There is a statutory right for employees not to be unfairly dismissed. The right usually requires a qualifying period of continuous employment, and claim has to be made to an employment tribunal within three months of the effective date of termination. The employee has to prove dismissal has occurred, though resignation in response to a fundamental breach of contract by the employer counts as constructive dismissal. The courts have interpreted the statutory test of fairness to require proof that the employer acted outside of the range of reasonable responses to the fault of the employee. Some reasons for dismissal are automatically unfair. The normal remedy for unfair dismissal in practice is not reinstatement but a modest award of compensation for which there is an upper limit.

The reasonable person standard is key to both Criminal Law and Torts. What does and does not count as reasonable behavior and decision-making is frequently deter- mined by lay jurors. Hence, laypeople’s understanding of the term must be considered, especially whether they use it predominately in an evaluative fashion. In this corpus study based on supervised machine learning models, we investigate whether laypeople use the expression “reasonable” mainly as a descriptive, an evaluative, or merely a value-associated term. We find that “reasonable” is predicted to be an evaluative term in the majority of cases. This supports prescriptive accounts, and challenges descriptive and hybrid accounts of the term – at least given the way we operationalize the latter. Interestingly, other expressions often used interchangeably in jury instructions (e.g. “careful,” “ordinary,” “prudent,” etc.), however, are predicted to be descriptive. This indicates a discrepancy between the intended use of the term “reasonable” and the understanding lay jurors might bring into the courtroom.

Legal outcomes often depend on whether conduct is reasonable. But how do we judge what is reasonable? What are the relevant criteria? Legal theorists have long debated these questions. This chapter outlines some of the leading theories. It then describes recent experimental work probing whether those theories align with lay judgments of what is reasonable. The findings indicate that reasonableness is best understood as a hybrid concept – a product of multiple inputs. Working from this perspective, the chapter raises important additional questions about reasonableness – questions that experimental jurisprudence is well suited to explore.

The introduction begins by acknowledging that the reasonable person is not just a powerful legal concept but also a legendary legal figure that is little understood. It explains briefly how the concept operates in practice and introduces the book’s core argument concerning empathetic perspective taking. Outlining the structure of the book, the introduction then proceeds to addressing the limitations of the analysis and the unique challenge of setting out to write a biography of the reasonable person without either caricaturising or fetishising it.

This chapter takes a psychological perspective on tort law decision-making, drawing on psychological theory, empirical research, and legal practices in tort litigation to assess the state of knowledge about decision-making in tort cases. It examines how plaintiffs decide to bring a lawsuit, how defendants respond, and the process of dispute resolution in tort cases. Most tort cases do not go to trial, but trial decisions remain significant as a framework for negotiations. The chapter also draws on psychological theory and research to describe how the judge and the jury as decision-makers resolve legal issues and reach liability verdicts and damage awards in tort cases. Psychological heuristics, biases, and other psychological phenomena affect decision-making in intentional tort, negligence, and strict liability cases, and judgments about liability and damages. The chapter closes with suggestions for further investigations of understudied topics in tort law decision-making.

This chapter develops an original account of political ethics, which details not only what it means to belong to a political community but also the normative contribution that politics makes to the lives of private individuals. Advancing discrete conceptions of authenticity and reasonableness, it discusses two fundamentally political duties that we owe to those who share our communities with us: duties that partly define our membership within those groups and inform the ethical value of politics as a discrete form of human activity. It also describes two ways in which politics enhances our ethical lives in instrumental terms, articulating a conception of political action that foregrounds its objective value. This argument forms the normative core of 'statehood as political community', the conception of state creation advanced within the first part of the overall text.

Simply being applicable could still permit far too much in terms of the extraterritorial reach of the EU’s data protection laws. The law of jurisdiction cannot solve all the present issues. It helps to solve conflicts in terms of sovereignty, but not fundamental rights. As such, this warrants a second-tier, additional set of criteria including degree of connection and interest-balancing as a rule of reason. The degree of connection between a regulated situation and the regulator, and interest-balancing are useful in assessing the legitimacy of the EU’s exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the internet age, which throws traditional concepts of territoriality into question. Flowing from this, a rule of reason transpires. A State may legitimately exercise jurisdiction where it has an obligation to do so to protect a fundamental right, based on a permissive principle exercised reasonably, that is, after regulators have balanced different interests to identify the State with the strongest interest in regulating the situation, unless this harms the global interest.

