The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent is unable to legally claim that the sexual activity was consensual, and such sexual activity may be considered child sexual abuse or statutory rape. The person below the minimum age is considered the victim, and their sex partner the offender, although some jurisdictions provide exceptions through "Romeo and Juliet laws" if one or both participants are underage and are close in age.
An adult is a human or other animal that has reached full growth. The biological definition of the word means an animal reaching sexual maturity and thus capable of reproduction. In the human context, the term adult has meanings associated with social and legal concepts. In contrast to a non-adult or "minor", a legal adult is a person who has attained the age of majority and is therefore regarded as independent, self-sufficient, and responsible. They may also be regarded as "majors". The typical age of attaining legal adulthood is 18, although definition may vary by legal rights, country, and psychological development.
The age of criminal responsibility is the age below which a child is deemed incapable of having committed a criminal offence. In legal terms, it is referred to as a defence/defense of infancy, which is a form of defense known as an excuse so that defendants falling within the definition of an "infant" are excluded from criminal liability for their actions, if at the relevant time, they had not reached an age of criminal responsibility. After reaching the initial age, there may be levels of responsibility dictated by age and the type of offense committed.
Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. These acts would otherwise be considered crimes if the individuals committing them were older. The term delinquent usually refers to juvenile delinquency, and is also generalised to refer to a young person who behaves an unacceptable way.
Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood, but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as being a teenager. This is the time when children go through significant psychological, social and emotional development as they approach adulthood. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes this phase as a phase from 10 to 19 years old, while in Germany youth is considered as a period from 12 to 19 years old, it is during this period when young people separate from their parents and build their own families, join the armed forces, have the right to vote and can even claim a certain level of protection such as work and parental support, while in Bulgaria and Denmark youth is recognized as a phase between 14 and 18 years old, while in Greece children are considered people up to 12 years old and young people are people from 12 to 18 years old. The suicide rate among young people has declined significantly to 85,051 in recent years, suicide was one of the main causes of death among young people aged 10 to 19 according to a recent study which seeks to investigate the cause of death among young people.
Legal capacity is a quality denoting either the legal aptitude of a person to have rights and liabilities, or altogether the personhood itself in regard to an entity other than a natural person.
The age of majority is the threshold of legal adulthood as recognized or declared in law. It is the moment when a person ceases to be considered a minor and assumes legal control over their person, actions, and decisions, thus terminating the control and legal responsibilities of their parents or guardian over them. Most countries set the age of majority at 18, but some jurisdictions have a higher age and others lower. The word majority here refers to having greater years and being of full age as opposed to minority, the state of being a minor. The law in a given jurisdiction may not actually use the term "age of majority".
Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18. The 5–4 decision overruled Stanford v. Kentucky, in which the court had upheld execution of offenders at or above age 16, and overturned statutes in 25 states.
Emancipation of minors is a legal mechanism by which a minor before attaining the age of majority is freed from control by their parents or guardians, and the parents or guardians are freed from responsibility for their child. Minors are normally considered legally incompetent to enter into contracts and to handle their own affairs. Emancipation overrides that presumption and allows emancipated children to legally make certain decisions on their own behalf.
Juvenile court, also known as young offender's court or children's court, is a tribunal having special authority to pass judgements for crimes committed by children who have not attained the age of majority. In most modern legal systems, children who commit a crime are treated differently from legal adults who have committed the same offense. Juveniles have a lack of capacity for understanding their criminal acts, meaning they also have diminished criminal responsibility compared to their adult counterparts.
The age of consent for sex outside of marriage varies by jurisdiction across Europe. The age of consent – hereby meaning the age from which one is deemed able to consent to having sex with anyone else of consenting age or above – varies between 14 and 18. The majority of countries set their ages in the range of 14 to 16; only four countries, Cyprus (17), Ireland (17), Turkey (18), and the Vatican City (18), set an age of consent higher than 16.
In the common law legal system, an expungement or expunction proceeding, is a type of lawsuit in which an individual who has been arrested for or convicted of a crime seeks that the records of that earlier process be sealed or destroyed, making the records nonexistent or unavailable to the general public. If successful, the records are said to be "expunged". Black's Law Dictionary defines "expungement of record" as the "Process by which record of criminal conviction is destroyed or sealed from the state or Federal repository." While expungement deals with an underlying criminal record, it is a civil action in which the subject is the petitioner or plaintiff asking a court to declare that the records be expunged.
Juvenile law pertains to those who are deemed to be below the age of majority, which varies by country and culture. Usually, minors are treated differently under the law. However, even minors may be prosecuted as adults.
The youth rights movement seeks to grant the rights to young people that are traditionally reserved for adults. This is closely akin to the notion of evolving capacities within the children's rights movement, but the youth rights movement differs from the children's rights movement in that the latter places emphasis on the welfare and protection of children through the actions and decisions of adults, while the youth rights movement seeks to grant youth the liberty to make their own decisions autonomously in the ways adults are permitted to, or to abolish the legal minimum ages at which such rights are acquired, such as the age of majority and the voting age.
Laws regarding incest vary considerably between jurisdictions, and depend on the type of sexual activity and the nature of the family relationship of the parties involved, as well as the age and sex of the parties. Besides legal prohibitions, at least some forms of incest are also socially taboo or frowned upon in most cultures around the world.
Laws against child sexual abuse vary by country based on the local definition of who a child is and what constitutes child sexual abuse. Most countries in the world employ some form of age of consent, with sexual contact with an underage person being criminally penalized. As the age of consent to sexual behaviour varies from country to country, so too do definitions of child sexual abuse. An adult's sexual intercourse with a minor below the legal age of consent may sometimes be referred to as statutory rape, based on the principle that any apparent consent by a minor could not be considered legal consent.
In common law jurisdictions, statutory rape is nonforcible sexual activity in which one of the individuals is below the age of consent. Although it usually refers to adults engaging in sexual contact with minors under the age of consent, it is a generic term, and very few jurisdictions use the actual term statutory rape in the language of statutes. In statutory rape, overt force or threat is usually not present. Statutory rape laws presume coercion because a minor or mentally disabled adult is legally incapable of giving consent to the act.
In the United States, each state and territory sets the age of consent either by statute or the common law applies, and there are several federal statutes related to protecting minors from sexual predators. Depending on the jurisdiction, the legal age of consent is between 16 and 18. In some places, civil and criminal laws within the same state conflict with each other.
Trial as an adult is a situation in which a juvenile offender is tried as if they were an adult, whereby they may receive a longer or more serious sentence than would otherwise be possible if they were charged as a juvenile.
