Fact and Law in the Causal Inquiry

This paper takes it as a premise that a distinction between matters of fact and of law is important in the causal inquiry. But it argues that separating factual and legal causation as different elements of liability is not the best way to implement the fact/law distinction. It is partly a legal question what counts as a cause-in-fact; and certain liabilitylimiting doctrines under the umbrella of “legal causation” depend on the application of factual-causal concepts. The contrastive account of factual causation proposed in this paper improves matters. This account more clearly distinguishes matters of fact from matters of law within the cause-in-fact inquiry. It also extends the scope of cause-in-fact to answer some questions currently answered by certain doctrines of legal causation – doctrines which, it is argued, are more naturally seen as applications of our ordinary causal concept than as non-causal liability-