For a long time, 18 years was considered the dividing line in our society when a young person was growing up. Now things are becoming less and less clear. The years between the ages of 18 and 21 are defined by a strange hodgepodge of rules and regulations that only partially confer rights on adults by those who are legally recognized as adults but who are often still culturally treated as children. Eighteen years is a magical birthday, a milestone in adulthood, accompanied by great privileges as well as serious legal implications. At 18, your teen can choose, buy a house, or marry their high school sweetheart. They can also go to jail, be prosecuted and gamble their Vegas tuition. Once a person reaches the legal age of their state, they can enter into legally enforceable agreements. Minors do not have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract. However, an agreement entered into when a person was a minor may be ratified, expressly or implicitly, upon reaching the age of majority, so that it becomes valid and enforceable. The legal age of majority is distinct from the legal age of license. The legal driving age is the minimum age a person must reach to legally participate in certain activities, such as drinking alcohol, voting or driving.
The legal age of license varies by activity and jurisdiction and may, but is not obligatory, coincide with the age of legal majority. So why does our age-based legal system persist despite an abundance of evidence showing that it is unwise to use age to define maturity? Americans` early age-related concerns revolved around when a person should be legally allowed to marry, contract, vote, and testify in court, as well as when they became guilty of crimes. The use of age to set these limits was an explicit rejection of the British system, in which inherited status governed privileges. The Americans wanted to build a system governed by experience and informed consent, with seemingly neutral markers for civil rights. While not everyone can acquire a country or an education, theoretically, everyone could reach the age of 18 or 21. On Friday, the new law went into effect, raising the age to buy tobacco products and e-cigarettes to 21. The new restriction will only increase confusion about what we consider to be the legal age of majority and what rights “adults” are entitled to under the law. Because assumptions about age are a legal pillar of American society, dating back nearly 250 years to the founding of our nation. Age laws have been a tool to advance ideas about equality and fairness, and they persist because, at first glance, they seem to work well.
It`s only when we pause to examine the science behind age, or how race, class, and gender intersect with the enforcement of these laws, that we see just how troubling their existence is in 2019. Humans mature and grow as individuals throughout our lives (at least ideally). Thus, the 45-year-old would probably not only be better equipped to make decisions than the 25-year-old version, but in all likelihood a very different person, both literally (replacing your body`s physical condition in this gap) and mentally. Nevertheless, the 45-year-old version of you and the much less mature and less accomplished 25-year-old version live under exactly the same rules and restrictions in most societies. So why is an arbitrary number like 18 or 21 considered a limit when society says everyone should legally work on an equal footing? What makes a person an “adult” in the first place? Is it the ability to drive a car unattended? Consent to intimate relationships? Ability to vote? Are you serving in the military? Buy a beer? And at what age is a person really ready to take on this responsibility? These are all difficult questions that do not lend themselves to simple answers. In this sense, in most jurisdictions, when two people are legally married, age of consent laws generally do not apply at all. In truth, excessive alcohol consumption potentially has far more harmful effects on brain development than mature people, and perhaps the research on physical brain development mentioned above reflects well beyond 18 years, especially in terms of decision-making, the move from 18 to 21 years of legal drinking age has been credited with reducing road deaths by 20% little. of time after the change of law. However, among other developed countries, only South Korea, Japan and Iceland have a minimum drinking age above 18, and their older teens seem to manage it well. In our time, the age at which the “child” grows up legally is called the age of majority. But these laws of the progressive era show how little uniformity the age system has produced.
Each State differed in how it defined expectations of age, maturity and rights. For example, in the 1920s, Rhode Island and New York set new minimum age limits for marriage. But while Rhode Island banned marriage before age 21, New York chose 14 as the legal minimum, which remained state law until 2017. It won`t be easy, but we need to make this change if we are to maintain the current system of age restrictions. The status quo is not only logically inconsistent, but also philosophically unfair in the way it restricts the rights of legal adults. And since 1984, when states began raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 in exchange for federal funding for highways — in some cases, as little as a decade after the cut — they couldn`t buy beer at a bar in most of the U.S., a restriction that has infuriated students ever since. Unlike early American laws, which created norms that, at first glance, provided a uniform standard of legal maturity, these laws concerned social control. The legal age is also called the age of majority. This is the age at which a person acquires the legal status of an adult. The legal age is determined by state law and may vary from state to state.
However, almost all states set the basic legal age at 18. This is the age at which a person takes control of their own actions and affairs and becomes responsible for the decisions they make. People over the legal age of majority are generally tried as adults when charged with crimes. Once this age is reached, all existing maintenance obligations of parents, guardians and children are deemed to have ended. However, minors may acquire the status of legal majority before reaching the age of majority if they obtain a court decision on emancipation or if they meet exceptions defined by law, such as marriage as a minor or the acquisition of certain qualifications. On the other hand, in the 1970s, several states raised their legal drinking age to 18. This resulted in the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (1984), which punished states for allowing people under 21 to buy alcohol and drink in public. Apparently old enough to kill for his country, but not old enough to drink. This inconsistency is not sustainable in the long term. Such illogical legislation breeds contempt for the rule of law and encourages its contempt. Governments can correct this injustice either by removing restrictions to give 18-year-olds all the rights and obligations of adulthood, or by biting the bullet and raising the legal age of adulthood to 21.
In any case, while one might be technically able to reproduce around the age of 12, the occasional exploitation of these young individuals eventually led to changes in the law. As such, this age has gradually increased over the centuries in most parts of the world. However, in some developed countries, the age of consent to sexual relations remains below 16. In others, there is a sliding scale, called “Romeo and Juliet laws” in the United States. These usually state that as long as two people are in each other`s age range, it is legal for them to have consensual sex. New York authorities on Monday proposed raising the legal age to buy cigarettes from 18 to 21. In 47 states, the age of majority – the age at which a person has the legal rights and obligations of an adult – is 18. Why is 18 considered the age of adulthood? These reformers, like the founding generation, continued to turn a blind eye to the fact that legal age laws only provided for the perception of equality and fairness.
Within the justice system, age continues to overlap with social, racial and gender hierarchies to amplify inequalities.