Research On The Causal Relationship Of Tort Law

One important task of tort law is to determine the responsibility of the infringer, the causal relationship is considered to be an integral and important criteria in many elements which judge the responsibility. In past two hundred years many scholars have done many depth study on the topic, have developed many valueable doctrines and theories. Compared with the theoretical achievements of foreign scholars our research needs to be strengthened on the causation topic: lacking of stipulation at the the legislative level, in theory having divergent views on the problem, in practice there is no uniform standard. All these problems above are problems which need to be addressed. This paper tries to give some suggestions in identifying causal relationship.In the paper we discuss the causality identification methods, we can adopt"dichotomy"to study the problem of the causal relationship. We can use"but-for"doctrine and the substantial-factor test to identify the causal relationship in fact, with respect to the problem of the causal relationship in law we discuss the problem in different types. The structure is as follows: First two chapters briefly introduce the theories of continent law system countries and common law system countries. The first chapter made an introduction and criticism to condition theory, cause theory, comparative causation theory, scope of duties theory and targets of rules theory. The second chapter made an introduction to and criticism on those major theories, including but-for rule, substantial factor rule, direct consequence theory, foresee ability theory. After introducing the author suggest we can adopt"dichotomy"to identify the causal relationship in our country. The third chapter discusses some basic problems in causation topic. The first one is about the debate between the inevitable causal relationship and chanciness causal relationship. Author believes that both inevitable causal relationship and chanciness causal relationship are the reasons lead damage. It is not necessary to distinguish them. The second question discussed in this chapter is to identify the reason in causal relationship.The fourth chapter is about some idea of identification methods in identifying causal relationship. At the very beginning author propose that we can adopt"dichotomy"to cut the process into to two steps: one step is to identify the causal relationship in fact, adopt"but-for"rule and the substantial-factor test; the second step is to identify the causal relationship in law .In intentional torts author believe that it is not necessary to restrict the causal relationship in fact. In torts of negligent author recommend to adopt foresee ability theory. In cases which leave fault, author recommend to adopt comparative causation theory.In the epilogue, the author drew a conclusion about the basic opinions of this dissertation in hope of being beneficial to the research on causation in China.