Research On Relationships Between Causation And Legal Liability

As an essential condition of liability for law, causation is always a key issue both in theoretical field and judicial activities. Causation is a concept in the field of philosophy which means relationships between the cause and the result. Causation in the law is basically far from causation in the science of philosophy. The essential purpose of causation in law is to determine the undertaking of the liability and the scope of the liability. That is to say we not only recognize the causation-in-fact but the causation- in-law.The study on relationships between causation and legal liability in China is still very backward, which is basically limited to a superficial introduction of theories made by foreign countries. So we do not have any systematic theory system on this issue. It undoubtedly blocks the progress of our research on law and is far from meeting the need of judicial practices. Therefore, it is necessary and imperious to do some thorough and effective research on it. Besides the preface and epilogue, the whole dissertation has been divided into four chapters.Chapter one is mainly concerned the basic analysis to causation and legal liability. In chapter one,we discuss the concept and characteristics of causation, we also make a comparison between the causation in law and the causation in philosophy. Furthermore, we make a general discussion on the issue of relationships between causation and legal liability.Chapter two is concerned the recommendation and analysis to theories about relationships between causation and legal liability both in our country and in foreign country. In chapter two, we examine and comment the theories about the issue both in common law legal system, civil law legal system and in our country on purpose to lay the foundation for further research.Chapter three emphatically discusses the causation and the proof of legal liability. The chapter three is the main body of the dissertation. Firstly, the article discusses the Bifurcated approach in detail. In the view of the article, it's helpful to analyze the issue by dividing causation into causation-in-fact and causation-in-law; secondly, the article combines the Bifurcated approach with the Two-level approach. The article points out the causation-in-fact or the level of establishment of legal liability is referred to the quality of the liability, the causation-in-law or the level of scope of legal liability is referred to the quantity of the liability; finally, the article makes a further analysis to the role of causation in the limit of legal liability.Chapter four is mainly about the proposition of the article. The article calls for establishing a new theory that is the doctrine of two-tired system and synthetic analysis in causation to meets the needs of theoretical field and judicial practices.