The law of unintended consequences

THE HEADLINE ON THIS KYODO REPORT is incorrect. It reads, “Hatoyama starts debate on lowering legal age”.

Here’s the first sentence:

Justice Minister Hatoyama Kunio told an advisory board Wednesday to study the possibility of legally lowering the age of adulthood from 20 to 18.

It’s incorrect in this sense: the debate actually started last May, when the Abe administration passed a law defining the conditions for a national referendum to amend the Constitution, should one be necessary.

A voting age of 18 was incorporated into that bill at the insistence of the Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s primary opposition party.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party didn’t like the idea–and still doesn’t–but they compromised to get the legislation passed. The DPJ had a laundry list of more proposed additions, but the LDP thought they weren’t essential to the intent of the legislation and used its majority to enact the bill. Naturally, the English-language media pitched the story this way: “LDP Rams Bill Through Diet”.

As the story notes, the provisions of the bill have ramifications that extend beyond national referendums, including the drinking age and the smoking age. It fails to note, however, that they also affect other matters, such as the age for assuming legal responsibility for contracts. In fact, several hundred laws and regulations will now have to be reexamined.

Is lowering the age of adulthood a good idea? The Kyodo article quoted a doctor as suggesting the drinking age should be raised to 22. Indeed, there has been a growing awareness in America lately that for many, childhood is being extended and adulthood deferred or avoided altogether. (See here, for example, or the contrasting reviews of the book, The Death of the Grown-Up, one by the NYT, and the other by Michelle Malkin. Enterprising Googlers will find many more opinions and articles.)

Some would entertain the idea of raising the age of adulthood even higher than 22, but the necessity for most people to have full-time employment by that age makes the suggestion both impractical and unfair.

Regardless of where one stands on the issue, it is regrettable that a measure with such far-reaching consequences was adopted as part of a back-room political deal to pass legislation, without public debate or a preliminary examination of its potential effects.

But then, isn’t one sign of adulthood the awareness of the consequences of one’s actions and the willingness to take responsibility for them?

UPDATE: Here’s a more detailed look at the story by the Yomiuri.

Still, the issue has turned out to be needlessly confusing. Try this:

If the Civil Code is not revised and the referendum law’s stipulation setting the age at 18 goes into effect, people at 18 and 19 will be allowed to vote on constitutional amendments, but will not have the right to make binding contracts and take other legal steps.

And compare it to this:

In March last year, the ruling parties reached a compromise with the DPJ and agreed to change the age limit in the referendum law to 18. But the law has a clause that the age limit in a national referendum can be maintained at 20 until the legal adulthood age in other laws is lowered to 18. Thus if the adulthood age in the Civil Code is not lowered, there will be no problem in implementing the national referendum law.

This has become much too complicated for an issue of such importance.