Lennings C1, Lennimgs N2
1Lsc Psychology, 2Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
Biography:
Chris Lennings is a senior clinician and academic with 43 years experience and a long term interest in adolescent development and maturity and how that intersects with the law. Nicholas Lennings is a solicitor and academic whose background at Harvard and Oxford has developed his interests in judicial decision making, expert evidence, and young people’s decision making.
Almost a decade ago Lennings and Lennings (2013) presented a paper at the ANZAPPL conference in Adelaide examining the psychological and legal implications of the doctrine of doli incapax. We argued at the time that the doctrine was confusing and poorly defined and supported a view of using developmental as opposed to chronological age to apply the doctrine. Since then, the High Court in RP v The Queen (2016) 259 CLR 641 affirmed the status quo that was the subject of complaint in the previous paper. More recently, multiple reports have addressed the issue with a zeitgeist of increasing the age of criminal responsibility, including some which have argued that the age should be increased to 14 years. The current paper examines the doctrine of doli incapax in light of these recent reports, cases, and neurocognitive and developmental advances. Like the original paper, it centres the arguments on case studies of the application of doli incapax for young people and an analysis of current authorities on young people’s ability to give consent, to understand consequences, and to reason and communicate about choices. We agree there remains good legal grounds for retaining a doctrine of doli incapax, but argue that continuing to rely on arcane concepts as the basis of that doctrine can lead to unjust outcomes for young people.