Antecedent Cause Meaning in Law

Lawyers and legal theorists have an unfortunate penchant for proclaiming that law is, should, and must be autonomous in its use of concepts such as the causality of other disciplines (such as philosophy) (Stapleton 2008; 2015). As Sir Frederick Pollack said more than a century ago, “the lawyer cannot afford to engage with philosophers in the logical and metaphysical controversies that afflict the idea of cause” (1901:36). However, the question of whether such conceptual autonomy is desirable, necessary or even possible presupposes that the law, for its causal requirements, has objectives that do not coincide with the metaphysics of causality thus studied by philosophy. 8. There is also a complex scheme of liability for damages in cases of multiple causes, where it is more a question of double prevention than of acts or omissions, and this model of liability is again different from that of acts or omissions: first, there is liability in ordinary cases, garden, simultaneous double prevention, as well as for acts and omissions. Second, there is primarily (but not in general) no responsibility for the diversity of overdetermination of simultaneous double prevention – this is generally true when one of the doubly preventive acts sufficient for the occurrence of harm is a natural event, not a culpable human act, and it is primarily true that all double preventive acts sufficient for the occurrence of harm are the acts of culpable human actors (Moore 2009a: 466-467). Thirdly, unlike cases of cessation and abstention, there is a double preventive case of prevention; In such cases, there is responsibility for the double preventive prevention, but not for the planned action, which would otherwise have been a double prevention (Moore 2011b). The results of this study suggest the feasibility of this methodology of empirical jurisprudence, in which litigation is used as a unit of analysis. This approach has the potential to increase understanding in court proceedings, involving not only litigants with mental illness, but also litigants who are discriminated against on many other grounds.

NVivo, Atlas.TI and other automatic coding programs can facilitate a more detailed understanding of litigation and overcome some of the shortcomings of previous studies. The implications of the research include breaking down one or more of the variables in terms of precursors, behaviours, drugs, or court case characteristics to see if additional variables might indicate the need for further research. The experts` statements could also be analysed to better understand how they affect the judicial process. The general and positive recipe that is supposed to result from the skepticism of legal realists and critics is not so clear. It is believed that once skepticism (that causality is an objective fact) has eliminated the blinders, we can see that only interests and policies lead us to conclusions about moral responsibility and legal responsibility. So, presumably, the positive recipe is that we do it openly, weighing all the relevant political considerations when deciding who should be held accountable, and then throwing those conclusions of responsibility into what was the cause of what. It was useful to taxonomize the seven variations of the counterfactual test to show how such variations were generated in response to the perceived problems for the first variation, which was the simple, unmodified counterfactual test. Although there is no immediate causality test that is as dominant in the law (even if only lip service) as the counterfactual test of the real cause, it is still useful to point out the different immediate cause tests as they address the problems in other tests of immediate causality. A discussion of standard problems with each version of the tests in legal theory is therefore included, as we describe what motivates other tests. Simultaneous causes are events that occur simultaneously to achieve a certain result.

They are contemporary, but any event alone would produce the effect that occurs. If a person stabs another person who is shot by a third person at the same time, any action alone could cause the injury to the person. This Pigouvian view of tort law gave way to that of Ronald Coase after 1960: tort law actually exists to achieve an efficient allocation of resources, but such effectiveness is achieved regardless of whether or not tortious liability pursues causal liability. Coase`s main conclusion was that for economically rational actors, opportunity costs are also real costs, so a missed opportunity to accept a payment instead of causing harm to another person already forces the author to “internalize” all the costs of his activities. Such a cause of damage cannot be held liable for such damages in order to be able to bear the “real costs” of its activity; He already “pays” by renouncing the possibility of being bought by the victim of the damage. Since each case and plaintiff decides on the desired level of its activity, it will therefore take into account all the effects of its interaction without the fact that tort liability based on the case obliges it to do so (Coase 1960). When an accused is convicted of a crime, the precursors are communicated to the court. This information is usually taken into account by the judge/magistrate when deciding on the sentence that the defendant will receive. When an accused pleads not guilty, previous convictions are usually not disclosed to jurors during the trial to avoid harm to the accused, but this is supported [by whom?] If the accused has already been convicted of similar types of crimes, this should be part of the evidence presented at trial. To decide which version of this relationship is the right one, one must choose between the different competing concepts of causality in the law we are studying. To have a basis for comparison, it is also necessary to solve the many mysteries that surround the search for the true metaphysics of causality in philosophy; This includes, among other things, the externalization of all the characteristics of the ordinary use of the “cause” that are only pragmatic characteristics of an appropriate expression, rather than semantic characteristics that set the reference of the term.

These are daunting tasks that need to be accomplished on both sides of the equation. To complete them, the lawyer must truly “engage with philosophers in the logical and metaphysical controversies that afflict the idea of cause” (Pollack 1901:36). For philosophical jurists and legal philosophers, this will not be a cost factor, but an advantage. A second set of problems arises from an indeterminacy of the meaning of the test, and not from difficulties of factual verification. There is a great vagueness in counterfactual judgments. The vagueness lies in the specification of the possible world in which we must test the counterfactual (Cole 1964a,b; Lewis, 1973b). Suppose an accused has negligently destroyed a lifeline and a sailor drowns for lack of one. When we say, “But for the accused`s act of destroying the lifeline,” what world do we imagine? We know that we should eliminate the act of the accused, but what should we replace it with? A rescuer who was destroyed alternately by the heavy sea? An accused who did not destroy the rescuer because she had already pushed the victim overboard when no one else was there to throw the lifeline to the victim? And so on. To make the counterfactual test so crucial that it leads to one answer rather than another, we must assume that those who use this test have the ability to specify a particular possible world that is “similar” to our real world, except that the defendant in that world did not do what she did in the real world.

A removed cause is one that is removed or separated from the immediate cause of an injury. If the injuries sustained by a person hospitalized after being hit by a truck are exacerbated by professional misconduct, professional misconduct is a distant cause of that person`s injury. The fact that the cause of the damage is eliminated does not relieve a defendant of liability for the act or omission, but there may be an allocation of liability among the defendants.