< u>Prof. Sandy Steel
\n \nThis talk will look at the law’s divergent trea tment of ‘reasonable belief’ across consent\, self /other-defence\, and necessity in tort. Sometimes reasonable\, but mistaken\, belief in a permitting fact (e.g. that one is under imminent threat of v iolence\; that a person lacks legal capacity) is a defence\, but sometimes not (e.g. reasonably mist aken beliefs about a person's consent). I will arg ue that the law has taken a wrong turn and there i s no justification for this divergent treatment: t he default position ought to be that reasonable mi stakes are irrelevant to whether a trespassory rig ht has been violated. However\, I’ll identify some ways in which this default can be displaced\, suc h as when one person is responsible for the mistak e\, or the relationship between the parties makes it unjust for the reasonably mistaken party to bea r the cost of the mistake. I’ll consider in partic ular the implications of the latter category for t he reasonable mistakes of public officials\, such as police officers.
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