The unavoidable challenge of determining ‘reasonableness’
- Although in a free society, a community’s good faith conclusions about what’s “reasonable” should be entitled to strong deference, there is an outer limit to what a civilized society can tolerate within the realm of reasonableness.
- Resolving the definition of ‘reasonable’ is difficult; a classic grey area. For example, it is always difficult to determine whether a criminal defendant’s assertion of self-defense as a defense to a criminal charge was indeed reasonable. However, a civilized society must resolve these questions nonetheless.
Defining the outer limits of ‘reasonableness’
- We need an overarching range of what’s reasonable arrived at by considering the views of more significant numbers of people in the larger community. Indeed, this is one of the benefits of federalism.
- The larger community must carefully set the outer limits of what’s reasonable either by legislation or final decision by the highest court.
Larger communities may intervene against local aggressors
- While larger communities may intervene against aggressors in local communities, they are not required to.
- When a local communities is slightly outside the range of what is deemed a reasonable interpretation of a grey area, there may still be insufficient motivation in the larger community to do anything about it. We avoid conflict, and life goes on peacefully. While not perfect, this should be viewed as an acceptable result if the motivation to act remains lacking.
- While people always remain free to spend their money, time, and efforts defending distant third parties against aggressors, they are not required to do so. The same is true regarding the dispositions of members in larger communities toward aggressors in local communities. While people are permitted to act, they are not required to do so. If people are not motivated to expend their own resources mitigating aggressors, they should not be forced to do so.
- While avoiding conflict in all cases may not be possible, we can minimize conflict over minor disputes when people are not sufficiently motivated to invest their personal resources.
