The Objective is to be Subjective

I've said it before and now I have to say it again, when it comes to law, nobody has a clue. The again, for any social science, as long as you can construct a logical enough argument you can prove the theoretical sky to be red.

I guess my complaint is directed at the assignment I'm currently doing. It's about a 'reasonable person' test when it comes to assessing the breach of duty in the tort of negligence. The idea of an objective standard for the reasonable person sounds pleasing and the use of it would be ok but for fact that all of us are quite different and have varying degrees of knowledge, physical characteristcs and mental capacities by which we act in a given situation. Thus the compentencies by which a 'reasonable person' should act in a situation really needs to be dictated, to an extent, subjectively. Considering I've read a few bullsh*t papers for this assignment I think I could crap on for some time as to what I think of the theory, how it plays out and whether it makes sense to me but the point I'm driving at is, it doesn't seem to make sense to anyone. Judges, juries , lawyers and anyone else interpret legal principles in a hundred different ways and tend to use the escape route of distinguishing facts in a given case as a reason as to why legal principles developed in earlier cases shouldn't apply in the current case. So now the rest of us are left wondering what the hell we're supposed to do with judgments that are conflicting and varied ? I don't freakin' know, I can't make heads or tails of certain reasoning sometimes. If it were me I'd simply say, 'this is the rule', you break it, you're gone, I don't care if you have two left feet, have a single digit IQ, are the most competant librarian in the world. Once you've accepted the fact that we live together, in a society, then our freedom of action is dictated by the security of person that we owe to the people that we're interacting with. A reasonable standard of care owed to another person needs to be the same across the board as the injury that a person suffers doesn't make a difference after the action has happened....ok....so I really don't believe that line but whatever, it's said.

I'm over it, I'll be back later.