While causation is an idea of general consequence
in religion and philosophy, it is a term of more special-
ized meaning in science, in history, and in law.
In
science, causation is largely a principle of explanation
and
prediction. For history, when admitted at all, it
is a vast abstraction
that succeeds only minimally in
ordering the complexities of observed human
behavior.
In law, the idea is at once highly theoretical as the
most
general justification for the imposition of liability,
and severely
practical as a means for assigning legal
responsibility in the individual
case. Law views causa-
tion as related both to
the order of nature and to the
nature of justice. In the first, causation
plays a central
role in the determination of legal facts; in the
second,
causation emerges as a leading component of the idea
of responsibility. Each of these roles is indefinitely
complex.
Their combination is the history of the idea
of causation in law.
