Old Enough to Be Drafted: The Case for a Uniform Legal Age

"If he's old enough to get drafted, he's old enough to vote!" The clamor for a uniform legal age has been batted back and forth, resulting in "taking one step forward and two steps back." It's far past time that the federal and state governments come to a conclusion on when a person is an "adult," and adjust laws pertaining to this subject accordingly.

The haphazard laws which have been in place, changed, rearranged, and mangled, demonstrate everything except common sense; they demonstrate gender bias, whatever political fervor is popular at the time, geographical differences, and, above all, lack of confidence in the nation's young people.

While lowering the voting age, which required a Constitutional Amendment in 1971, was a start, there's still a long way to go to end the confusion once and for all as to what age represents legal adulthood in the United States.

Looking back on the results and statistics following the National Minimum Drinking Age being raised in 1984, former Middlebury College Professor John McCardell has concluded that this law has done more harm and little of the good for which it was originally designed. While individual states did not really have much of an option in complying with this law, due to then-President Reagan's added threat of pulling highway funding away from any state which did not go along with it, McCardell has concluded what many already assumed: that while raising the law may have had a slight effect on the number of highway fatalities, it also significantly increased the rate of underage drinking.

Even more ludicrous has been the hold-out on juvenile culpability in criminal matters. It's outrageous for the United States to claim "You are not old enough to drink a beer or to get married, but you are old enough to be executed." Why does the United States believe such a person should be held responsible for his criminal actions, yet is allegedly not responsible enough for other aspects of adult status? Yet the juvenile death penalty was one of the longest hold-outs-- it was not until 2005, in the Roper v. Simmons case, that the Supreme Court of the United States finally concluded that it was unconstitutional to execute individuals who were under age eighteen at the time of their crime. However, not only is it still commonplace to try minors as adults, there are currently thousands of young people serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

It is important to come to one national standard of legal age-- for all states, and for all relevant topics. Criminal responsibility, drinking, getting married, contracts and inheritance, even driving-- it would make much more sense if all of these were uniform. First, a person should not have "some" adult rights and responsibilities but not "all" of them; and second, these rights and responsibilities should not be granted on the basis of where a person lives. A youngster who is not old enough to marry or vote should not be given the right in his own hands to drop out of high school-- a decision which will affect the rest of his life. Nor is it fair or right for youngsters in some states to be able to legally drive at fourteen, while other states require that they be of a more responsible age.

It would make sense to come to one uniform standard, thereby eliminating the confusion and bias.