How People Judge What Is Reasonable

A classic debate concerns whether reasonableness should be understood statistically (e.g., reasonableness is what is common) or prescriptively (e.g., reasonableness is what is good). This Article elaborates and defends a third possibility. Reasonableness is a partly statistical and partly prescriptive “hybrid,” reflecting both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Experiments reveal that people apply reasonableness as a hybrid concept, and the Article argues that a hybrid account offers the best general theory of reasonableness. First, the Article investigates how ordinary people judge what is reasonable. Reasonableness sits at the core of countless legal standards, yet little work has investigated how ordinary people (i.e., potential jurors) actually make reasonableness judgments. Experiments reveal that judgments of reasonableness are systematically intermediate between judgments of the relevant average and ideal across numerous legal domains. For example, participants’ mean judgment of the legally reasonable number of weeks’ delay before a criminal trial (ten weeks) falls between the judged average (seventeen weeks) and ideal (seven weeks). So too for the reasonable num- ber of days to accept a contract offer, the reasonable rate of attorneys’ fees, the reasonable loan interest rate, and the reasonable annual number of loud events on a football field in a residential neighborhood. Judgment of reasonableness is better predicted by both statistical and prescriptive factors than by either factor alone. This Article uses this experimental discovery to develop a normative view of reasonableness. It elaborates an account of reasonableness as a hybrid standard, arguing that this view offers the best general theory of reasonableness, one that applies correctly across multiple legal domains. Moreover, this hybrid feature is the historical essence of legal reasonableness: the original use of the “reasonable person” and the “man on the Clapham omnibus” aimed to reflect both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Empirically, reasonableness is a hybrid judgment. And normatively, reasonableness should be applied as a hybrid standard

Knowledge and reasonableness

The notion of relevance plays a role in many accounts of knowledge and knowledge ascription. Although use of the notion is well-motivated, theorists struggle to codify relevance. A reasonable person standard of relevance addresses this codification problem, and provides an objective and flexible standard of relevance; however, treating relevance as reasonableness seems to allow practical factors to determine whether one has knowledge or not—so-called “pragmatic encroachment.” I argue that a fuller understanding of reasonableness and of the role of practical factors in the acquisition of knowledge lets us avoid pragmatic encroachment

Constitutional Reasonableness

The concept of reasonableness pervades constitutional doctrine. The concept has long served to structure common law doctrines from negligence to criminal law, but its rise in constitutional law is more recent and diverse. This Article aims to unpack surprisingly different formulations of what the term reasonable means in constitutional doctrine, which actors it applies to, and how it is used. First, the underlying concept of reasonableness that courts adopt varies, with judges using competing objective, subjective, utility-based or custom-based standards. For some rights, courts incorporate more than one usage at the same time. Second, the objects of the reasonableness standard vary, assessed from the perspective of judges, officials, legislators, or citizens, and from the perspective of individual decision-makers or general institutional or government perspectives. Third, judges may variously apply a constitutional reasonableness standard to a right, to the assertion of defenses, waivers, or limitations on obtaining a remedy for the violation of a right, or to standards of review. The use of the common term reasonableness” to such different purposes can blur distinctions between each of these three categories of standards. The flexibility and malleability of reasonableness may account for its ubiquity and utility. Entire constitutional standards can - and have - shifted their meaning entirely as judges shift from one concept or usage of reasonableness while appearing not to change the “reasonableness” standard or to depart from precedent. That ambiguity across multiple dimensions explains both the attraction and the danger of constitutional reasonableness. In this Article, I point the way to an alternative: regulatory constitutional reasonableness, in which reasonableness is presumptively informed by objective and empirically-informed standards of care, rather than a set of shape-shifting inquiries

How and Why the Per Se Rule Against Price-Fixing Went Wrong

Most scholars believe the Supreme Court dropped its per se rule against price-fixing in Appalachian Coals (1933), re-instituting that rule in Socony-Vacuum (1940), but that the rule ignored "reasonableness" until BMI (1979), and that Maricopa (1982) relied on Socony to step back from "reasonableness" again. However, the view that Socony's per se rule had nothing to do with "reasonableness" came from unreasonably ignoring Socony's comments on Appalachian Coals, which came from misunderstanding Appalachian Coals by ignoring the economic implications of the facts the district court found. Those implications show that Appalachian Coals, Socony, and BMI all gave the same price-fixing rule.

Sufficient condition for Blackhole formation in spherical gravitational collapse

A sufficient condition for the validity of Cosmic Censorship in spherical gravitational collapse is formulated and proved. The condition relies on an attractive mathematical property of the apparent horizon, which holds if ''minimal'' requirements of physical reasonableness are satisfied by the matter model.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX2

Constitutional Law: Supreme Court Delineates the Relationship Between the Fourth and Fifth Amendments

In Schmerber v. California the Supreme Court reaffirmed the admissibility of blood test evidence procured without consent of the accused. Rejecting petitioner\u27s fourth and fifth amendment claims, the Court utilized a refined definition of the privilege against self-incrimination in determining the reasonableness of intracorporeal search and seizure. Moreover, the approach taken by the majority arguably presages the demise of the mere evidence rule

Generally Covariant Conservative Energy-Momentum for Gravitational Anyons

We obtain a generally covariant conservation law of energy-momentum for gravitational anyons by the general displacement transform. The energy-momentum currents have also superpotentials and are therefore identically conserved. It is shown that for Deser's solution and Clement's solution, the energy vanishes. The reasonableness of the definition of energy-momentum may be confirmed by the solution for pure Einstein gravity which is a limit of vanishing Chern-Simons coulping of gravitational anyons.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, no figure

Reasonableness, Murder, and Modern Science

Originally titled “Is It Murder in Tennessee to Kill a Chimpanzee,” this article argues in some detail that typical legal definitions of “murder” as involving the intentional killing of “a reasonable being” would require classifying the intentional killing of chimpanzees as murder

Fair trade in insurance industry: Premium determination of Taiwan automobile insurance

This paper examines premium determination of voluntary automobile insurance policy and risk classification under a heavily regulated rating system in Taiwan. We investigate the distribution of actual premium and pure premium, based on unique data to test if premium reflect appropriate gender-age factor. The reasonableness of loading and the difference in driving exposure between policyholder and driver are investigated for three different types of policy. An adjustment of gender-age premium coefficients is called for