ABSTRACT
The Supreme Court provides legal precedent and moral leadership that juvenile justice advocates can leverage. The three proposals outlines—returning to a default rule of keeping kids in juvenile court, abolishing mandatory minimum sentences for kids, and overhauling youth incarceration—are all good starting points for correcting the course of American juvenile justice. The Supreme Court's decisions in the Miller trilogy were about much more than LWOP for kids. The Miller Court, in particular, made clear that its opinion was an indictment of broader juvenile justice practices, such as transfer laws that permit children to be tried in adult court and sentencing guidelines that render youth irrelevant. When the juvenile court system was created, it was difficult and rare for a child to be transferred out of that system and into the adult court system. Though, transfer provisions that put kids in adult court are the norm.
