Scholars of American juvenile justice use this narrative to frame their field. This overarching narrative is problematic, however, because it combines a nuanced historical interpretation of the Progressive Era with a less developed accounting of the Great Society. The outpouring of scholarship on women, the state and welfare, for example, has demonstrated the central roles that women played in the creation, implementation, and spread of innovative social welfare policies in the early twentieth century. Yet the standard account of the constitutional domestication of the juvenile court focuses almost exclusively on the role that men played as litigators and justices in a trilogy of U.S. Supreme Court cases, beginning with In re Gault in 1967.
By highlighting the essential roles of six women in the Gault case, this paper provides a new perspective on juvenile justice reform during the mid twentieth century. Focusing on the role of these women as mothers, children’s advocates, lawyers, legal researchers and state actors challenges the conventional framework for the history of social welfare law. For instance, these women articulated visions of social justice that differed substantially from the strict individualistic constitutional based argument of prominent male lawyers. Instead of contrasting the Progressive Era and Great Society, this paper shows why historians must pay closer attention to the parallels and continuities between these two historical eras, including the strikingly similar role of women reformers in both periods.