Capacity, Consistency and the Young

Abstract

Young citizens in modern liberal democratic societies are subject to various limitations on their rights and responsibilities that other citizens are exempt from. In particular, their criminal liability is lessened comparative to other citizens, and their entitlement to make medical and political decisions is reduced. In each of these domains, the justification for the differential treatment of the young is their incapacity. However, the time and methods with which capacity is attributed to young people differ between the medical, criminal and political domains. I argue that modern liberal democratic states owe to young citizens a consistent recognition of their capacity for autonomous decision-making, and that this recognition requires the legal status of young citizens to be updated and standardized over the domains under consideration. This requirement is not commonly satisfied by democratic societies, as the way in which their capacities are judged is inconsistent between the three domains under consideration.