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I'm uncomfortable with the "victory of emotion over reason" or the "victory of
language over facts" line of analysis. For me, one of the key issues (although
by no means the only one) is that of "reasonable." That's the jury's charge: to
 determine if there is reasonable doubt. A law prof from Yale was on McN/Lehrne
r last night commenting on the idiocacy of the defense's conspiracy tactic. It
was, for him, clearly  unreasonable. Yet I think I can imagine how black jurors
 might find this line of argument reasonable (in the same way that colonists fo
und charges of British conspiracies against colonial liberties reasonable).
The trial helped me understand more clearly how a concept like reasonable is in
herently gendered and shaped by race and class. Does that mean the ideal of rea
sonable must be discarded? I don't think so. I think it does mean that we need
to recognize the multiplicity of standards of reasonableness and address materi
ally, while negotiating discursively, the conditions contributing to these diff
erent, and at times dramatically opposed, standards.

 Jim Jasinski
 Univ. of Illinois

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End of H-RHETOR Digest - 3 Oct 1995 to 4 Oct 1995
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