Cambridge Socio-Legal Group Seminar: 'The Reasonable Person: A biographical introduction to an empathetic character' *Now online only*

** Originally due to have been held on 30 November 2022. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. **

Speaker: Valentin Jeutner, Oxford University

Abstract: The presentation argues that the reasonable person is, at heart, an empathetic perspective-taking device born amidst the British industrialization under the influence of Scottish Enlightenment thinking. The talk is based on a nearly completed monograph which traces the role of the reasonable person standard across time, legal fields and countries (including the standard’s role in the British colonies). The monograph argues that the reasonable person concept is meant to invite judges, jury-members, legal subjects to engage in taking another person’s perspective when assessing their own or another person’s conduct. The perspective of another is taken by means of empathy – i.e. by means of feeling, sensing what others might feel or sense in a particular situation. Both perspective-taking and empathy were key-concepts for Scottish sentimentalists including David Hume and Adam Smith and the talk aims to show that it can plausibly be argued that there is a connection between their thinking and the contemporaneous emergence of the reasonable person’s modern manifestation in English courts. The talk refers to the reasonable person’s 'modern manifestation' because I also aim to show that while the reasonable person is, presently, a common law creature, ancestors of the reasonable person can be found in legal systems that date back not only to Roman law and its commonly invoked bonus paterfamilias but also all the way to the earliest legal system in ancient Egypt.

Bio: Valentin Jeutner is an Associate Professor of Law at Lund University, Sweden. He was educated at Oxford (BA Law), Georgetown (LLM), Cambridge (PhD Law), Lund (MTh Theology). Valentin is a member of the New York Bar and has held visiting positions at the Federal Chancellery of Germany, Münster University, KU Leuven, the Berkman Klein Center of Harvard Law School, and Malta University. Since 2013, he has been affiliated with Pembroke College, Oxford. Valentin's teaching and research activities concern foundational questions of (international) law.

Please note this event is now online-only. You can watch and submit questions by registering to attend remotely.

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