Definition

Reasonable minded people are those that use words rather than force to navigate disagreements. In the context of 3L, ‘reasonable minds’ refers to those who accept the Legal Principle and act in good faith to correctly interpret it. Reasonable minded people will disagree on a lot of things - a free society should expect and welcome this. To disagree with the Legal Principle is to conclude that it is permissible to aggress against a peaceful person instead of use conversation - by rejecting reason, they are unreasonable.

Reasonable interpretation of the Legal Principle

Determining what is reasonable vs unreasonable behaviour is key to determining if the Legal Principle has been breached, but it is subjective. Via the means of discourse, different people will draw the line on the continuum between unreasonable and reasonable behaviour applied to different topics in different places for different reasons. These are unavoidable grey areas that must be decided at the local community level.

Example: age of consent

• There is no objectively correct age at which a child becomes an adult capable of making informed decisions for themselves.
• We can look around the world at countries with well developed legal systems and infer that a reasonable range with is 15-20 years old.
  • Most countries set the range between 16-18 years of age. The country with the highest age of consent is Bahrain, at 21 years of age, and there are some countries in Europe that set it as low as 14 with some additional restrictions.
• We can conclude that it is unreasonable to expect a 13 year old or younger to be sufficiently mature to be in a position to make informed consent to have sex, and that it is similarly unreasonable to prevent a 22 year old or older from doing so.