Abstract
Gideon Yaffe has recently argued that children should be subject to lower standards of criminal liability because, unlike adults, they ought to be disenfranchised. Because of their disenfranchisement, they lack the legal reasons enfranchised adults have to comply with the law. I critically consider Yaffe’s argument for such disenfranchisement, which holds that disenfranchisement balances children’s interest in self-government with adults’ interest in having an equal say over lawmaking. I argue that Yaffe does not succeed in showing that these two values need to be balanced, nor that disenfranchising children is a justifiable method of achieving this balance. In my conclusion, I sketch an alternative contractualist approach to disenfranchising children that, like Yaffe’s, appeals to the implications that enfranchisement has for political relations among citizens, but, unlike Yaffe’s, rests on empirical claims about the influence of parents on children’s voting patterns rather than on a priori claims regarding who has a rightful say over lawmaking.
Acknowledgments
I appreciate the feedback provided by Eric Miller, Carl Cranor, and Steve Munzer on previous drafts of this article.
References
Alford, J., C. Funk, and J. Hibbing. 2005. “Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?” American Political Science Review 99: 153–67, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055405051579.Search in Google Scholar
Brennan, J. 2011. The Ethics of Voting. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Campbell, A., P. E. Converse, W. E. Miller, and D. E. Stokes. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.Search in Google Scholar
Charney, E., and W. English. 2012. “Candidate Genes and Political Behavior.” American Political Science Review 106: 1–34, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055411000554.Search in Google Scholar
Charney, E., and W. English. 2013. “Genopolitics and the Science of Genetics.” American Political Science Review 107: 382–95, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055413000099.Search in Google Scholar
Cholbi, M. 2002. “A Felon’s Right to Vote.” Law and Philosophy 21: 543–64, https://doi.org/10.2307/3505059.Search in Google Scholar
Cook, P. 2013. “Against a Minimum Voting Age.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 16: 439–58, https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2013.795707.Search in Google Scholar
Fowler, J. H., L. A. Baker, and C. T. Dawes. 2008. “Genetic Variation in Political Behavior.” American Political Science Review 102: 233–48, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055408080209.Search in Google Scholar
Franklin, M. N. 2004. Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies Since 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511616884Search in Google Scholar
Jennings, M. K., L. Stoker, and J. Bower. 2009. “Politics Across Generations: Family Transmission Reexamined.” Journal of Politics 71: 782–99, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022381609090719.Search in Google Scholar
Lyons, J. 2016. “The Family and Partisan Socialization in Red and Blue America.” Political Psychology 38: 297–312, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12336.Search in Google Scholar
Ojeda, C., and P. K. Hatemi. 2015. “Accounting for the Child in the Transmission of Party Identification.” American Sociological Review 80: 1150–74, https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122415606101.Search in Google Scholar
Peto, T. 2018. “Why the Voting Age Should be Lowered to 16.” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 17: 277–97, https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594x17705651.Search in Google Scholar
Priest, M. 2016. “Why Children Should Have the Right to Vote.” Public Affairs Quarterly 31: 215–38, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44732770.Search in Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 1955. “Two Concepts or Rules.” Philosophical Review 64: 3–32, https://doi.org/10.2307/2182230.Search in Google Scholar
Settle, J. E., C. T. Dawes, and J. H. Fowler. 2009. “The Heritability of Partisan Attachment.” Political Research Quarterly 62: 601–13, https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912908327607.Search in Google Scholar
Ventura, R. 2001. “Family Political Socialization in Multiparty Systems.” Comparative Political Studies 24: 666–91, https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414001034006004.Search in Google Scholar
Yaffe, G. 2018. The Age of Culpability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198803324.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Yaffe, G. 2020. “Psychological and Political Contributors to Criminal Culpability: Reply to Brink, Howard, and Morse.” Criminal Law and Philosophy 14: 273–87, https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1007/s11572-020-09526-9.10.1007/s11572-020-09526-9Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
