Causation and Responsibility An Essay in Law, Morals, and Metaphysics

by Moore, Michael S.

• ISBN13: 9780199256860
• ISBN10: 0199256861
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. What precisely is the connection between the concept of causation used in attributing responsibility and the accounts of causal relations offered in the philosophy of science and metaphysics? How much of what we call causal responsibility is in truth defined by non-causal factors? This book argues that much of the legal doctrine on these questions is confused and incoherent, and offers the first comprehensive attempt since Hart and Honore to clarify the philosophical background to the legal and moral debates. The book first sets out the place of causation in criminal and tort law and then outlines the metaphysics presupposed by the legal doctrine. It then analyses the best theoretical accounts of causation in the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and using these accounts criticizes many of the core legal concepts surrounding causation - such as intervening causation, forseeability of harm and complicity. It considers and rejects the radical proposals to eliminate the notion of causation from law by using risk analysis to attribute responsibility. The result of the analysis is a powerful argument for revising our understanding of the role played by causation in the attribution of legal and moral responsibility.

Author Biography

Michael Moore holds the Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Chair at the University of Illinois, where he is jointly appointed as the Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy. His major works include Placing Blame (OUP, 1997), Act and Crime, (OUP, 1993) and Law and Psychiatry (CUP, 1984).

Table of Contents

List of Cases	p. xxiii
List of Statutes	p. xxvii
The Role of Causation in Moral and Legal Responsibility
The Embedding of Causation in Legal Liability Doctrines	p. 3
Causation and Moral Blameworthiness	p. 20
Causation and the Permissibility of Consequentialist Justification within Agent-Relative Morality and the Law	p. 34
Presuppositions About The Nature Of Causation by Legal Doctrines
The Law's Own Characterizations of its Causal Requirements	p. 81
The Prima Facie Demands of the Law on the Concept of Causation	p. 109
Pruning the Law's Demands on a Concept of Causation	p. 136
The First Blind Alley: The Attempt to Replace Proximate Causation With Culpability as A Prerequisite for Legal Liability
'Negligence in the Air Will not Do'	p. 157
Conceptual Problems in Applying the Harm-within-the-Risk Test to Crimes/Torts of Negligence	p. 178
Normative Problems in Applying the Harm-within-the-Risk Test to Crimes/Torts of Negligence	p. 198
The Descriptive Inaccuracy of the Harm-within-the-Risk Analysis as Measuring Proximate Causation	p. 217
The Legal Presupposition of There Being 'Intervening Causes'
The Legal Doctrines of Intervening Causation	p. 229
The Lack of any Metaphysical Basis for the Doctrines of Intervening Causation	p. 254
The Superfluity of Accomplice Liability	p. 280
The Metaphysics of Causal Relata
A Prolegomenon to the Issue of Causal Relata	p. 327
The Facts, Events, States of Affairs, and Tropes Debate	p. 347
The Metaphysics of the Causal Relation
Counterfactual Conditionals	p. 371
The Counterfactual Theory of Causation	p. 391
The Role of Counterfactual Dependence as an Independent, Non-causal Desert-determiner	p. 426
Generalist Theories of Causation	p. 471
Singularist Theories of Causation	p. 496
Appendix: Contract Law and Causation: An Illustration	p. 513
Bibliography	p. 573
Index	p. 591
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.