Court Opinion

ID: 9854188
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:02:31.349997+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:57.969920
License: Public Domain

McGraw, Justice,

concurring:

While the press of business at term’s end has lessened the opportunity of everyone on the court to reflect upon Justice Neely’s majority opinion, I offer these comments.
While trudging through the turgid prose, I had little cause to stumble over the answers to the questions which this case presented. I am moved to comment upon the extensive dicta which could be interpreted by the unwary to foreshadow a drift by this Court toward a “punishment model” of treatment for juvenile offenders. While the majority opinion’s discussion may be revealing, it should not be viewed as constituting an endorsement by this Court of all the attendant legal concepts it purportedly encompasses. I believe that characterization in terms of liberal and conservative political philosophies is inappropriate to the issues at hand. These issues do not lend themselves to simplistic partisan political analysis. Reasonable people of good will, of whatever political persuasion, desire decent, rehabilitative treatment for troubled children. Judicial opinions should not be seen as attempting to dance the razor’s edge between political extremes.
In closing I observe with amusement the statement that the absence of philosophical and analytical content in this Court’s prior juvenile opinions left no alternative but to enter “reluctantly” into a “brief’ philosophical discussion. Historically, Mr. Justice Neely has never been reluctant to engage in philosophical discussion, and in no such discussion, has he ever been brief.