Philadelphia's Juvenile Law Center wins MacArthur grant

The Juvenile Law Center, the public-interest law firm founded in Philadelphia in 1975 to advocate for children in custody or the child-welfare system, has been awarded $500,000 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

The MacArthur Foundation announced the institutional awards today.

"We are obviously thrilled to be a recipient and gratified by what the magnitude of this award represents for the work to be done," said Marsha L. Levick, the center's legal director and a founder.

"What this award really means is that we'll be able to do more of what we have been doing, providing services to more kids and really pushing the boundaries of the law," Levick added.

In announcing the award, the MacArthur Foundation cited the Juvenile Law Center's amicus, or "friend of the court," brief, joined by 49 other juvenile-advocacy groups, in Roper v. Simmons, the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case that abolished the juvenile death penalty.

The foundation wrote that the decision "affirmed principles that the Juvenile Law Center had upheld for three decades and marked a watershed moment in children's rights."

The center is the oldest public-interest law firm in the United States devoted to the interests of juveniles. It was founded in 1975 by four Temple University law school graduates, including Levick and Robert Schwartz, who has also remained with the center and is now executive director.

Levick said that in the last year the center had filed three amicus briefs, including one supporting Omar Khadr, the youngest person ever detained at the Guantanamo military prison in Cuba.

Khadr was 15 when he was shot twice in a 2002 firefight with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Now 21, Khadr is in Guantanamo, charged with hurling a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer.

Levick said the center's amicus brief argues that Khadr was basically a "child soldier," impressed into military service before he had the ability to make an independent, knowing decision.

Khadr's legal counsel, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, of the U.S. Navy Office of Military Commissions, has praised the center's work, calling it "an impressive organization to work with and . . . an indispensable ally."