Murder and the Reasonable Man

"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.