Abstract
Disputes over causes play a central role in legal argumentation and liability attribution. Legal approaches to causation often struggle to capture cause-in-fact in complex situations, e.g. overdetermination, preemption, omission. In this paper, we first assess three current theories of causation (but-for, NESS, ‘actual causation’) to illustrate their strengths and weaknesses in capturing cause-in-fact. Secondly, we introduce a semi-formal framework for modelling causal arguments through strict and defeasible rules. Thirdly, the framework is applied to the Althen vaccine injury case. And lastly, we discuss the need for new criteria based on a common causal argumentation framework and propose ideas on how to integrate the current theories of causation to assess the strength of causal arguments, while also acknowledging the tension between evidence-based and policy-based causal analysis in law.
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Notes
Different versions of the framework have been presented at the Evidence and Decision Making Workshop, ICAIL, 2017, London and AICOL Workshop, JURIX, 2017. This paper presents the latest developments of the framework to date.
At the initial stages of the case study, we annotated the decision identifying causal and accompanying hedging expressions. After identifying the main causal links in the case, we ranked the various expressions in two levels of strength. For instance, ‘a probable causal relation between tetanus toxoid and two injuries’, ‘it is more probably than not the case that tetanus toxoid can cause the injuries suffered here’ are examples of level 2 (usually causal) support.
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Liepiņa, R., Sartor, G. & Wyner, A. Arguing about causes in law: a semi-formal framework for causal arguments. Artif Intell Law 28, 69–89 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-019-09246-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-019-09246-z