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Northwestern Law's Children and Family Justice Center (CFJC) played an integral role in the movement that led to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision to end the practice of executing juvenile offenders. 

Almost five years ago, CFJC attorneys, including Bernardine Dohrn, Lauren Adams, and Steven Drizin, began working with Northwestern Law students and a core group of other individuals and organizations to create a strategy that would convince the Supreme Court to revisit the juvenile death penalty only 15 years after it last ruled on the issue.

Key aspects of the strategy included framing the issue as one of adolescent development and highlighting the extent to which the United States' practice was at odds with the rest of the world. 

Steven Drizin co-authored an amicus brief on behalf of 50 child advocacy organizations, which highlighted the developmental issues, and Lauren Adams and Tom Geraghty co-wrote an amicus brief on behalf of 15 former Nobel Laureates, which underscored the human rights and international law aspects of the strategy.

The center's work paid off this week as the Supreme Court, in its 5-4 ruling on Roper v. Simmons, relied on arguments of adolescent development and international law to rule that it is no longer constitutionally permissible to execute offenders who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crimes.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote for the majority opinion, said: "When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the state can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the state cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity."

Justice Kennedy was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. Justices Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented.

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