Originally Posted by
Aimless
He's saying that on the whole it's good to follow the law and to not allow for arbitrary exceptions. More specifically, he's affirming the principle of differentiating between adults and children.
That being said, there is no absolute requirement--in principle--to adhere to a specific and arbitrary chronological age when it comes to deciding whether or not a person should be treated as an adult in a given situation. That's esp. true when you're close to the cutoff, eg. about to turn 18 in a situation where the cutoff is 18yrs. So, Khen, I don't think it would have been wrong or dangerous to treat him as an adult in this situation. It's not comparable to treating a 12-y-o as an adult.
Curious as to how often we see the above reasoning going in the opposite direction, eg. treating someone over 18 as a juvenile.