Chapter 6 closely analyses the operation of investment treaty clauses promising full protection and security. The chapter shows how armed conflict affects both dimensions of this standard significantly. It suggests that the duty to not cause unlawful harm to foreign investors and their invesments should be interpreted as a duty to comply with international humanitarian law standards when applied to the conduct of hostilities. This approach, deriving from the interaction of human rights with humanitarian rules, avoids normative inconsistencies. The due diligence obligation to protect foreign investors and their investments from third-party harm, on the other hand, should be understood as inherently sensitive to prevailing conditions. The state’s (constructed) knowledge of threats to foreign investments, its capacities and resources to counteract these threats, and the notion of reasonableness should guide the analysis under the due diligence standard. The latter element introduces a corrective balancing exercise, opening the way to factor in overriding military or humanitarian concerns.

This chapter critically discusses the proceduralisation of due diligence obligations. The chapter defines proceduralisation as a process gradually eroding the ‘reasonable’ standard traditionally linked to due diligence and substituting it with specific legal parameters. Through proceduralisation, the content of due diligence obligations is ‘spelled out’ into a series of sub-duties, tecnical standards and direct obligations (including procedural ones) whose fulfilment is required for assessing compliance with the standard of due diligece of the ‘principal’ obligation. The first part of this chapter critically explores this phenomenon, arguing that proceduralisation through interpretative practice raises challenges and comes close to creating new legal rules. The second part illustrates proceduralisation through two case studies taken from international environmental protection and due diligence obligations in international human rights law. The chapter argues that the proceduralisation of due diligence obligations fundamentally tests their dogmatic structure by affecting their nature and content.

This chapter explores how due diligence obligations operate in pratice and how their content is determined. The first part explores the factual conditions affecting the scope of a state’s duty to act with due diligence, which are identified in power over the source of risk and knowledge of the risk. The chapter critically discusses the concept of power of the source of risk linked to due diligence and explains the difference between this power and similar notions, like control, influence and jurisdiction. The chapter then argues that the other condition shaping the scope of a state’s duty to act with due diligence is knowledge of the risk and links this knowledge to the concept of state fault. The second part of the chapter discusses the legal and factual parameters affecting the content of due diligence obligations. After thoroughly appraising the concept of reasonableness, the set of variables influencing the degree of diligence expected of a state are identified in: the degree of risk linked to the primary rule; the nature and value of the legal interest protected by due diligence; the level of state capabilities; and the level of state control over the source of risk.

This chapter explains the concept of reasonable multiculturalism. Building on the Rawlsian notion of reasonableness, and on Kymlicka’s formulation of multiculturalism, the mechanisms for reconciliation between liberalism and multiculturalism are outlined. What are the boundaries of multiculturalism within the framework of liberal democracy? What are the boundaries of state interference in the business of minority cultures whose norms and practices are at odd with liberal democracy? Reasonability assumes acceptance of the underpinning shared principles. Cultures that do not adhere to these principles are perceived as less reasonable. The extent of reasonability varies. But lacking reasonability does not immediately entail that the liberal majority should intervene in the business of the subcultures. Interference is warranted to restore justice. The chapter discusses the concept of mutual respect, distinguishing between two forms of cultural pluralism – ‘multination’ and ‘polyethnic’ states – and between two kinds of rights that a group might claim: the first involves the right of a group against its own members, the second involves the right of a group against the larger society. Furthermore, the nature of liberal tolerance and the mechanisms of deliberative democracy are explained, the latter instrumental for resolving disputes in a liberal democracy in a civil, non-violent way.

This chapter presents the story of how proportionality became a core concept in English public law. This is a story of continuity and change. It is only since its connection to European law during the 1980s that proportionality acquired conceptual autonomy and was distinguished from the common law concept of reasonableness. While its application in domestic judicial review was rejected during the 1990s, the promoters of proportionality sought continuity between the common law and European human rights standards, among them proportionality. Since the incorporation of the convention in the domestic sphere, proportionality applies as a different head of review from irrationality. As a prong-structured test, it is very akin to the global proportionality model and it involves a significant extension of judicial powers. Still, the doctrine of deference ensures that the role of courts remains different from the one ascribed to the primary decision-makers.