The Many Faces of the Reasonable Person

2019 ◽  
pp. 271-303
Author(s):  
John Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Reasonable Person ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
Select Group ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

The reasonable person is the longest-established of ‘the select group of personalities who inhabit our legal village and are available to be called upon when a problem arises that needs to be solved objectively’. These days, he has neighbours as diverse as the ordinary prudent man of business, the officious bystander, the reasonable juror properly directed, and the fair-minded and informed observer. In the minds of many, however, he is most closely associated with the law of torts, particularly the law of negligence. Because the reasonable person is used to set standards in so many corners of the law, it is natural to think that the standards he sets must be legal ones. This chapter seeks to convince the reader otherwise. It suggests that the services of the reasonable person are in such heavy demand in the law precisely because he sets extra-legal standards, and indeed extra-legal standards of a notably versatile kind.

The Constitutional Principle of Accountability: A Study of Contemporary South African Case Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuks Okpaluba
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Principle ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Law ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Many

‘Accountability’ is one of the democratic values entrenched in the Constitution of South Africa, 1996. It is a value recognised throughout the Constitution and imposed upon the law-making organs of state, the Executive, the Judiciary and all public functionaries. This constitutional imperative is given pride of place among the other founding values: equality before the law, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. This study therefore sets out to investigate how the courts have grappled with the interpretation and application of the principle of accountability, the starting point being the relationship between accountability and judicial review. Therefore, in the exercise of its judicial review power, a court may enquire whether the failure of a public functionary to comply with a constitutional duty of accountability renders the decision made illegal, irrational or unreasonable. One of the many facets of the principle of accountability upon which this article dwells is to ascertain how the courts have deployed that expression in making the state and its agencies liable for the delictual wrongs committed against an individual in vindication of a breach of the individual’s constitutional right in the course of performing a public duty. Here, accountability and breach of public duty; the liability of the state for detaining illegal immigrants contrary to the prescripts of the law; the vicarious liability of the state for the criminal acts of the police and other law-enforcement officers (as in police rape cases and misuse of official firearms by police officers), and the liability of the state for delictual conduct in the context of public procurement are discussed. Having carefully analysed the available case law, this article concludes that no public functionary can brush aside the duty of accountability wherever it is imposed without being in breach of a vital constitutional mandate. Further, it is the constitutional duty of the courts, when called upon, to declare such act or conduct an infringement of the Constitution.

Torts and Other Wrongs

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Strict Liability ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Reasonable Person ◽  
Reasonable Person Standard ◽  
The Law

Torts and Other Wrongs is a collection of eleven of the author’s essays on the theory of the law of torts and its place in the law more generally. Two new essays accompany nine previously published pieces, a number of which are already established classics of theoretical writing on private law. Together they range across the distinction between torts and other wrongs, the moral significance of outcomes, the nature and role of corrective and distributive justice, the justification of strict liability, the nature of the reasonable person standard, and the role of public policy in private law adjudication. Though focused on the law of torts, the wide-ranging analysis in each chapter will speak to theorists of private law more generally.

Legal Principles, Constitutional Principles, and Judicial Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-930
Author(s):  
Han-Ru Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
English Language ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Logical Connection ◽  
Select Group ◽  
The Law ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract Principles form part and parcel of our law and legal discourse, so much so that we seldom think of what they are and what they entail. For centuries they have been invoked daily to interpret and argue about the law. But when it comes to matters of constitutional law, principles are further called upon to perform a perennially controversial function: to help police the boundaries of state action. In most common law jurisdictions with a written constitution, this function of principles runs against the generally accepted view that the exercise of judicial review must ultimately be governed and restricted by the terms of the national constitution. This Article argues that the exercise of judicial review based on principles is not confined to that view, once the relationship between principles and the constitution is unpacked and recontextualized. While the English-language literature on principles over the past half-century has been dominated by a select group of Anglo-American scholars, there is a wealth of untapped insights from other parts of the world. One of the major contributions by continental legal theorists even predates the earliest modern Anglo-American writings on the subject by more than a decade. Overall, the law literature in common law and civil law systems reveals a significant degree of commonalities in the basic characters of principles despite the absence of initial evidence of transsystemic borrowings. The wider conceptual inquiry also displays a shift in the focus of the debate, from the protracted search for a clear-cut distinction between rules and principles towards a redefinition of principles’ relationship with “written” law, be it in the form of a civil code or a constitutional instrument. From this inquiry reemerge “unwritten” principles not deriving from codified or legislated law although they have been used to develop the law. Translated into the constitutional domain, these unwritten principles bear no logical connection with the terms of the constitution. Their main functions cover the entire spectrum from serving as interpretive aids to making law by filling gaps. The theoretical framework fits with an ongoing four-century-old narrative of the evolution of constitutional principles and judicial review across most common law-based systems. Constitutional principles are another area where Anglo-American law and legal discourse is less exceptional and more universal than what many assume. Throughout modern Western history, legal battles have been fought and ensuing developments have been made on the grounds of principles. Our law and jurisprudence remain based on them.

