned for two months for his conduct. As a juvenile, however, he was put through a more or less secret, informal hearing by the court, after which he was ordered, or more realistically, 'sentenced,' to confinement in Arizona's Industrial School until he reaches 21 years of age. Thus, in a juvenile system designed to lighten or avoid punishment for criminality, he was ordered by the State to six years' confinement in what is in all but name a penitentiary or jail.

Where a person, infant or adult, can be seized by the State, charged, and convicted for violating a state criminal law, and then ordered by the State to be confined for six years, I think the Constitution requires that he be tried in accordance with the guarantees of all the provisions of the Bill of Rights made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. Undoubtedly this would be true of an adult defendant, and it would be a plain denial of equal protection of the laws-an invidious discrimination to hold that others subject to heavier punishments could, because they are children, be denied these same constitutional safeguards. I consequently agree with the Court that the Arizona law as applied here denied to the parents and their son the right of notice, right to counsel, right against self-incrimination, and right to confront the witnesses against young Gault. Appellants are entitled to these rights, not because 'fairness, impartiality and orderliness-in short, the essentials of due process'-require them and not because they are 'the procedural rules which have been fashioned from the generality of due process,' but because they are specifically and unequivocally granted by provisions of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments which the Fourteenth Amendment makes applicable to the States.

A few words should be added because of the opinion of my Brother HARLAN who rests his concurrence and dissent on the Due Process Clause alone. He reads that clause alone as allowing this Court 'to determine what forms of procedural protection are necessary to guarantee the fundamental fairness of juvenile proceedings' 'in a fashion consistent with the 'traditions and conscience of our people." Cf. Rochin v. People of California, 342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183. He believes that the Due Process Clause gives this Court the power, upon weighing a 'compelling public interest,' to impose on the States only those specific constitutional rights which the Court deems 'imperative' and 'necessary' to comport with the Court's notions of 'fundamental fairness.'

I cannot subscribe to any such interpretation of the Due Process Clause. Nothing in its words or its history permits it, and 'fair distillations of relevant judicial history' are no substitute for the words and history of the clause itself. The phrase 'due process of law' has through the years evolved as the successor in purpose and meaning to the words 'law of the land' in Magna Charta which more plainly intended to call for a trial according to the existing law of the land in effect at the time an alleged offense had been committed. That provision in Magna Charta was designed to prevent defendants from being tried according to criminal laws or proclamations specifically promulgated to fit particular cases or to attach new consequences to old conduct. Nothing done since Magna Charta can be pointed to as intimating that the Due Process Clause gives courts power to fashion laws in order to meet new conditions, to fit the 'decencies' of changed conditions, or to keep their consciences from being shocked by legislation, state or federal.

And, of course, the existence of such awesome judicial power cannot be buttressed or created by relying on the word 'procedural.' Whether labeled as 'procedural' or 'substantive,' the Bill of Rights safeguards, far from being mere 'tools with which' other unspecified 'rights could be fully vindicated,' are the very vitals of a sound constitutional legal system designed to protect and safeguard the most cherished liberties of a free people. These safeguards were written into our Constitution not by judges but by Constitution makers. Freedom in this Nation will be far less secure the very moment that it is decided that judges can determine which of these safeguards 'should' or 'should not be imposed' according to their notions of what constitutional provisions are consistent with the 'traditions and conscience of our people.' Judges with such power, even though they profess to 'proceed with restraint,' will be above the Constitution, with power to write it, not merely to interpret it, which I believe to be the only power constitutionally committed to judges.

There is one ominous sentence, if not more, in my Brother HARLAN's opinion which bodes ill, in my judgment, both for legislative programs and constitutional commands. Speaking of procedural safeguards in the Bill of Rights, he says:

'These factors in combination suggest that legislatures may properly expect only a cautious deference for their procedural judgments, but that, conversely, courts must exercise their special responsibility for procedural guarantees with care to permit ample scope for achieving the purposes of legislative programs. * * * (T)he court should necessarily proceed with restraint.'

It is to be noted here that this case concerns Bill of Rights Amendments; that the 'procedure' power my Brother HARLAN claims for the Court here relates solely to Bill of Rights safeguards; and that he is here claiming for the Court a supreme power to fashion new Bill of Rights safeguards according to the Court's notions of what fits tradition and conscience. I do not believe that the Constitutin vests any such power in judges, either in the Due Process Clause or anywhere else. Consequently, I do not vote to invalidate this Arizona law on the ground that it is 'unfair' but solely on the ground that it violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments made obligatory on the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. Cf. Pointer v. State of Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 412, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 1072, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (Goldberg, J., concurring). It is enough for me that the Arizona law as here applied collides head-on with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments in the four respects mentioned. The only relevance to me of the Due Process Clause is that it would, of course, violate due process or the 'law of the land' to enforce a law that collides with the Bill of Rights.

Notes

1. 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right * * * to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation * * *.' Also requiring notice is the Fifth Amendment's provision that 'No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury * * *.'
2. 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall * * * have the Assistance of Counsel in his defence.'
3. 'No person * * * shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself * * *.'
4. 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right * * * to be confronted with the witnesses against him * * *.'