Judge H. Ted Rubin
by
Jack F. Smith, Senior Judge

            For nearly a quarter of a century, from 1940 through 1964, the Denver Juvenile Court had been presided over by a single judge, Judge Philip B. Gilliam.  Judge Gilliam’s name had become virtually synonymous with the Denver Juvenile Court during those years.  In 1964 the Colorado General Assembly, in response to increasing caseloads, created an additional judgeship for the court.  H. Ted Rubin, a Denver attorney and state legislator, was elected to the newly-created position.  Rubin took office in January 1965. He came to the bench with impressive credentials.  He was an attorney, had obtained a master’s degree in social work, and had just served two terms in the Colorado House of Representatives. 

            Ted Rubin was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  He received his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s degree in social work from Case Western Reserve University, and his law degree from DePaul University.  He became a Colorado resident in 1960, and four years later was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives, and served two consecutive terms there.  Rubin, and his wife Bunny, lived in Park Hill, and with their three children, Marjorie, Steven and Jefferson.  

 From the creation of separate courts for children in the early 1900’s, juvenile courts had developed with informal and relaxed legal procedures.  The constitutional protections required in adult criminal courts were seen by the early advocates of children’s courts as unnecessary and counter-productive.  Beginning with 1960’s, however, several state and federal judicial opinions required that the protections of due process of law be applied to children’s cases.  Prior to this time the ancient legal doctrines of parens patriae and in loco parentis had permitted juvenile courts to proceed rather paternalistically.  Simply put, these two doctrines allowed the juvenile judge and probation staff to act as a “wise parents” when it came to children charged with crimes.  The “due process of law” accorded adults charged with crimes required, among other things, the right to remain silent when questioned, the right to an attorney, the right to confront witnesses, and the right to appeal.   The need to follow these requirements was not generally recognized as being necessary in juvenile cases.

In 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a juvenile case from Washington, D.C., held that the rudiments of due process of law must be applied to such cases.  In its decision in Kent v. United States, the court announced that juvenile proceedings “must measure up to the essentials of due process and fair treatment.”  The court expresses its concern that children were receiving neither the specialized treatment vaunted as the hallmark of the juvenile court, nor the legal protections of due process of law guaranteed to criminal defendants. 

 This emerging emphasis on the requirements of due process of law culminated in the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision In Re Gault.  The Gault case grew out of an Arizona juvenile court judge’s sentence of a boy (Gerald Gault) to a state reform school because of an allegedly obscene telephone call to a neighbor lady.  Following his commitment to the institution, Gerald’s parents sought the help of a volunteer attorney from the Arizona branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.  After being denied appellate relief in the Arizona Supreme Court, the ACLU made application to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The high court accepted certiorari and agreed to review the case.

 The Gault decision, as applied to state juvenile courts, required that all juveniles charged with crimes must be provided with notice of the specific charges against them, provided for the right to an attorney (and, if indigent, to a publicly paid lawyer), the right to be advised of the right to remain silent during questioning, and the right to confront witnesses.  It was in this rapidly changing legal climate that the newly elected Rubin took the bench.   

Prior to the announcement of Gault, Colorado’s laws relating to children were coming under scrutiny as well.  The Interim Committee on Children’s Laws of the legislature had, during 1963-64 and with the assistance of University of Colorado law professor Homer Clark, catalogued the state’s provisions dealing with children that were scattered throughout the many volumes of the Colorado Revised Statutes.  Rubin was a member of this committee.  Many existing laws did not square with the new requirements of the developing line of appellate court decisions. 

In 1966, Rubin, now a juvenile court judge, worked closely with Colorado legislators as this commission’s mission proceeded.   Rubin played a major role in the conceptualization and drafting of many of the new provisions.  Among these new provisions were: defining the minimum age of juvenile delinquency as ten years of age, prohibiting commitment to a state institution for children under twelve years of age, requiring the presence of a parent during police questioning of a youthful suspect, requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt in cases of youth charged with crimes, and creation of a new non-delinquent status for children charged with acts such as truancy and being beyond parental control.  Upon its enactment in 1967, the Colorado Children’s Code came to be regarded as one of the most progressive in the nation.  Judges, legislators, and consultants from other states paid frequent visits to Colorado during this period in their quest to update their own children’s laws.

