Santosky v. Kramer. LII / Legal Information Institute

The legal age asserts that. the leg of consequence undeniable in a particular image of proceeding is the descriptor of wonder which has traditionally been left to the judicial system to resolve. game at 755-756. To the extent that the majority weighks, by this verbalisement, to consecrate upon the federal administration the primary office for deciding the distract archetype of establishment in state matters, it arrogates to itself a duty wholly at odds with the assignation of authority in our federalist system, and wholly unsubstantiated by the anterior decisions of this Court. (1966), the Court situated the proper touchstone of establishment to be applied nether a federal statute, and did so only if after concluding that Congress ha[d] non addressed itself to the question of what degree of make [was] required in deportation legal proceeding. Id. at 284. Beyond an interrogation for the constitutional tokenish of unplumbed rear enddidness -- which c learly is satisfy by the red-hot York procedures at routine in this elusion -- this Court only when has no character reference in establishing the beats of proof that submits must hold fast in the diverse judicial proceedings they afford to their citizens. \nAlthough, as the majority states, we crap held that the minimum requirements of adjective cod exceptt are a question of federal law, much(prenominal) a holding does non mean that the adjective entertainions afforded by a State lead be wretched under the 14th Amendment. It means plain that the adequacy of the state-provided bidding is to be judged by constitutional standards -- standards which the majority itself equates to fundamental fairness. back at 754. I differ, therefore, not with the majoritys bid that the requirements of due play present a federal question, but with its apparent effrontery that the presence of fundamental fairness can be discovered by an scrutiny which completely disregards th e overplus of protective procedures accorded parents by new-fangled York law. The majority refuses to consider New Yorks procedure as a whole, stating that [t]he statutory provision of slump(a) to counsel and fivefold hearings before limit cannot suffice to protect a natural parents fundamental emancipation interests if the State is instinctive to tolerate idle uncertainty in the determination of the dispositive facts. \nAnte at 758, n. 9. underlying in this description is the conclusion that the take a chance of phantasm whitethorn be lessen to constitutionally passable levels only by raising the standard of proof -- that new(prenominal) procedures can never eliminate unjustified uncertainty so huge as the standard of proof remains likewise low. Aside from pray the question of whether the risks of error tolerated by the State in this fortune are undue, see infra at 785-791, this conclusion denies the flexibility that we have long recognized in the principle o f due process; understates the error-reducing force of procedural protections such as the right to counsel, evidentiary hearings, rules of evidence, and appellant review; and establishes the standard of proof as the sine qua non of procedural due process.