When Do Coming-of-Age Laws and Regulations Violate Individual Rights?
More often than not, government established and enforced age limits are immoral
Please excuse the delay. I’m publishing this article three instead of two weeks after the last one. A road-trip to the Canadian Maritime or Atlantic provinces took priority over writing. I will try to maintain my every-two-week schedule going forward but other priorities such as working on the 3rd expanded edition of the book, supporting Defenders of Capitalism, and just living the good life in general may get in the way. Cheers!
Humanity has engaged in coming-of-age related rites-of-passage across cultures since the dawn of time. It is a universal phenomenon rooted in the physical and psychological transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.
Many of the traditions remain with us as voluntary cultural or religious observances; Jews celebrate bar and bat mitzvah, Christians engage in baptism or confirmation, Quinceañera is widespread in Latin America, as is Sweet Sixteen in parts of the U.S and Canada, and Confucian traditions include Guan Li and Ji Li.
However, in modern society many issues pertaining to the approaching maturity of an individual have been codified into law; a kind of coming-of-age related age restrictions. Depending on the country, state, or locality you live in, laws and regulations may dictate when you’re considered old enough to vote, work (and how much), drive, buy and consume tobacco products, alcohol and recreational drugs, watch certain movies, consume adult content online, consent to having sex, get married, have a sex change, serve in the military or in public office, etc. Critics often point out that some of the age limits seem arbitrary: “How can someone be allowed to vote at age 18, but not buy alcohol until age 21?”
So, when is it appropriate for a society to create age limiting laws and regulations? When are government age restrictions (federal, state, or local) a violation of the individual rights of children, young adults and/or their parents and therefore immoral?
It’s a complicated subject and in many ways a minefield. Discussing child labor, tobacco, alcohol, and drug addiction, and most recently sex transitions—all areas where age limitations are at the forefront—is fraught with fear and emotion, and the discourse easily gets inflamed. With the risk of being cancelled, what follows are my thoughts. I’m far from a legal expert, so consider this my musings based on a healthy dose of mostly Wikipedia research. I’ll use U.S. examples, but the principles are probably applicable globally.
To start with, to determine which age restrictions are immoral and not, we need to determine the proper role of government in a moral society. As regular readers know, such a society is governed by a capitalist social system that recognizes that individual rights are the only true rights and that the only role of government is to protect those rights. Under such a system government has three roles: It protects us from (1) foreign aggressors (the role of the military) and from (2) domestic aggression such as fraud, theft, murder, etc. (the role of law enforcement). And it (3) prosecutes domestic aggressors and settles disputes (the role of the judiciary or the court system). Everything else is off limits.
With this in mind, which legal and regulatory age restrictions are appropriate? I think the age of candidacy limitations in the U.S. constitution fit the bill. You have to be 35 to candidate for president, 30 for U.S. senator, and 25 for U.S. representative. We can debate the specific age required for each office, but I think it is a valid constitutional restriction that doesn’t violate individual rights (all states, and many local governments have similar age restrictions in place). You could perhaps argue that if the age limits were moved high enough to exclude large swaths of the population, for example age 70, such restrictions would be discriminatory and therefore amount to an individual rights violation. But the likelihood of that happening is zero. (Interestingly, the U.S. Constitution doesn’t have an age requirement for SCOTUS justices).
Another U.S. Constitution age restriction is the voting age. Originally 21, Amendment 26 lowered it to 18 (Seventeen states permit 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections and caucuses if they will turn 18 by election day). We can debate what the voting age should be (and/or if passing a civics test should be part of the requirements), but a coming-of- age restriction in this context doesn’t violate individual rights. (Preventing certain groups of citizens such as blacks and women from voting on the other hand, is a rights violation)
As for the three valid functions of government, the military, law enforcement and the judiciary, reasonable age restrictions likewise do not constitute a violation of individual rights. The minimum age to join the military is 17 with parental consent, otherwise 18. Similarly, many if not most states and local communities have age requirements in place for joining law enforcement and serving as a judge, in addition to qualitative criteria such as graduating from the police academy, earning a law degree, etc.
The above are in my view the areas where legalizing age restrictions is a valid role of the limited government in a capitalist social system. But those are the easy ones. What about the rest?
In my last article, I argued that proponents of age verification for adult online content should use the marketplace of public opinion to put pressure on providers of such content to voluntarily implement restrictions. Using the force of government to regulate or sign age verification into law, I said, would violate the individual rights of both adult online content producers and consumers. I think the marketplace of public opinion should play a similar role in all other areas where age limitations may be justified: working, driving, buying and consuming tobacco products, alcohol and recreational drugs, watching certain movies, consenting to having sex, getting married, having a sex change, etc. If public opinion demands age limitations, age verification, parental consent, certificates of competency (for driving, working), etc., marketplace participants will sooner rather than later adjust their behavior. Early adopters will see an opportunity for elevating their reputation, taking market share, and increasing sales and profits, and others will soon follow to not be left behind. (For driving, I assume a capitalist social system where all roads are privately owned, and road owners, the car industry, car insurance companies, and consumer advocacy groups establish voluntary standards for obtaining and retaining a driver’s license).
I do, however, see a role for litigation resulting in nuanced case law around age limitations evolving over time (which I suspect is already happening in some if not all of the areas, but highly tainted by individual rights violating federal, state and local laws and regulations). For example, I don’t think implementing and enforcing child labor laws is a role of the limited government in a capitalist social system. But I do think that litigation and evolving case law has a function to fill in protecting the individual rights of children. But across the board age limits are too blunt an instrument; one child may be perfectly fine with working at a young age for a number of hours in a particular profession, while another child may not. Similarly, one young couple may be mature enough to get married, while another may not. No law or regulation can foresee all the possible permutations without violating the individual rights of some in order to “protect” others, but slowly evolving nuanced case law can while limiting the damage.
These are my current, still developing, layman thoughts. What are yours? Am I making sense or am I completely off the mark, perhaps even nuts? I look forward to your comments, especially if you have legal expertise that may shine additional light on this fascinating but challenging topic.