When do your constitutional rights begin?

Question

At birth, at conception? when you are 18?

Answer 1

What would those be???
Death and taxes???

Answer 2

There is no clearcut answer to your question - it depends on the constitutional right and who is asserting it and under what circumstances.

Many of the answers provided above probably refer to statutes that allow people to marry, drive, consume alcohol, etc. - all of which vary from state to state and all of which are very specific. But these are not determinative of constitutional rights, which are subject to a much more vague body of federal case law. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state cannot execute someone who was age 16 when he committed a murder, but does that mean that the minimum age is 16? Maybe the minimum age is 17. Nobody knows until the Supreme Court decides to hear a case involving a 17 year-old and the attorney makes that argument.

The relavant question is not so much "when?" as "what?" and "how?"

For example, you might ask the following question: At what age does a child have a constitutional right to smoke? Answer: There is NO constitutional right to smoke, so the state can set an minimum age to whatever it wants to promote a legitimate state interest. For that matter, the state could ban smoking outright (although, curiously enough, it cannot ban advertising on smoking outright as long as smoking is legal - see below).

The biggest misconception about constitutional rights is that they are absolute, when they are not. You are dealing with a relative concept. For example, you can say that a fetus has a constitutional right to live at "viability" (see the answerer who cited the Casey case above), but that right must be weighed against the constitutional right of a woman not to be forced by a government to carry a child to term, the latter of which is superior in many circumstances in the eyes of the Supreme Court.

Even the most venerated constitutional right - free speech - is subject to being banned if the state can prove a compelling state interest in doing so (to date, these are few and far between). More importantly, the right to free speech can always be subject to time/place/manner restrictions if narrowly-tailored by the state to deal with a specific problem. In this regard, age makes a difference - but not in any clear-cut way, as your question suggests.

Two examples:

While pornography depicting adults cannot be banned, it's dissemination can be reasonably limited in time/place/manner (e.g., through zoning laws). However, pornography depicting children can be banned because the state has a compelling state interest in protecting the victims of this pornography - the children appearing in it. Apparently, adulthood keeps the actors in pornography from being "victims" in need of state protection.

Furthermore, a state school system has a much greater lattitude in restricting how/what/when student-writers can publish in school newspapers because the state has a competing interest that does not exist with respect to adult-writers - i.e., the orderly education of children.

Answer 3

While minors are legally more restricted than adults, there are only few Constitutional rights they loose completely. The two I can name of the top of my head is the right to vote and the right to bear arms.

People may say that minors have no rights, but they do. Minors still have Freedom of Religion, Speech, Press. They still recieve the benefit of Due Process of Law, no cruel and unusual punishment, no excessive bail, and most of the Bill of Rights. Like previously stated, minors are just more restricted, but they do not loose their rights completely.

So Constitutional rights begin at birth...Though, more specifically, probably when the child as matured to the point that he/she starts to use them. However, theoritically, they start at birth.

....

The question of if they start at conception is one that always leads into the abortion debate. At the moment, though, because of the different Supreme Courts multiple rulings and legislative laws on the subject, the Constitutional Right to Life starts at three months. However, that Right ends if the Mother's life is put at stake. The Right to Life is also the only Constitutional Right that has been given to fetus's.

Answer 4

At birth, but the rights of persons under the age of 18 are interrpreted differently then those 18 or over.

Answer 5

Actually at birth but some are limited on age some on a state by state basis like some states let you drink at 18 others at 21

Answer 6

Some kick in at birth, such as the right against self-incrimination. Others, such as the right to a jury trial, don't start until you are 18.

Answer 7

Legally, they partially commence before someone's birth.

'Nasciturus pro iam nato habetur quotiens de comodus eius agitur'--- 'If it is in the interest of the unborn baby, it shall be regarded as it was born' (Codex Iustiniani).
---such practice was developed in ancient Rome and remains to the present day in Europe. In the U.S., I suppose, an unborn baby also has its constitutional rights, e.g., regarding inheritance after birth, etc.

Answer 8

18, 16 if you have a baby or your emancipated. basically any age under 18 your still under the care of someone else so you have no rights.

Answer 9

At birth, before that, you are not a citizen.
Once you are born in this country, you become a citizen.

Answer 10

At viability.
This was the holding of Planed Parenthood v. Casey.

Answer 11

I'm afraid they have become obsolete they've all been either taken or signed away. Sad but they are gone