contract-law common-law minor legal-history
What is the history of minors being unable to bind themselves to contracts?
<p>What was the first jurisdiction that had special rules for contracts to which a person under a certain age is a party? How did the modern concept that people under 18 can back out of contracts except those for essential products or services develop in English common law?</p>

<p>This was at least a feature of Athenian law. In the
<a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0142%3Aspeech%3D10%3Asection%3D10" rel="noreferrer">Aristarchus</a> of Isaeus (early 4th century BC), it is recorded that &quot;the law expressly forbids any child—or woman—to contract for the disposal of more than a bushel of barley&quot;. This is a sufficiently ancient and transmissible principle of law that there well may have been Egyptian and Sumerian analogs. You might get the details that you seek by focusing on medieval English common law.</p>
