Paralegal
Law essay-Legal Rights and Responsibilities
This essay seeks to examine how and why legal rights and responsibilities are regulated in different ways over the course of an individual’s life. It will take you on a journey to look at the various stages of life and illustrate the ways a life is regulated both with criminal and civil liability. As a baby grows up through childhood into adolescence, they are increasingly able to appreciate the consequences of their actions. Teenagers explore their independence and reach adulthood at eighteen when they assume full rights and responsibilities (Goody and Silver, 2012). The adult may also become a parent with legal responsibilities. Finally the essay looks at how an elderly individual may be treated in different ways by the law.
A child's birth is an amazing experience for both parents and it is when the foetus becomes physically separate from its mother that it becomes a legal person and deemed to have gained a legal personality. It is now officially recognized by the state to protect it as it grows up.
A child growing up is acquiring more rights and responsibilities as they mature, and probably the most significant is the right to free education. Prior to ten years of age a child can not commit a crime as the law regards them as not knowing the difference between right and wrong. From ten years of age and on, a child becomes criminally responsible and is now treated as having sufficient understanding of the serious nature of their actions. They will be held accountable for those actions in the same way as an adult (Goody and Silver, 2012).
In civil law a child can be held responsible but the age of responsibility is more complicated, with different ages and “tests”. In such cases the law adopts a common sense approach, as illustrated in Mullin V Richards [1998] 1 ALL ER 920. In this case two fifteen year olds were in a play fight with plastic rulers when one of the rulers shattered causing an eye injury.
This essay seeks to examine how and why legal rights and responsibilities are regulated in different ways over the course of an individual’s life. It will take you on a journey to look at the various stages of life and illustrate the ways a life is regulated both with criminal and civil liability. As a baby grows up through childhood into adolescence, they are increasingly able to appreciate the consequences of their actions. Teenagers explore their independence and reach adulthood at eighteen when they assume full rights and responsibilities (Goody and Silver, 2012). The adult may also become a parent with legal responsibilities. Finally the essay looks at how an elderly individual may be treated in different ways by the law.
A child's birth is an amazing experience for both parents and it is when the foetus becomes physically separate from its mother that it becomes a legal person and deemed to have gained a legal personality. It is now officially recognized by the state to protect it as it grows up.
A child growing up is acquiring more rights and responsibilities as they mature, and probably the most significant is the right to free education. Prior to ten years of age a child can not commit a crime as the law regards them as not knowing the difference between right and wrong. From ten years of age and on, a child becomes criminally responsible and is now treated as having sufficient understanding of the serious nature of their actions. They will be held accountable for those actions in the same way as an adult (Goody and Silver, 2012).
In civil law a child can be held responsible but the age of responsibility is more complicated, with different ages and “tests”. In such cases the law adopts a common sense approach, as illustrated in Mullin V Richards [1998] 1 ALL ER 920. In this case two fifteen year olds were in a play fight with plastic rulers when one of the rulers shattered causing an eye injury.