¹ Annotated Code of Maryland, Art. 27, Section 35A(2).

² Argued for in Moore, Michael S., Act and Crime: The Implications of the Philosophy of Action for the Criminal Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), ch. 8.Google Scholar

³ SirPollock, Frederick, Torts, 6th ed. (New York: Banks Law Publishing Co., 1901), 36.Google Scholar

⁴ Such politics-based skepticism about metaphysics surfaced recently with regard to my use of the metaphysics of events to answer certain questions of criminal law. Compare Freeman, Samuel, “Criminal Liability and the Duty to Aid the Distressed,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (1994): 1455–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with Moore, Michael S., “More on Act and Crime,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (1994): 1750–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ On purposive interpretation of legal texts, see Moore, Michael S., “The Semantics of Judging,” Southern California Law Review 54 (1981): 279–81Google Scholar; and Moore, , “A Natural Law Theory of Interpretation,” Southern California Law Review 58 (1985): 383–88.Google Scholar

⁶ On the criminal-law meaning of “malice” in the law of homicide, see Moore, , “Natural Law Theory,” 332–36.Google Scholar

⁷ A late expression of this view of tort law is to be found in Calabresi, Guido, “Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts,” Yale Law Journal 70 (1961): 499–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Coase, Ronald, “The Problem of Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics 3 (1960): 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ I thus put aside those who interpret Coase to be a causal skeptic. (See, e.g., Epstein, Richard, “A Theory of Strict Liability,” Journal of Legal Studies 2 [1973]: 164–65Google Scholar, for an interpretation of Coase according to which the Coasean insight was that we cannot say what is the cause of what.) Coase made a much better point than this “interactive effects” interpretation gives him credit for: it is that causation does not matter for the efficient allocation of resources.

¹⁰ See, e.g., Calabresi, Guido, “Concerning Cause and the Law of Torts: An Essay for Harry Katven, Jr.,” University of Chicago Law Review 43 (1975): 69–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shavell, Steven, “An Analysis of Causation and the Scope of Liability in the Law of Torts,” Journal of Legal Studies 9 (1980): 463–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Landes, William and Posner, Richard, “Causation in Tort Law: An Economic Approach,” Journal of Legal Studies 12 (1983): 109–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ For a good discussion of the economists' misuse of “cause” to name an increase in conditional probability, see Wright, Richard, “Actual Causation versus Probabilistic Linkage: The Bane of Economic Analysis,” Journal of Legal Studies 14 (1985): 435–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wright, , “The Efficiency Theory of Causation and Responsibility: Unscientific Formalism and False Semantics,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 63 (1987): 553–78.Google Scholar

¹² Or so I argue in Moore, Michael S., Placing Blame: A General Theory of the Criminal Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)Google Scholar, chs. 2–4.

¹³ See ibid., ch. 5, where I take issue with the Kantian view that our deserts are determined by our culpability (“inner wickedness”) and not by the effects of our actions in the real world.

¹⁴ Calabresi, , “Concerning Cause” (supra note 10).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Shavell, , “Analysis of Causation” (supra note 10).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Landes, and Posner, , “Causation in Tort Law” (supra note 10).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Contrast the simple, conditional probability analysis used by economists (supra note 10) with the more complicated probability analysis of causation by philosophers. See, e.g., Salmon, Wesley, “Probabilistic Causality,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 (1980): 50–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar No philosopher would propose a simple increase in the conditional probability of an event E by the existence of an event C as an analysis of causation, for that completely fails to distinguish epiphenomena, accidental correlations, and preempted conditions, on the one hand, from true causal relations, on the other. Yet from the point of view of an incentive-based system that eschews any attempt to analyze a pre-legal notion of causation, such an increase in conditional probability may be an appropriate trigger for legal liability.

