Negligence. Subjective or Objective?

Seavey, Warren A.

doi:10.2307/1330404

Cited by 41 publications

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“…Beginning most prominently with Oliver Wendell Holmes’s (1881) classic analysis of the common law, the RPP was thought of as an “objective” standard for assessing liability, and a departure from subjective moralizing. The distinction between objective and subjective legal standards, particularly in cases of negligence, was elaborated in an influential paper by Seavey (1927), who also recognized the inherent difficulty in deciding what qualities or characteristics should be ascribed to the hypothetical RPP. This vagueness or ambiguity in estimating a RPP’s beliefs and actions is what, in our view, leads people, consciously or unconsciously, to superimpose their own characteristics or values onto the RPP.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The reasonably prudent person, or me?

Simpson

Alicke

Gordon

et al. 2020

J Applied Social Pyschol

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Abundant research concerning the role of the self in social judgment suggests that people have a strong tendency to evaluate others’ actions, preferences, and values with regard to their own. Reliance on self‐standards contrasts with the legal standard of the reasonably prudent person (RPP) standard, which presumably represents the behavior of the average person in the community. In three studies that investigated judgments of harmful actions, we compared the influence of self‐standards (“How likely would I behave in this manner?”) and RPP estimates (“How likely would the average, reasonable person in the community behave in this manner?”). In each study, self‐standards influenced participants’ judgments of guilt and the acceptability of the defendant's actions more than did judgments about what a RPP would do. Studies 2a and 2b also investigated attitudinal differences in susceptibility to RPP consensus manipulations. Participants judged a target who committed murder in self‐defense, and also projected their own hypothetical behavior in the scenario. When the manipulated RPP disapproved of the murder, the target was deemed more culpable, but only among participants who themselves were unwilling to commit the hypothetical act. Participants who expressed willingness to murder in self‐defense were unaffected by RPP information, regardless of whether or not it was consistent with their own stance. Hence, RPP information at best exerted minimal influence on juridical judgments, and only among certain participants. Implications of these findings for legal applications of the RPP, and for the role of the self in social judgment, are discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The reasonably prudent person, or me?

Simpson

Alicke

Gordon

et al. 2020

J Applied Social Pyschol

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“…In Anglo-American law, this is referred to as the reasonably prudent person (RPP) standard. The reasonableness standard has been discussed and elaborated most extensively in the law as a means to provide jurors with an objective basis (Heller 1998, Seavey 1927) for assessing liability.…”

Section: The Reasonably Prudent Personmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reasonable Person Standard: Psychological and Legal Perspectives

Alicke

Weigel

2021

Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci.

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In criminal cases of self-defense and provocation, and civil cases of negligence, culpability is often decided with reference to how a reasonably prudent person (RPP) would have behaved in similar circumstances. The RPP is said to be an objective standard in that it eschews consideration of a defendant's unique background or characteristics. We discuss theory and evidence suggesting that in morally relevant judgments, including those involving negligence, self-defense, and provocation, the tendency to rely on the self—on one's own values and predilections—dominates considerations of the RPP. We consider subjective standards that have been proposed as alternatives to the RPP and review research on this topic. We conclude by considering avenues for future research, particularly addressing conditions in which self-standards of reasonableness are most likely to prevail. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 17 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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“…6 6 This point is already implicit in an observation made by Warren Seavey, saying that “[t]here is, however, an element of coercion in an objective standard of intelligence since the general tendency is to restrain action by those of sub‐normal mentality or, at least, to induce them to use greater efforts to prevent harm to others”; Seavey 1927, 12. …”

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confidence: 99%

Can Tort Law Be Moral?

Dorfman¹

2010

Ratio Juris

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According to the established orthodoxy, the law of private wrongsespecially common law torts-fails to map onto our moral universe. Four objections in particular have caught the imagination of skeptics about the moral foundations of tort law: They purport to cast doubt over the moral appeal of the duty of care element; they target the seemingly inegalitarian objective standard of care; they object to the morally arbitrary elements of factual causation and harm; and they complain about the unnecessary extension of liability under the guise of the proximate cause element. Analyzing these four prevailing arguments concerning the a-moral (and, with regard to some interpretations, anti-moral) character of tort law, I shall seek to show that the normative structure of tort law can, nonetheless, be reconstructed so as to reflect, to an important extent, our considered judgments about basic moral principles.

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Negligence. Subjective or Objective?

Cited by 41 publications

References 0 publications

The reasonably prudent person, or me?

The reasonably prudent person, or me?

The Reasonable Person Standard: Psychological and Legal Perspectives

Can Tort Law Be Moral?

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