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