Introduction: ‘Personal’ Problems: Rethinking the Reasonable Person

Abstract

For well over a century, the reasonable person — or perhaps, more accurately, the reasonable man — has been a central figure in the landscape of the law. The reasonable person has, for instance, embodied the fault component of the law of negligence and played an important role in criminal law, particularly in defence. He has also come to personify the appropriate level of care in various aspects of contract law (in mitigation of damages, for example), in administrative law (as in the regulation of sexual harassment), and elsewhere. A central focus of this book is the operation of the reasonable person standard in the law of negligence. Although this inquiry focuses on the use of the reasonable person for assessing responsibility in civil law and in criminal law, it also contains some lessons for thinking more systematically about his other appearances. The book also looks at the egalitarian concerns in a core problem of fault and responsibility.