scholarly journals The End of Roman Juristic Writing

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 228-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Watson
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Support ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
The Law

I first met Reuven Yaron in 1958, and we immediately became fast friends. The friendship with him and Shoshana has deepened over the years, and will continue. He and I have frequently read one another's draft papers. I thank him for many years of intellectual and emotional support, and hope he will take pleasure in this offering that he has had no possibility of criticising in advance.The traditional date for the end of classical Roman law is 235 when the emperor Alexander Severus was murdered, or slightly later with the death of Modestinus, the last of the great known jurists. Thereafter, few original juristic books were written, and it is widely but not universally believed that a decline in legal standards began almost at once.For many scholars there seems to exist a connection, sometimes simply implicit, between the failure of jurists to write new books, and a decline in legal standards. I should like to suggest there was a different reason for jurists ceasing to write new law books. They had already written them all! The claim that for the period, say fifty years, after around 235, all the law books had already been written seems extreme, but is easy to substantiate.

The End of Protection: The Danish ‘Paradigm Shift’ and the Law of Cessation

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-85
Author(s):  
Nikolas Feith Tan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Refugee Policy ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
Temporary Protection ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legislative Changes

Abstract This contribution discusses the recent ‘paradigm shift’ in Danish refugee policy towards temporary protection and return in light of the law of the international legal standards governing when an asylum state can end the protection of refugees. The article provides an overview of the spectrum of cessation standards drawing on the 1951 Refugee Convention, complementary protection under human rights law and the concept of temporary protection, before setting out the legislative changes making up the Danish ‘paradigm shift’. The Danish case reveals a structural gap in the law of cessation as it regards to complementary protection. The lack of a comprehensive complementary protection framework in some jurisdictions leaves the law open to governments wishing to instrumentalise and minimise protection obligations. Finally, the article analyses legal and policy implications of the policy turn, discussing Denmark’s potential role as a forerunner in temporary protection and cessation, gaps in the law of cessation vis-à-vis complementary protection, and calling for increased scholarly focus on the law of cessation.

Appropriating Law in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred

2007 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura H. Korobkin
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Slave System ◽  
Personal Beliefs ◽  
Great Dismal Swamp ◽  
Dismal Swamp ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual

This essay investigates Harriet Beecher Stowe's interpolation of State v. Mann, a harsh 1829 North Carolina proslavery decision, into her 1856 novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. The essay argues that Stowe's use of State v. Mann continues a conversation about slavery that had been carried on through its text for many years in abolitionist writings. Bringing State v. Mann's circulation history into view shows Stowe engaging the antislavery establishment as well as the legal system, borrowing and imitating its techniques for handling proslavery materials. If her novel is infiltrated and structured by the many legal writings that it assimilates, its fictive world in turn infiltrates, interprets, and alters the significance of the writings she employs, so that proslavery legal writings are made to testify strongly against the slave system that they originally worked to maintain and enforce. Stowe's hybrid text dominates the law while smoothly assimilating it into an interpretive fictive context. Simultaneously, Stowe's typographical cues remind readers of State v. Mann's ongoing, destructive extratextual legal existence. By linking fictive context to legal content, Stowe's novel suggests that slave law must be read and interpreted as a unit that includes the individual suffering it imposes. Misreading State v. Mann as revealing its author's belief in the immorality of slavery, Stowe constructs a fictional judge who upholds slave law despite his personal beliefs. By absorbing, imitating, and besting the strategies and the reach of both legal and abolitionist writings, Dred implicitly stakes a claim for the superior power of political fiction to act in the world.

