Professor Gideon Yaffe’s recent, intricately argued book, The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility, argues against the nearly uniform position in both law and scholarship that the criminal justice system should give juveniles a break because on average they have different capacities relevant to responsibility than adults. Professor Yaffe instead argues that kid should be given a break because juveniles have little say about the criminal law, primarily because they do not have a vote. For Professor Yaffe, age has political rather than behavioral significance. The book has many excellent general analyses about responsibility, but all are in aid of the central thesis about juveniles, which is the central focus of this essay review. After addressing a few preliminary issues, the essay discusses Professor Yaffe’s negative argument against the validity of the behavioral difference rationale for giving juveniles a break. If the negative case fails, which the essay argues it does, then the only issue is whether the book’s alternative is desirable. Again, the essay argues that it is not, and concludes by offering three positive arguments for the traditional rationale: (1) coherence and simplicity; (2) a benignly definitional argument that survives the negative argument and supports giving juveniles a break in the exceedingly unlikely event that the empirical assumptions of the traditional rationale are proven incorrect; and (3) a proposal for individualization of the culpability assessments of juveniles so that the criminal justice system blames and punishes them proportionately to their culpability.

中文翻译：

---

反对获得的智慧：为什么刑事司法制度应该让孩子们休息一下

吉迪恩·雅夫（Gideon Yaffe）教授最近发表的一本颇有争议的书《可追溯的时代：儿童与刑事责任的性质》，在法律和学术领域几乎一致的观点认为，刑事司法系统应该给少年一个休息的机会，因为他们平均具有不同的能力与成年人相关的责任。亚菲教授反而认为应该给孩子一点休息时间，因为少年对刑法几乎没有发言权，主要是因为他们没有投票权。对于Yaffe教授而言，年龄具有政治意义而非行为意义。该书对责任进行了许多出色的一般分析，但所有这些分析都是关于少年的中心论点的帮助，这是本文综述的重点。在解决了一些初步问题之后，本文讨论了Yaffe教授的否定论点，即反对让青少年休息的行为差异原理的有效性。如果否定性案例失败了（本文认为确实如此），那么唯一的问题就是该书的替代方案是否可取。再次，本文辩称事实并非如此，并通过为传统理论提供三个积极的论据作为结论：（1）连贯性和简单性；（2）善意的定义性论点，在否定性论点中幸存下来，并支持在极不可能的情况下，即证明传统理据的经验假设不正确的情况下，给少年们以休息。（3）关于对未成年人的犯罪能力评估进行个性化的提案，以便刑事司法系统根据其罪责对它们进行适当的指责和惩罚。