Murder and the reasonable man
Subtitle: passion and fear in the criminal courtroom
By: Cynthia Lee.
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 371
Subjects: Self-defense (Law) -- United States.; Provocation (Criminal law) -- United States.; Murder -- United States.; Judicial process -- Social aspects.
Description: "In this book, Cynthia Lee demonstrates how two well-established, traditional criminal law defenses - the doctrines of provocation and self-defense - enable majority-culture defendants to justify their acts of violence. While the reasonableness requirement, inherent in both defenses, is designed to allow community input and provide greater flexibility in legal decision-making, the requirement also allows majority-culture defendants to rely on dominant social norms, such as masculinity, heterosexuality, and race, to bolster their claims of reasonableness. At the same time, Lee examines other cases that demonstrate that the reasonableness requirement tends to exclude the perspectives on minorities, such as heterosexual women, gays and lesbians, and people of color."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 349-364) and index.
Table of contents: title: Female infidelity; title: Unreasonable women, gay men, and men of color; title: Gay panic; title: Culture and crime; title: An overview of the doctrine of self-defense; title: Race and self-defense; title: Race and police use of deadly force; title: The elusive meaning of reasonableness; title: Toward a normative conception of reasonableness; title: The act-emotion distinction.