¹⁸ Kelman, Mark, “The Necessary Myth of Objective Causation Judgments in Liberal Political Theory,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 63 (1987): 579–637.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Malone, Wex, “Ruminations on Cause-in-Fact,” Stanford Law Review 9 (1956): 60–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Edgarton, Henry, “Legal Cause,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 72 (1924): 211–44, 343–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ Green, Leon, Rationale of Proximate Cause (Kansas City, MO: Vernon Law Book Co., 1927).Google Scholar

²² Ryan v. New York Central R.R., 35 N.Y. 210, 91 Am. Dec. 49 (1866).Google Scholar (Railroad liable only for the first house that its negligently emitted sparks ignite, not for each subsequent house that first house, in turn, ignites.)

²³ See Dressier, Joshua, Understanding Criminal Law, 2d ed. (New York: Matthew-Bender, 1995): 466–67.Google Scholar (A death occurring more than a year and a day from the act of a defendant conclusively presumed not to be the effect of that act.)

²⁴ See Green, , RationaleGoogle Scholar (supra note 21). On this test, one asks whether the harm that happened was an instance of the type of harm whose risk made the defendant's action negligent to perform; this is not a causal inquiry, but rather a culpability inquiry.

²⁵ American Law Institute, Model Penal Code, section 2.03.

²⁶ On foreseeability, see Moore, , Placing BlameGoogle Scholar (supra note 12), ch. 8. The test purports to ask a single question: Was the harm that happened foreseeable to the defendant as he acted?

²⁷ Edgarton, , “Legal Cause”Google Scholar (supra note 20). (“Proximate cause” is the label put on the conclusion of balancing social and individual interests on a case-by-case basis.)

²⁸ Strawson, P. F., Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Ordinary-language philosophy (e.g., at Oxford University from 1945 to 1965) went further than I go in the text. Such ordinary-language philosophers as Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin thought that the only metaphysics one can do is the descriptive metaphysics described in the text. For a critique, see Moore, Michael, “The Interpretive Turn: A Turn for the Worse?” Stanford Law Review 41 (1989): 927–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ See, e.g., Kramer Service, Inc. v. Wilkins, 184 Miss. 483, 186 So. 625 (1939).Google Scholar

³⁰ Although invariant succession is admissable as good evidence of causation.

³¹ The example is David Armstrong's in his argument that accidentally true generalizations must be distinguished from true causal laws. See Armstrong, , What Is a Law of Nature? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

³² For discussions of the epiphenomena problem, see Salmon, , “Probabilistic Causality” (supra note 17)Google Scholar; Lewis, David, “Causation,” Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): 556–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kim, Jaegwon, “Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy IX: Causation and Causal Theories, ed. French, Peter, Vehling, Theodore, and Wettstein, Howard (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).Google Scholar

³³ For a discussion of how law, morals, common sense, and science all converge to distinguish correlation from causation, see Schlick, Moritz, “Causality in Everyday Life and in Recent Science,” University of California Publications in Philosophy 15 (1932): 99–125.Google Scholar

³⁴ This is the dominant test for cause-in-fact in both torts and criminal law in America. See, e.g., New York Central R.R. v. Grimstad, 264 F.2d 334 (2d Cir. 1920)Google Scholar; and American Law Institute, Model Penal Code, section 2.03(1).

³⁵ See Moore, , Act and Crime (supra note 2), 267–76.Google Scholar

³⁶ Mill, John Stuart, A System of LogicGoogle Scholar, Book III, ch. V, section 3.

³⁷ For a discussion of these pragmatic features in various contexts, see Feinberg, Joel, Doing and Deserving (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

³⁸ Smith, Jeremiah, “Legal Cause in Actions of Tort,” Harvard Law Review 25 (1911–1912): 104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ Parsons v. State, 81 Ala. 577, 597, 5 So. 854, 866–67 (1887).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The best contemporary legal discussion of these cases is to be found in Wright, Richard, “Causation in Tort Law,” California Law Review 73 (1985): 1775–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Overdetermination cases are to be distinguished from garden-variety multiple cause cases. In the latter, no one event or state is sufficient to produce the harm, because more than one event is individually necessary to produce the harm. Such sets of individually necessary, only jointly sufficient conditions, are very frequent and may well be the most frequent kind of case. Wright mentions (in ibid., 1793) a kind of case intermediate between regular multiple cause cases and the overdetermination variety. If there are three fires, no one of which is sufficient, but any two of which are sufficient, to burn the plaintiff's structure, then no fire is individually necessary to produce the harm. Although I do not separately treat these, we should consider these too to be overdetermination cases.

