The Child's Status in the Democratic State

Abstract

I shall begin by examining a typical argument for universal adult suffrage with a view to testing whether the argument provides any basis for excluding minors from the franchise. One contemporary theorist who attempts to offer a closely reasoned, rigorous defense of universal adult suffrage is Carl Cohen in his recent book Democracy. Cohen's main argument consists of a defense of two propositions: (1) that all men are equal in some fundamental and (2) that the respect in which all men are equal does justify the equal assignment of the right to participate in the government of the polity.' Because the second point is more relevant to my concerns, I shall pass over Cohen's intelligent and sensitive discussion of the first proposition in which he concludes that the possession of dignity is the fundamental respect in which all men are equal. The transition from the first to the second proposition is made by