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Age of Consent

By Corey Rayburnyung

After Rick Hills posted this insightful post at Prawfsblawg about strange results of American age of consent law, I took the opportunity to talk about the oddities described in Hills's post.  I'm not sure if Hills's post also inspired Eugene Volokh, but he launched into a trifecta of posts over the weekend about the age of consent and Romeo and Juliet laws.  From the first post:Many states have lower ages of consent for sex among minors than for sex between adults and minors. Thus, two 16-year-olds having sex may be legal, but not a 30-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old. I share the intuition behind this distinction, but I wonder whether my intuition is right. For instance, I would think that quite a few 16-year-old girls who are interested in sex would rather be involved with 30-year-old men than with other 16-year-olds; the 30-year-olds are more likely to know what they're doing both sexually and romantically, plus are more likely to be much more emotionally mature as well as interesting to talk to...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sex Crimes on April 28, 2008 (boomark / email).