⁴¹ See ibid.

⁴² These are the facts of Anderson v. Minneapolis St. Paul & S. St. Marie R.R. Co., 146 Minn. 430, 179 NW 45 (1920)Google Scholar; and Kingston v. Chicago and N. W. Ry., 191 Wis. 610, 211 N.W. 913 (1927).Google Scholar

⁴³ Cf. City ofPiqua v. Morris, 98Google Scholar Ohio St. 42, 120 N.E. 300 (1918) (negligent maintenance of drainage wickets held not a cause of plaintiff's injury from overflowing reservoir, because the flood would have overflowed the reservoir even if the wickets were not clogged).

⁴⁴ Wright, , “Causation in Tort Law” (supra note 40), 1794, 1800.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Cook v. Minneapolis, St. Paul and S. St. Marie Ry., 98 Wis. 624, 74 N.W. 561 (1898).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Christie, Agatha, Murder on the Orient Express (New York: Pocket Books, 1960).Google Scholar See also People v. Lewis, 124 Cal. 551, 57 P. 470 (1899)Google Scholar (initial gunshot and later knife wound both caused victim's death, because “drop by drop his life current welled out from both wounds and at the very instant of death the gunshot wound was contributing to the event”).

⁴⁷ See generally Hart, H. L. A. and Honoré, Tony, Causation in the Law, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 124, 239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁸ People v. Dlugash, 41 N.Y. 2d 725, 363 N.E.2d 1155, 395 N.Y.S.2d 419 (1977).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Corey v. Havener, 182 Mass. 250, 65 N. E. 69 (1902).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Wright, , “Causation in Tort Law” (supra note 40), 1787.Google Scholar

⁵¹ The less seriously punished treason statute in force in England during the Second World War. See Rex. v. Stean, [1947]Google Scholar K.B. 997, 32 Crim. App. Rep. 61, 1947–1 All Eng. L. Rep. 813.

⁵² Rex. v. Stean.

⁵³ McLaughlin, J. A., “Proximate Cause,” Harvard Law Review 39 (1925): 155 n. 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁴ This is Richard Wright's conclusion. See Wright, , “Causation in Tort Law” (supra note 40), 1802.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ This is Wright's conclusion on a slightly varied version of the hypothetical, in ibid. See also Mackie, J. L., The Cement of the Universe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 45–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁶ This is Hart a n d Honore's conclusion in Causation in the Law, 239–40.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ On the idea of causal apportionment, see Rizzo, Mario and Arnold, Frank, “Causal Apportionment in the Law of Torts: An Economic Approach,” Columbia Law Review 80 (1980): 1399–1429CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaye, and Aickn, , “A Comment on Causal Apportionment,” Journal of Legal Studies 13 (1984): 191–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rizzo, Mario and Arnold, Frank, “Causal Apportionment: Reply to the Critics,” Journal of Legal Studies 20 (1986): 219–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In his essay in this volume, Alvin Goldman nicely sets out how our obligations to vote — even when our individual vote is not a necessary condition for the election's outcome—can be explained on like grounds (of causal contribution to the outcome for which one's vote was not a necessary condition). See Goldman, , “Why Citizens Should Vote: A Causal Responsibility Approach.”Google Scholar

⁵⁸ In its original opinion creating comparative fault in California (Li v. Yellow Cab Co. of California, 532 P. 2d, 1226 [Cal. Sup. Ct. 1975])Google Scholar, the California Supreme Court held that one should apportion tort liability “in direct proportion to the extent of the parties' causal responsibility” (119 Cal. Rptr. 858 footnote 6a. [1975] [advance sheets only]). Prior to final publication, the court recognized its error, proportioning liability to degrees of fault, not to degrees of causation.

⁵⁹ See the citations in Rizzo, and Arnold, , “Causal Apportionment” (supra note 57), 1402.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See ibid.

