Adolescents occupy a unique place in law. Typically defined as persons between the ages of 14 and 18, adolescents have traditionally been regarded as “minors” by law. Minors, as a group, are legally disabled. This disability means that they are presumed to lack the necessary skills for capable decision making and presumed to benefit from adults’ guidance and protection. Adult-like decision making skills generally are necessary for exercising legal rights. As a result, the law regulates the decision making liberties of minors far more extensively than those of adults. This regulation results in a hodgepodge of laws that are based on different perceptions of adolescents’ capacities for making different decisions, the state’s interests in allowing them to make those decisions, and the general need to respect the rights of parents to direct their children’s upbringing.
Depending on their age, and sometimes other factors, adolescents typically are not yet considered adults nor are they no...
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References
Bellotti v. Baird (1979). 443 U.S. 622.
Levesque, R. J. R. (2000). Adolescents, sex, and the law: Preparing adolescents for responsible citizenship. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Levesque, R. J. R. (2002). Dangerous adolescents, model adolescents: Shaping the role and promise of education. NY: Plenum/Kluwer.
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Levesque, R.J.R. (2011). Age of Consent, Majority, and License. In: Levesque, R.J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_404
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_404
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