The Reasonable Person, The Pursuit of Justice, and Negligence Law

Abstract

In common law jurisdictions, the reasonable person is a commonly encountered ¢gure.The reasonable person and the associated idea of reasonableness feature in a number of ¢elds, notably negligence law, criminal law, administrative law, and the law relating to sexual harassment in the workplace. In these areas of the law, judges invoke the reasonable person as a standard by reference towhich they assess the conduct of defendants, claimants, and the decisions of public o⁄cials. But who is the reasonable person? In negligence law, judges and commentators have emphasised the reasonable person’s ordinariness. Thus, they have spoken of the ‘man’ (or, nowadays,‘person’) on the Clapham omnibus or the Bondi tram. This emphasis on ordinariness brings with it a concern with community standards as relevant to the question ‘What is reasonable?’ Hence the reasonable person has been described as ‘the ordinary citizen’ who seeks to act on those considerations that regulate ‘community behaviour’. Here, we are presentedwith a picture of an addressee of the law who is co-operative (perhaps even other-regarding) and, as such, ready to play his or her unremarkable, but practically useful, part in community life. Moreover, descriptions of this sort bespeak negligence law’s com-