Causation: Linguistic, Philosophical, Legal and Economic

Authors

Richard W. Wright, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law
Ingeborg Puppe, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Bonn

Abstract

Causation plays an essential role in attributions of legal responsibility. How-ever, considerable confusion has been generated in philosophy, law and economics by the use of causal language to refer not merely to causation in its basic (actual/factual/natural) sense, which refers to the operation of the laws of nature, but also to the quite different normative issue of appropriate legal responsibility. To reduce such confusion, we argue that causal language in these disciplines should be used to refer solely to causation in its basic sense. While it is often said that the law need not and should not concern itself with philosophical analyses of causation, we demonstrate that this is incorrect with respect to causation in its basic sense. After surveying the philosophical foundations of the modern analyses of causa-tion, we discuss the inadequacy of the counterfactual strong necessity (sine qua non, but for) criterion for a condition to be a cause in a specific instance, which is dominant in modern philosophy, law and economics. We argue instead for the need to employ the more comprehensive, factual, weak necessity/strong suffi-ciency criterion, which is based on the “covering law” account elaborated by John Stuart Mill and has been developed in the modern legal literature as the “NESS” (necessary element of a sufficient set) criterion. We discuss the importance of un-derstanding the required standards of persuasion for proving causation (or any other required fact) as generally requiring a warranted belief rather than a mere statistical probability. We note the confusion and paradoxes that result from some courts’ employing the statistical probability interpretation of the standards of per-suasion in certain situations involving inherent uncertainty regarding causation, rather than acknowledging the inherent uncertainty and explicitly addressing the normative responsibility issue. Finally, we criticize the efficiency theorists’ attempt to explain the causation requirement for legal responsibility, despite causation’s being irrelevant under their theories.

Recommended Citation

Richard W. Wright & Ingeborg Puppe, Causation: Linguistic, Philosophical, Legal and Economic, 91 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 461 (2016).
Available at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol91/iss2/4