⁶¹ See Smith, , “Legal Cause” (supra note 38).Google Scholar

⁶² Restatement of Torts, sections 431–35 (1934)Google Scholar; Restatement (Second) of Torts, sections 431–33 (1965).Google Scholar

⁶³ Regina v. Howe, [1987–1] All Eng. L. Rep. 771.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland v. Lynch, [1975] A.C. 653.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Regina v. Howe.

⁶⁶ Abbott v. The Queen, [1976–3] All Eng. L. Rep. 140.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ See Moore, Michael, “Torture and the Balance of Evils,” Israel Law Revieiv 23 (1989): 280–344Google Scholar; revised and reprinted as chapter 17 of Moore, , Placing Blame (supra note 12).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Moore, , Placing Blame, ch. 17, 680–84.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Ibid., 692–94.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 696–98.

⁷¹ Ibid., 694–96.

⁷² Ibid., 689–90.

⁷³ Ibid., 698–703.

⁷⁴ These are the facts of Regina v. Faulkner, 13 Cox C.C. 550Google Scholar (Ireland, Court of Crown Cases Reserved, 1877).

⁷⁵ See the Restatement (Second) of Torts, section 431, comment a (1965)Google Scholar, which proclaims that in law, “cause” is used “in the popular sense, in which there always lurks the idea of responsibility, rather than in the so-called ‘philosophic sense’ which includes every one of the great number of events without which any happening would not have occurred.”

⁷⁶ See, e.g., Smith, , “Legal Cause” (supra note 38), 109.Google Scholar The sine qua non test, or necessarycondition test, is discussed in the text accompanying note 34 supra.

⁷⁷ SirBacon, Francis, “Maxims of the Law,” in Bacon, , The Elements of the Common Law of England (London: Assigns of I. Moore, 1630), 1.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Berry v. Borough of Sugar Notch, 191Google Scholar Pa. 345, 43 Atl. 240 (1899). For another coincidence case, see Denny v. N.Y. Central R.R., 13 Gray (Mass.) 481 (1859)Google Scholar (railroad's negligence in delaying at one section of track, and its subsequent arrival at a flood plain just when a flood sweeps down and destroys goods on the train, held not to be a cause of the damage to the goods).

⁷⁹ Cf. Bird v. St. Paul E and Minneapolis Ins. Co., 224 N.Y. 47, 120 N.E. 86 (1918)Google Scholar (“There is no use in arguing that distance ought not to count, if life and experience tell us that it does”); and Edgarton, , “Legal Cause” (supra note 20), 369–70.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ People v. Botkin, 132 Cal. 231, 64 Pac. 286 (1901).Google Scholar

⁸¹ A refinement may be necessary here. If the causal relation is transmitted over many events that are of the same type, then the diminishment of causation often seems to be less. See, e.g., Scott v. Shepherd, 96Google Scholar All Eng. L. Rep. 525 (K.B. 1773) (liability for causing injury to plaintiff by explosion of a lighted squib that was thrown into a crowded marketplace by defendant, and then rethrown by each subsequent possessor of it so as to rid himself of the danger). The analogy here is to a long row of dominos; the falling of each is plausibly individuated as one event, but their ability to transmit causal force seems unrelated to the number of such events. A colorful example offered by Alfred Mele is a variation of People v. Botkin (supra note 80): Would it matter if the poisoned candy was sent from California to Delaware by Pony Express (with numerous handoffs) rather than by train?

⁸² This line is much more difficult to draw than is recognized in any of the legal literature, yet it is a necessary line to draw in that preemption intervening causes do not have to meet the criteria below articulated for an intervening cause.

⁸³ Hart, and Honore, , Causation in the LawGoogle Scholar (supra note 47). Although the clarity and the nonlegal analogues of the idea of an intervening cause were new with Hart and Honoré, they built on a solid body of case law. This case law is detailed in Carpenter, Charles, “Workable Rules for Determining Proximate Cause,” California Law Review 20 (1932): 229–59, 396–419, 471–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hart and Honoré's detailing of the case law is in Causation in the Law, 133–85, 325–62.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Watson v. Kentucky and Indiana Bridge and Ry. Co., 137 Ky. 619, 126 S.W. 146 (1910).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Hart, and Honoré, , Causation in the Law, 74–77.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ These are roughly the facts of Kimble v. Mackintosh Hemphill Co., 359 Pa. 461, 59 A.2d 68 (1948).Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Hart, and Honoré, , Causation in the Law, 77–81.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ See cases cited, and discussion, in ibid., 170–71.

