Causation and Responsibility

In various areas of Anglo-American law, legal liability turns on causation. In torts and contracts, we are each liable only for those harms we have caused by the actions that breach our legal duties. Such doctrines explicitly make causation an element of liability. In criminal law, sometimes the causal element for liability is equally explicit, as when a statute makes punishable any act that has “caused … abuse to the child….” More often, the causal element in criminal liability is more implicit, as when criminal statutes prohibit killings, maimings, rapings, burnings, etc. Such causally complex action verbs are correctly applied only to defendants who have caused death, caused disfigurement, caused penetration, caused fire damage, etc.

[1]  C. J. Ducasse.  On the Nature and the Observability of the Causal Relation , 2018, Routledge Library Editions: Epistemology.

[2]  Wex S. Malone.  Ruminations on Cause-in-Fact , 1956 .

[3]  Frank S. Arnold,et al.  Causal Apportionment: Reply to the Critics , 1986, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[4]  Judith Jarvis Thomson,et al.  Acts and other events , 1977 .

[5]  J. Beale.  The Proximate Consequences of an Act , 1920 .

[6]  D. Kaye,et al.  A Comment on Causal Apportionment , 1984, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[7]  L. Green.  Rationale of proximate cause , 1928 .

[8]  S. Kadish.  Complicity, Cause and Blame: A Study in the Interpretation of Doctrine , 1985 .

[9]  Torture and the Balance of Evils , 1989 .

[10]  Ernest Lepore,et al.  Actions and Events , 1985 .

[11]  R. Epstein.  A Theory of Strict Liability , 1973, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[12]  A. Honoré,et al.  Causation in the law , 1960 .

[13]  J. Gardner,et al.  Action and Value in Criminal Law , 1993 .

[14]  R. Posner,et al.  Causation in Tort Law: An Economic Approach , 1983, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[15]  Michael S. Moore,et al.  Placing blame : a general theory of the criminal law , 1997 .

[16]  S. Shavell.  An Analysis of Causation and the Scope of Liability in the Law of Torts , 1980, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[17]  C. E. Carpenter.  Workable Rules for Determining Proximate Cause , 1932 .

[18]  M. Kelman.  The Necessary Myth of Objective Causation Judgments in Liberal Political Theory , 1987 .

[19]  R. Keeton.  Legal cause in the law of torts , 1964 .

[20]  J. Earman,et al.  The Cement Of The Universe , 1974 .

[21]  R. W. Wright.  Actual Causation vs. Probabilistic Linkage: The Bane of Economic Analysis , 1985, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[22]  Michael Tooley,et al.  Causation: A Realist Approach. , 1990 .

[23]  A. Goldman.  Why Citizens Should Vote: A Causal Responsibility Approach , 1999 .

[24]  J. Mill.  A System of Logic , 1843 .

[25]  J. Feinberg,et al.  Doing and Deserving , 1970 .

[26]  D. Armstrong.  What is a law of nature , 1983 .

[27]  David Fair,et al.  Causation and the flow of energy , 1979 .

[28]  R. W. Wright,et al.  Causation in Tort Law , 1985 .

[29]  Carol E. Cleland,et al.  Events and their Names. , 1988 .

[30]  M. Moore.  The Interpretive Turn in Modern Theory: A Turn for the Worse? , 1989 .

[31]  Frank S. Arnold,et al.  Causal Apportionment in the Law of Torts: An Economic Theory , 1980 .

[32]  Samuel Freeman.  Criminal Liability and the Duty to Aid the Distressed , 1994 .

[33]  J. Dressler.  Understanding Criminal Law , 1995 .

[34]  P. Suppes.  A Probabilistic Theory Of Causality , 1970 .

[35]  Douglas Ehring,et al.  Causation and Persistence: A Theory of Causation , 1997 .

[36]  G. Williams.  Criminal Law: The General Part , 1961 .

[37]  R. W. Wright.  The Efficiency Theory of Causation and Responsibility: Unscientific Formalism and False Semantics, in Symposium, Causation in the Law of Torts , 1987 .

[38]  G. Calabresi.  Some Thoughts on Risk Distributions and the Law of Torts , 1961 .

[39]  G. Calabresi,et al.  Concerning Cause and the Law of Torts: An Essay for Harry Kalven, Jr. , 1975 .