Inevitable Causality And Equivalent Causality In Criminal Law

Causality problem is a very complicated problem in criminal law theory, hasalways been one of the focus of the criminal law educational world discussion, butthere is still much controversy. The presence of causality, not only related to theestablishment of the crime or not, but also influence the sentencing, is objective basisfor criminal liability. Therefore, cause and effect, how clear causal judgment standard,not only in criminal law theory, but also for the judicial practice is a problem to besolved. Specifically, the causality in criminal law refers to relationships that causedbetween behavior and harmful result.Traditional criminal law theory in China wasaffected by the punishment law of the former Soviet union,there has always been theinevitable causality theory, the inevitable and accidental causality theory. Theinevitable causality theory was predominant.Recent decades, however, the inevitablecausality doctrine has been constantly questioned by academic circles. Roughlyspeaking, the academic thought the inevitable causality theory exists two majorshortcomings, one is for how to determine a certain behavior is regularly happened asa result, the judgment standard of "natural" is not clear. Another shortage is that thetheory unreasonably narrowing the scope of the punishment. For example, when aperson causes the result of manufacturing conditions, were excluded from the scopeof causality to consider. Also because of its shortcomings, academic circles began tothink about an alternative theory, with the introduction of foreign criminal law theory,Chinese scholars began to focus on the equivalent causality theory,which in Japan hasbeen well studied and occupy in Germany on the status of the objective imputationtheory.The author thinks that, however, the role of the inevitable causality theory andthe equivalent causality theory in criminal law are both to avoid the accidentimputation to the behavior.In careful study, the "regularity" of inevitable causalitytheory and the “rather "of equivalent causality is very close, even can be said to be thesame. And research of the inevitable causality theory, reveals that the judgment in thespecific instance almost the same as the equivalent causality theory. In this case, it is not necessary to scrap the inevitable causality theory and takethe equivalent causality theory.Because, the inevitable causality theory is developedon the basis of the causal relationship,and the causal relationship of philosophy is thefoundation of other social disciplines to study causal relationships. Although thecausal relationship between research, in different disciplines, there will be thedifferent research purposes, but essentially is inseparable from the philosophicalcausality. The inevitable causality theory in criminal law, said its say in thephilosophy of "must" and "necessity" is not the same, it meets a causal relationshipbetween criminal law of causality is not true but legal causation. If the inevitablecausality theory,of course, said the "inevitable" is easy to cause misunderstanding, sotake the equivalent causality theory is also good. But the author thinks that theory isserving the practice,complex theory is too cumbersome for the practice operation.The equivalent causality theory is divided by subjective, objective and compromise,which one is used in practice is not certain,so it is easy to cause confusion. As to theinevitable causality theory, if use the author’s point of view, is relatively simple inpractice.