Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2025
ISSN
1744-1617
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Language
en-US
Abstract
This article examines how legal actors—particularly legislators, judges, and attorneys—invoke chronological age to justify the application of legal rules to adolescents. In doing so, they often rely on comparisons to existing “age-gates,” treating these thresholds (such as ages 18 or 21) as self-justifying reference points. Age 18, marking the legal transition from childhood to adulthood, and age 21, the former age of majority and current sales age for certain controlled substances, serve as especially powerful rhetorical anchors in age-based legal reasoning. These anchor points shape how legal actors advocate for or against particular age thresholds, often substituting analogy for substantive justification. This article argues that the rhetorical force of anchor age-gates is difficult to avoid, and therefore age-gates in one area are likely to influence decisions about other age-gates in other areas. Legal actors should recognize the influence of benchmarking arguments and cannot avoid responsibility for the risk that their advocacy in one context will be misused in another. At the same time, legal actors should resist treating age-gates as inherently dispositive. Instead, decision-makers should supplement age-based comparisons with principled reasoning grounded in the purposes and effects of the legal rule at issue. The article concludes by exploring the status-transforming quality of legal marriage and its implications for determining the appropriate age of legal consent to marry.
Recommended Citation
Katharine B. Silbaugh,
Benchmarking Age-Gates
,
63
Family Court Review
788
(2025).
Available at:
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70015
Included in
Criminal Law Commons, Family Law Commons, Juvenile Law Commons
