Question

Do you believe that lawmakers,including judges,ought to take chronological age into consideration in making and enforcing the law? What relevance does age make for either an individual or a whole group? Justify your answer.

Answer 1

Chronological age is defined as the number of years, months, days, or hours a person has passed while he/she is alive. It is just related to the time that the person has experienced during his/her life. It has no relationship with the personality, intelligence, or any other personal characteristics like skills or knowledge. On the other side, mental age is defined by these personal characteristics irrespective to the chronology of years. Since the judgement of the justice in a court is completely based on the act that a perosn has done, and that act/behvaior of a perosn (for which he/she is in the court) is a perosnal characteristic. Therefore, lawmakers and judges should not consider the chronological age as much important, instead they should take the mental age into consideration while making a judgement. The mental age is highly dependent on the skills, knowledge, and competency that the person has in a particular time and place while chronological age is dependent on duration of time during which he/she is living. However, chronological has its releveance in making a general idea of how old a person is, and it is frequently used as a demographic variable. While, mental age can be used to jugde the person's actual cognitive competency relative to other people. Mental age is also used to estimate the intelligence quotient.