In the case of McKeiver et al. v. Pennsylvania in 1970, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that juveniles do not have a constitutional right to a trial by jury in delinquency proceedings under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. The court held that states could choose whether or not to provide jury trials for juvenile defendants and argued that such trials might harm the informal nature of juvenile courts, which are designed to act more as rehabilitative agencies than punitive ones. This decision was based on two cases involving 16-year-old boys charged with robbery and assault respectively; both were adjudicated delinquent without a jury trial.

In the dissenting opinion for McKeiver et al. v. Pennsylvania, Justice Brennan argued that juveniles should have a constitutional right to a jury trial in delinquency proceedings under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. He believed that denying this right would undermine the juvenile court system's rehabilitative goals by failing to provide procedural safeguards against erroneous fact-finding, which could lead to unjust outcomes for young defendants. Furthermore, he contended that jury trials would not necessarily make juvenile courts more adversarial or less protective of children's welfare; instead, they could enhance fairness and accuracy in these proceedings while still allowing judges considerable discretion over sentencing decisions.