On taking the bench in January 1965, Judge Rubin began to institute programs designed to give the court’s probation staff a wider range of treatment alternatives for children placed in their charge.  As a legislator, Rubin had sponsored the initiation of the Ft. Logan Mental Health Center children’s division, and the Golden Gate State Park Forestry Camp for delinquent youth.  Now, through the recently formed VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) program, he brought full-time volunteers to Denver to serve as an adjuncts to the probation officers.  This was the “domestic Peace Corps” envisioned by President John F. Kennedy.  All VISTA volunteers assigned to the Denver Juvenile Court lived in public housing projects, where many of the young probationers also resided.  Each volunteer worked with ten families of multi-problem youth and the Court’s probation staff. 

Judge Rubin also obtained U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare funds to study the causes, effects, and treatment of children addicted to sniffing model airplane glue.  The intervention approaches used with these children were presented to a national symposium, sponsored by the Denver Juvenile Court, and held in Denver in January 1967.  The glue sniffing study became a national model for the identification and treatment of this form of substance abuse.

 Rubin obtained a grant from a federal vocational rehabilitation agency and opened two halfway houses in Denver’s Capitol Hill.  One was for girls under his court’s supervision located in the former Molly Brown mansion.  Another was for boys and was three blocks from the Molly Brown House.  These programs continued until 1971.

 Judge Rubin persuaded the Colorado Outward Bound School to begin a rehabilitation program aimed solely at urban youth charged with crimes.  This program used both Outward Bound staff and Denver Juvenile Court staff.  It was titled “Urban  Bound.”  The program combined the use of Colorado’s rugged mountain settings and carefully planned physical endurance challenges to foster changes in the troubled city youth.

 As Rubin’s community-based programs continued to expand, segments of the community began to complain that he was not “tough enough” on crime.  He was reluctant to send delinquents or the new “status” offenders to state training schools because of his concern for the quality of care given there.  His insistence on adherence to the due process of law requirements mandated by the Gault decision and the new Colorado Children’s Code drew fire as well.  Denver police and school officials, in articles appearing the Rocky Mountain News, mounted a successful campaign to defeat Judge Rubin in his bid for retention in the November 1970 election.  In January 1971 a Denver attorney, John R. Evans, was appointed by Governor John Love, to the judgeship created by Rubin’s defeat.  Judge Evans served the Denver Juvenile Court until his death of heart failure in 1973.

 Judge Rubin chose not to return to private law practice, and joined the Institute for Court Management, a newly formed national entity focused on court improvement.  He served as the institute’s juvenile justice director, and then as senior staff attorney through the period 1971 until mid-1992.  He directed or co-directed several hundred national workshops and studies of juvenile justice agencies.  In 1990 he was honored with the Award of Excellence of the National Center for State Courts.

 During the 1970’s, Rubin served as reporter for the volume on Court Organization and Administration of the Joint Commission on Juvenile Justice Standards for the American Bar Association.  He served as visiting professor for the  State University of New York at  (1968), and taught the U.S. curriculum for American University’s seminar on juvenile justice  in Great Britain and America (London, 1982).  He served as a trustee of the  Colorado Children’s Trust Fund (1990-97) and was its chair in from 1995 to 1997.  He has served as a member of the board of directors of Denver Area Youth Services for 28 years.

 Judge Rubin has authored more than 250 articles and research reports in the area of juvenile justice and corrections.  He has written four books dealing with juvenile justice policy, practice and administration.  A fifth book, Juvenile Justice: Policies, Practices and Programs, will be published in June 2003 by the Civic Research Institute.

Judge Rubin and his artist wife, Bunny, moved to the Boulder foothills in 1991, and he continues to evaluate juvenile and family courts across the country.  His perspectives are published regularly in professional journals.