Wright and Stapleton Discuss Causation

Richard Wright has posted to SSRN Dialogues on Causation with Stapleton.  The abstract provides:

This paper, forthcoming in an Oxford University Press festschrift in honour of Jane Stapleton, retraces my discussions and debates with her over several decades on the concept of causation and its employment in determinations of legal responsibility. Until recently, she agreed with me on the need (i) to distinguish causation in its core sense of factual, scientific causation from the further issues involved in the determination of legal responsibility and (ii) to employ the more comprehensive, philosophically based NESS (necessary for the sufficiency of a sufficient set) analysis of causation to handle properly cases that are not properly resolved by the traditional but-for test. However, an incomplete understanding of the NESS analysis, combined with her aversion to philosophical analysis and her desire to employ concepts with which judges are familiar, have led her to propose “more forensically useful” modified-but-for versions of the NESS analysis, all of which are deficient. Nevertheless, her papers have required me to further clarify and elaborate the NESS analysis and have contributed to its general acceptance by academics and increasing acceptance and use by the courts, including the highest courts in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.