Reform of Contract Law and Business World

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustapha Mekki
Keyword(s):  
Contract Law ◽  
Economic Environment ◽  
Business World ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
The Law ◽  
Fair Balance

AbstractWith the reform of contract law, will economic players be able to continue to do good business? If the economic environment did not see the reform of the law of obligations as a reform of first urgency, the new law resulting from the ordinance of 10 February 2016 finds a fair balance which should satisfy most economic actors. Admittedly, like any reform, the Ordinance creates new risks: new powers of the judge, multiplication of legal standards, the scope of contractual freedom ... It is then up to the parties, to whom the law assigns more power, to identify its risks and to manage them appropriately by drawing up customized contractual clauses. The success of the reform thus depends on its good reception and its development by practice.

scholarly journals On what a theory of natural law is supposed to be

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-200
Author(s):  
Michael Pakaluk
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Natural Teleology ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Law ◽  
John Finnis ◽  
The Many ◽  
Locus Classicus

A theory may properly be called a theory of natural law, if either it functions as such a theory is expected to function; or it has the expected content; or it is a plausible interpretation of a theory generally acknowledged to be in the tradition of natural law. It functions as such a theory if it supports appeals to natural law intended to ‘contextualize’ human law. It has the expected content, if it adverts to providential, natural teleology as the basis for a law given to us prior to convention. It would clearly be located in the tradition, and rightly accounted as such a theory, if it were a plausible interpretation of Aquinas’ Treatise on Law, which is the locus classicus for the philosophical treatment of natural law. But the ‘New Natural Law,’ first expounded in Natural Law and Natural Rights (NLNR) of John Finnis, meets none of these criteria. NLNR seems best construed, then, as a contribution to the «law and morality » debate, not a theory of natural law. It gives merely another ‘method of ethics’ along with the many others put forward in the 20th c. If so, the philosophical work needed for a persuasive, contemporary revival of natural law still remains to be done.

scholarly journals The Iron Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Sims Bainbridge
Keyword(s):  
Social Disorganization ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
The Law ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Old Republic ◽  
The Many

Star Wars: The Old Republic and Fallen Earth are two of the many recent online gameworlds that depict disintegrating and conflict-ridden societies, in which the very legitimacy of the law is in doubt. Thus they become vehicles for critique of real modern society, and intentionally or unintentionally reflect social-scientific theories of social disorganization, institutional functionality, and the origins of law. This essay examines these examples in terms of the Iron Law of Oligarchy proposed a century ago by Robert Michels, and related classical theories that either contradict or extend it.

D. 41,2,3,21: Titulierte Besitzarten, Erwerbsgründeund das unum genus possidendi

2013 ◽  
Vol 81 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 527-559
Author(s):  
Eric H. Pool
Keyword(s):  
Roman Law ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

D. 41,2,3,21 turns on the issue of how possessio is to be divided. Understanding its content presupposes making a distinction that was self-evident for the Roman jurist but has never been made by later scholars of Roman law. They do not distinguish the varying ‘causes’ of possession (pro emptore … pro suo) which mark different types of lawful possession, and the ‘causes’ of acquisition (causae adquirendi) which justify obtaining possesion as by an owner. Taking a legally valid sale as an example the distinctive features of (possessio) pro emptore in contrast to emptio are established as well as their relevance for procedural practice. In particular there are no less than six forms of action in the law of inheritance for which these features are relevant. Next, the many negative effects of failing to make this distinction are indicated. There follows an in depth analysis and interpretation of the main phrases in Paul’s text: (i) quod nostrum non est; (ii) causae ad­­quirendi, in particular iustae causae traditionis; (iii) unum genus possidendi; (iv) species infinitae.

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