Legal Causation and Responsibility for Causing Harm

Legal causation and responsibility for causing harm.

In the legal setting, "cause" is composed of at least two distinct components, of which only one is related to "causality" as scientists understand it. I argue that the alleged separation of the social issue of "scope of responsibility" from the objective question of scientific causality is illusory. "Scientific causality" also plays an essential social role in the legal setting.

Causation and Responsibility

In this article I examine the relation between causation and moral responsibility. I distinguish four possible views about that relation. One is the standard view: the view that an agent’s moral responsibility for an outcome requires, and is grounded in, the agent’s causal responsibility for it. I discuss several challenges to the standard view, which motivate the three remaining views. The fin...

[Individual causation and responsibility in lethal accidents].

Artificial Intelligence and Legal Responsibility

There are two broad quest ions to be asked. F i r s t , t o what ex ten t ( i f any) can the making of — and the r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r — a g iven judgement or d e c i s i o n , or mis take,he a t t r i b u t e d to a_ computer-program? And second, supposing t h a t r e s p o n s i b i l i t y cannot be a t t r i b u t e d to a program, w i t h whom does it l i e ? Who is l e g a l l...

Causation in Legal and Moral Reasoning

Causation looms large in legal and moral reasoning. People construct causal models of the social and physical world to understand what has happened, how and why, and to allocate responsibility and blame. This chapter explores people’s commonsense notion of causation, and shows how it underpins moral and legal judgments. As a guiding framework it uses the causal model framework (Pearl, 2000) roo...