Reconciling the Complexity of Human Development With the Reality of Legal Policy Reply to Fischer, Stein, and Heikkinen (2009)

摘要

The authors respond to both the general and specific con-cerns raised in Fischer, Stein, and Heikkinen's (2009)commentary on their article (Steinberg, Cauffman, Wool-ard, Graham, & Banich, 2009), in which they drew onstudies of adolescent development to justify the AmericanPsychological Association's positions in two SupremeCourt cases involving the construction of legal age bound-aries. In response to Fischer et al.'s general concern thatthe construction of bright-line age boundaries is inconsis-tent with the fact that development is multifaceted, variableacross individuals, and contextually conditioned, the au-thors argue that the only logical alternative suggested bythat perspective is impractical and unhelpful in a legalcontext. In response to Fischer et al.'s specific concernsthat their conclusion about the differential timetables ofcognitive and psychosocial maturity is merely an artifact ofthe variables, measures, and methods they used, the au-thors argue that, unlike the alternatives suggested by Fi-scher et al., their choices are aligned with the specificcapacities under consideration in the two cases. The au-thors reaffirm their position that there is considerableempirical evidence that adolescents demonstrate adult lev-els of cognitive capability several years before they evinceadult levels of psychosocial maturity.