Justice Stewart dissenting in re Gault (cont.) 

U.S. Supreme Court
In re Gault
387 U.S. 1 (1967)
Justice Stewart's dissent
obtained from the Legal Information Institute website of Cornell University
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/histories/USSC_CR_0387_0001_ZD.html

I first came across this primary source in the Childhood in America text (pp.578-584). There, however, the one dissenting opinion of the 8-1 decision was not included, so I have included it here (if the image is too difficult to read, use the link above.) This case was historic in that it established due process rights in the juvenile court system. This introduced much of the more confrontational nature of the adult sytem into the juvenile one and significantly lessened the capacity of the juvenile court judge to decide cases with what, to that point, had basically been full parental discretion. The re Gault decision has been pointed to as the change in the juvenile justice system which paved the way to the more punative and adult-like nature of juvenile courts today.