Nagra Blog Post 6

While reading “Bright Lines in Juvenile Justice” by Professor Berg, I was astounded by the fact that I had never honestly thought about the idea of “bright lines”; I had thought about the concept but just took it as moral and legal precedent. Professor Bergs’s perspective on ideal and non-ideal theory was fascinating and refreshing. The idea of “domain-specific” ideal theories relates heavily to my domain-specific justice concept discussed in tutorial (2). The paper’s general idea is to motivate the use of bright-lines in juvenile justice, drawing on the faults of allowing a “case by case” evaluation of culpability. 

The majority of my ideas about the paper are contained in the mathematical and neurological concepts connected to the bright lines Berg brings up. I initially thought about the discontinuity between certain bright lines related to drug policy and their respective reasoning. The reasoning behind drawing a bright line at 21 years old for alcohol consumption usually falls back to both the substance’s neurological and drunk driving effects. Alcohol is heavily studied and is unanimously agreed upon by researchers to be neurotoxic with effects as broad-ranging as small structural changes to large losses of white and grey matter. Now let us consider other substances that have a similar bright line. Nicotine has minimal effects on motor abilities but is also neurotoxic. Considering this, it seems logical to place the bright line to use nicotine at a lower age than alcohol. Federally this is not the case. 

The consequences of an absence of a bright-line are very asymmetrical. Allowing developing brains to consume neurotoxic and mind-altering substances can lead to lifelong abnormalities. While there may be adolescents with more developed brains than someone on the other side of the bright line, age here is a generally adequate proxy for brain development. 

The “black and white” thinking caused by the bright-line on marijuana consumption, for example, has caused the elimination of a gray area and subsequently a “good-bad” connotation of the drug. This not only hinders research in the growing field of cannabinoids but causes society to look down on those who use the substance for medical purposes. I am not suggesting that society negatively connotates someone with cancer using Dronabinol to control nausea from chemotherapy, but pointing out the morally negative connotation of cannabinoid use in more grey-area cases. Dissidents of this line of thought might assert that there is not enough research on the drug class to designate who is justified in using them correctly, but circular reasoning. Scientists cannot research the drug because of the bright line, which causes “black-white-good-bad” thinking, which further causes society to connotate the drug class, strengthening the bright-line negatively. I find this feedback loop incredibly interesting and powerful. This also seems to be the case with most other scheduled substances with potential medicinal properties.