Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T20:22:15.635Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The Reasonable Person in the Colonies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2024

Valentin Jeutner
Affiliation:
Lunds Universitet, Sweden
Get access

Summary

This chapter considers how and in what contexts the reasonable person standard was applied by the selected colonial courts of the British Empire. The key question is whether the reasonable person imported from England remained English in substance – whether it continued to resemble a man on the Clapham omnibus – or the courts tailored the standard to the specific circumstances before them. As the first section shows, there are many cases in which the reasonable person was equated with an Englishman. This suggests that the standard was static in nature. However, the second section of the chapter complicates this conclusion by introducing numerous cases and settings in which the standard was adapted to specific, local contexts – sometimes so successfully that local variants of it developed. Drawing together the first two sections, the final part considers the nexus between a standard’s resemblance to the people to whom it is applied and the authority of law.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Reasonable Person
A Legal Biography
, pp. 80 - 105
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×