⁸⁹ This is something which Hart and Honoré suggest in ibid., 136, 182–85.

⁹⁰ E.g., State v. Scutes, 50 N.C. 409 (1858)Google Scholar (defendant who burned child not liable for the child's death if an intervening blow on the head by a third party killed the dying child).

⁹¹ In the original edition of their book, Hart and Honoré simply except such situations from the normal rule about intentional intervening agents. See Hart, H. L. A. and Honoré, A. M., Causation in the Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).Google Scholar As Joel Feinberg noted, these were ad hoc, unexplained, and seemingly unlimited as exceptions. See Feinberg, , “Causing Voluntary Actions,”Google Scholar in Feinberg, , Doing and DeservingGoogle Scholar (supra note 37). In the second edition of Causation in the Law (supra note 47), chapters VII and XIII now deal extensively with the provision of opportunities and the giving of reasons as “non-central” kinds of causings.

⁹² Richardson v. Ham, 44 Cal.2d 772, 285 P.2d 269 (1955).Google Scholar

⁹³ Particularly clear and systematic about this is Kadish, Sanford, “A Theory of Complicity,” in Gavison, R., ed., Issues in Contemporary Legal Philosophy: The Influence of H. L. A. Hart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Kadish, , “Causation and Complicity: A Study in the Interpretation of Doctrine,” California Law Review 73 (1985): 323–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Kadish, , Blame and Punishment (New York: MacMillan, 1987).Google Scholar

⁹⁴ See the two essays by Kadish cited in note 93 supra.

⁹⁵ See Williams, Glanville, Criminal Law — The General Part, 2d ed. (London: B. Henworths, 1961), 391.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ State ex. rel. Att'y Gen'l v. Tally, 102 Ala. 25, 15 So. 722 (1894).Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Hines v. Garrett, 131 Va. 125, 108 S.E. 690 (1921).Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Richardson v. Ham (supra note 92).

⁹⁹ See the two essays by Kadish cited in note 93 supra.

¹⁰⁰ Moore, Michael, Act and Crime (supra note 2), 28–29Google Scholar; Moore, , “More on Act and Crime,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (1994): 1788.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰¹ Dressler, Joshua, Understanding Criminal Law (New York: Mathew Bender, 1987), 83.Google Scholar

¹⁰² See, e.g., Fletcher, George, “On the Moral Irrelevance of Bodily Movements,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (1994): 1443–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰³ This is Joseph Beale's apparent view, in Beale, , “The Proximate Consequences of an Act,” Harvard Law Review 33 (1920): 637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰⁴ See Epstein, , “A Theory of Strict Liability” (supra note 9), 192Google Scholar; and Mack, Eric, “Bad Samaritanism and the Causation of Harm,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 9 (1980): 240–41, 242–43.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ This is the famous hypothetical used by Keeton, Robert, Legal Cause in the Law of Torts (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1963), 3.Google Scholar The hypothetical is based on the facts of Larrimore v. American National Insurance Co., 184 Okla. 614, 89 P.2d 340 (1939).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ For a defense of the view that there is only one act here, although there are many different descriptions of it, see Moore, , Act and CrimeGoogle Scholar (supra note 2), ch. 11.

¹⁰⁷ For a discussion of Leibniz's principle in a legal context, see Moore, Michael, “Foreseeing Harm Opaquely,” in Gardner, John, Horder, Jeremy, and Shute, Stephen, eds., Action and Value in Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ This is what Mark Kelman does, albeit with an imperfect grasp of just what extensionality is. See Kelman, , “Necessary Myth” (supra note 18), 604–6.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ For a discussion of this reference-shifting strategy, see Moore, , “Foreseeing Harm”Google Scholar (supra note 107).

