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by mehrdadn 2864 days ago
A reasonable person is not a random (or more sensibly, the average) person though. I think a reasonable person would agree with my explanation. I'm not sure the average person would.

Edit: Apparently multiple people are misreading and assuming I'm trying to flatter myself here. "A reasonable person" is a pre-defined legal term that I have little choice but to use verbatim here. It's essentially a proper noun, but without capitalization. Specifically, I'm _not_ describing my own rationality when I say "a reasonable person" would agree with me. What I'm saying is that I think the legal "a reasonable person" would reason the same way I just reasoned. If you still don't get what I'm saying: had the legal term instead been "a stupid monkey", then my sentence would have read "a stupid monkey would agree with me".
1 comments
vilmosi 2864 days ago
Oh, get off your high horse.

I'm not sure you read the article. The whole point of a "reasonable person" is that it represents an "average person".

> this person is seen to represent a composite of a relevant community's judgement as to how a typical member of said community should behave in situations that might pose a threat of harm (through action or inaction) to the public

This is why we have a jury of our peers picked at random. The randomness is not random.

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dang 2864 days ago
> Oh, get off your high horse.

That sort of personal swipe will get you banned here. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not do this kind of thing on HN, we'd appreciate it.

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mehrdadn 2864 days ago
> Oh, get off your high horse. I'm not sure you read the article. The whole point of a "reasonable person" is that it represents an "average person".

Er, pardon? This isn't my high horse. This is literally your own article's text, which you yourself apparently didn't read:

> As a legal fiction, the "reasonable person" is not an average person or a typical person, leading to great difficulties in applying the concept in some criminal cases, especially in regards to the partial defence of provocation.

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