A Critical Review of Arguments in Favor of Requirement of Criminal Adulthoodfrom Views of Fiqh and Law

In recent years, some scholars in the field of penal law has propounded the term “criminal adulthood” as regards criminal responsibility issues. As far as the writings of Shiite faqihs are concerned, the concept of adulthood mostly refers to legal issues concerning the capacity of satisfaction. Although the term adulthood has an essential role in the capacity of satisfaction in transactions and in its absence transactions are null and void, inclusion of adulthood, along with maturity, as a condition for religious responsibility and criminal responsibility requires religious grounds. Although apparently it seems that such view has no ground in the Quran and hadiths and that it is not supported by early faqihs, some faqihs and jurists believe that there is a definition of adulthood as “sound mind and intellectual ability”, which as a general term applies to criminal issues. This research considers the arguments of advocates of criminal adulthoods to be insufficient and critically reviews their arguments.