¹¹⁰ For an excellent discussion of the difference between facts and events, see Bennett, Jonathan, Events and Their Names (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1988).Google Scholar

¹¹¹ See Campbell, Keith, Abstract Particulars (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990).Google Scholar It is not uncontroversial whether facts are tropes, or whether they consist instead of a complex of substance-particulars and universals. See “Introduction,” in Mellor, P. H. and Oliver, Alex, eds., Properties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 18–20.Google Scholar

¹¹² These two kinds of commitments to tropes are distinguished in Daly, Chris, “Tropes,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94 (1994): 253–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; rewritten and reprinted in Mellor, and Oliver, , eds., Properties (supra note 111).Google Scholar

¹¹³ See J. L. Mackie's position on facts versus events as causal relata, in The Cement of the Universe (supra note 55).

¹¹⁴ Hornsby, Jennifer, Actions (London: Routledge, 1980), 76 n. 1.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ These are the facts of Foster v. Preston Mill Co., 44 Wash.2d 440, 268 P.2d 645 (1954).Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ See, e.g., Smith, , “Legal Cause in Actions of Tort” (supra note 38), 230–32.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ All of these cases are detailed in Edgarton, , “Legal Cause” (supra note 20), 356–60.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Ibid.

¹¹⁹ Moore, Michael, “Moral Reality,” Wisconsin Law Review 1982, 1061–1156Google Scholar; Moore, , “Moral Reality Revisited,” Michigan Law Review 90 (1992): 2424–2533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹²⁰ See the text accompanying note 117 supra.

¹²¹ Skeptics about causation have perceived this, leading them to invoke these cases regularly. See Edgarton, , “Legal Cause” (supra note 20), 346–47Google Scholar (“D's act stands in the same logical relation to the result, whether the other actor is a wrongdoer, an innocent person, or a thunderstorm”); Shavell, , “An Analysis of Causation and the Scope of Liability in the Law of Torts” (supra note 10), 495Google Scholar; and Landes, and Posner, , “Causation in Tort Law: An Economic Approach” (supra note 10), 110.Google Scholar

¹²² I explore the lesser (but not nonexistent) causal requirement for attempt liability in Moore, , Act and CrimeGoogle Scholar (supra note 2), ch. 8.

¹²³ Beale, , “Proximate Consequences” (supra note 103), 637.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ Mack, , “Bad Samaritanism”Google Scholar (supra note 104).

¹²⁵ Epstein, , “A Theory of Strict Liability”Google Scholar (supra note 9).

¹²⁶ This latter point is argued more extensively in Moore, , Act and Crime (supra note 2), 31–34.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ See note 91 and the accompanying text.

¹²⁸ Hart, and Honoré, , Causation in the Law (supra note 47), 186:Google Scholar

The main feature that unifies “inducing wrongful acts” and “occasioning harm” is that these two types of “causal connection” (to use the expression in the wide sense commonly found in legal writings) are not negatived by the factors that negative the simpler type of causal connection … for both … may be traced through an intervening voluntary action and the second form may also be traced through an intervening coincidence.

¹²⁹ Ibid., lxii–lxv, 286–90.

¹³⁰ Watson (supra note 84).

¹³¹ This is a variation of the facts in Central of Georgia Ry. Co. v. Price, 106 Ga. 176, 32 S.E. 77 (1898).Google Scholar

¹³² The argument is pressed by Kadish in the essays cited in note 93 supra; Bennett, , Events and Their NamesGoogle Scholar (supra note 110); Davidson, Donald, Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Thomson, Judith Jarvis, Acts and Other Events (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977).Google Scholar Such a view is adopted in Dusenbeny v. Commonwealth, 220 Va. 770, 263 S.E.2d 392 (1980)Google Scholar (no rape by a defendant who inserted the penis of another into the victim).

¹³³ I have argued this at some length in Moore, , Act and CrimeGoogle Scholar (supra note 2), ch. 8.

