Also known as: puer · pueri · puerility · puerilities · childhood · infancy · minority
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A period of childhood in Roman law extending up to age seventeen and marking the minimum age for pleading before a magistrate.
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Pierre Poulin, age sixteen and still in pueritia under Roman law, contracted to purchase a warehouse from Premier Manufacturing. Before closing a fire destroyed the building. Under the majority rule the risk had already shifted to Pierre at contract formation, so he remained obligated to pay the full price even though the improvements were gone.
Paige Porter, a city official, enacted a contracting program reserving twenty percent of municipal work for firms owned by persons under eighteen. The program failed strict scrutiny because it rested on generalized assumptions about youth rather than evidence of specific past discrimination against minors in the local construction industry.
Preston Pratt, age fifteen and within pueritia, committed the misdemeanor of reckless driving while joyriding with friends. When a pedestrian died, the court applied the majority rule and convicted him of manslaughter only after finding that death was a foreseeable result of the underlying offense.
Phuong Pham, age sixteen, bought a used car from Pinnacle Holdings for cash. Two weeks later she returned the vehicle and demanded her money back. The court permitted disaffirmance because her status during pueritia protected her from the consequences of an improvident bargain.
Pierce Patterson, a high-school junior, declined to recite the pledge of allegiance during morning exercises. School officials sought to compel participation, but the court held that the First Amendment protects a minor's choice even while still within the age of pueritia.
Pamela Phillips, a seventeen-year-old resident, joined a suit alleging that legislative districts diluted the voting strength of young citizens. The court addressed whether the claim presented a justiciable controversy concerning the political rights of persons still in pueritia.
Pueritia extends from the end of infantia to age seventeen, the point at which a person could plead before a magistrate.
Supporting sources
The infancy defense allows a person still in pueritia to disaffirm contracts to protect against overreaching by adults.
A minor's apparent capacity during pueritia can render consent effective for intentional torts when the minor understands the nature of the conduct.
Courts determine the availability of defenses tied to pueritia by the defendant's physical age at the time of the offense.
…90 days for a female. See, for example, Aristotle, Hist. Anim. 7.3.583b; Gen. Anim. 2.3.736, 2.5.741; Hippocrates, Lib. de Nat. Puer., No. 10. Aristotle's thinking derived from his three-stage theory of life: vegetable, animal, rational. The vegetable stage was reached at conception, the animal at "animation," and the…