Litigation as a Tool for Reform

Executive Director and Co-Founder, Bob Schwartz,

Juvenile Law Center has always used a variety of approaches to improve the lives of children in the foster care and justice systems. Much of the time, persuasion in a non-adversarial way is sufficient. We have persuaded policy makers to change laws, regulations or court rules based on reasoned arguments. We can often convince practitioners to treat children fairly, or to avoid harming them, even when they claim to be helping. This less contentious form of advocacy is important—we work with coalitions, negotiate, propose policy reforms, empower youth, publish materials about the law for parents and kids as well as lawyers and judges.

There are times, however, when compulsion is necessary. Thus, as we have aimed to reform systems and practices, litigation and appellate practice have always been important arrows in our quiver. Our litigation and appellate work has compelled changes in American jurisprudence. Our ability to litigate when it is necessary has also made it much easier for Juvenile Law Center to use the tools of persuasion. 

Shortly after we opened in 1975, we inherited a case that had been filed one year earlier by other civil rights lawyers. Philadelphia’s juvenile detention center, euphemistically called the Youth Study Center, was a badly designed building that incubated maltreatment of its young residents.  Over the next 20 years we settled various aspects of the caseabusive treatment, poor education, overcrowdingbut frequently returned to federal court to reduce overcrowding. We continued to monitor conditions. The building, which had opened in 1952, was finally closed in 2008 to make way for the Barnes Foundation art museum and a new, improved detention center in a new location.

In our early years, we often litigated over the use of detention. We also challenged harmful foster care practices and a variety of policies concerning delinquent and dependent youth. Over time we would bring suits to ensure that dependent kids had access to lawyers and that delinquent youth who were tried as adults had access to education. 

Our appellate practice was minimal in our early years, but it has blossomed through Marsha Levick’s leadership of our legal team in the post-Roper era. Juvenile Law Center filed an amicus brief in Roper v. Simmons, the case that ended the juvenile death penalty. Roper unlocked a vault from which developmental science emerged as a key litigation tool for children involved in the legal system, followed quickly by neuroscience and a body of law that has transformed the justice system in particular.

In the last decade, Juvenile Law Center is the only organization in the country to have filed amicus briefs in the four major Supreme Court cases that have rested on developmental science: Roper (1975); Graham v. Florida (2010, ending juvenile life without parole in non-homicide cases); JDB v. North Carolina (2011, creating a “reasonable child” standard when deciding whether Miranda warnings are required during interrogation); and Miller v. Alabama (2012, declaring unconstitutional mandatory life sentences for juveniles). Juvenile Law Center is co-counsel in the Supreme Court case, Montgomery v. Louisiana, which seeks to make Miller’s holding retroactive. Montgomery will be argued on October 13, 2015.

 

Image credit "Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The peasant lawyer (detail)" by Herman Pijpers, licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic.

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