¹³⁴ See Moore, , Placing Blame (supra note 12), ch. 13.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ See the essays by Kadish cited in note 93 supra. Kadish persuasively argues that the accomplice who does not cause the legally prohibited state of affairs (because the acts of the principal constitute intervening causes) is like the lucky attemptor who does not cause the harm he attempts; both are quite culpable, yet neither can be held responsible for a harm he did not cause.

¹³⁶ Dillon v. Twin State Gas and Electric Co., 85 N.H. 449, 163 A. 111 (1932).Google Scholar

¹³⁷ See McLaughlin, , “Proximate Cause” (supra note 53).Google Scholar

¹³⁸ Hart, and Honoré, , Causation in the Law (supra note 47), 239–40.Google Scholar

¹³⁹ Mackie, , Cement of the Universe (supra note 55), 45–46.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ Wright, , “Causation in Tort Law” (supra note 40), 1802.Google Scholar

¹⁴¹ Beale, Notably, “Proximate Consequences” (supra note 103)Google Scholar; and Epstein, , “A Theory of Strict Liability” (supra note 9).Google Scholar

¹⁴² See the discussion in Salmon, , “Probabilistic Causality” (supra note 17).Google Scholar

¹⁴³ I am unconcerned with whether the regularity theory sketched below was really believed by Hume. On this, see, e.g., Stroud, Barry, Hume (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chs. 3 and 4; and Strawson, Galen, The Secret Connexion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).Google Scholar The Humean theory is an interesting and an influential one even if it turns out that Hume never held it.

¹⁴⁴ See Armstrong, , What Is a Law of Nature? (supra note 31).Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ Ibid.

¹⁴⁶ Mackie, , Cement of the Universe (supra note 55)Google Scholar; Wright, , “Causation in Tort Law” (supra note 40), 1795.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁷ This is Wright's example; see Wright, “Causation in Tort Law,” 1795.

¹⁴⁸ Hart, and Honoré, , Causation in the Law (supra note 47), 28–32, lxxvii–lxxxi.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁹ I discuss the paradigm-case argument in Moore, , “The Semantics of Judging” (supra note 5), 281–92.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁰ This is an interpretation of Hart and Honoré offered in the essays by Kadish cited in note 93 supra. Hart himself questioned this libertarian interpretation of intervening causation when one of Kadish's papers was initially presented in Jerusalem in 1984.

¹⁵¹ This is a rendering of Davidson, Donald's “anomalous monism.”Google Scholar See Davidson, , Actions and EventsGoogle Scholar (supra note 132).

¹⁵² Mill, , A System of Logic (supra note 36).Google Scholar

¹⁵³ See generally Suppes, Patrick, A Probabilistic Theory of Causality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

¹⁵⁴ The defining article on this theory is Lewis, David's “Causation” (supra note 32).Google Scholar

¹⁵⁵ As Lewis makes clear in ibid.

¹⁵⁶ See the discussion in Wright, , “Causation in Tort Law” (supra note 40), 1777–80.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁷ Lewis, , “Causation” (supra note 32), 204.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁸ Ibid.

¹⁵⁹ See Moore, , Placing Blame (supra note 12), 351.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁰ See Moore, , Act and Crime (supra note 2), 268–69.Google Scholar

¹⁶¹ Thus, it is standard to use the overdetermination cases, the asymmetry of the causal relation, the problems of epiphenomena and other mere correlations, and the selectivity of “the cause,” as arguments testing the truth of various theories of causation, and not just the legal adequacy of such theories. See, e.g., Ehring, Douglas, Causation and Persistence: A Theory of Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

¹⁶² This is Michael Tooley's suggestion, in his “Causation: Reductionism versus Realism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (Supp. 1990): 215–36Google Scholar; and in Tooley, , Causation: A Realist Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁶³ As it is in Anscombe, Elizabeth, Causality and Determination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and Ducasse, C. J., “On the Nature and the Observability of the Causal Relation,” Journal of Philosophy 23 (1926): 57–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶⁴ See, for example, Fair, David, “Causation and the Flow of Energy,” Erkenntnis 14 (1979): 219–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶⁵ These are the metaphors employed by the cause-as-force theorists in law, Joseph Beale (supra note 103), and Richard Epstein (supra note 9).