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vilmosi | 7 years ago

It's called the "reasonable person". It's a test used for cases that are not covered by an existing law.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person?wprov=sfla...

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mehrdadn|7 years 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".

vilmosi|7 years 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.