FACT AND LAW IN THE CAUSAL INQUIRY

Fact and Law in the Causal Inquiry

This paper takes it as a premise that a distinction between matters of fact and of law is important in the causal inquiry. But it argues that separating factual and legal causation as different elements of liability is not the best way to implement the fact/law distinction. It is partly a legal question what counts as a cause-in-fact; and certain liabilitylimiting doctrines under the umbrella o...

Linguistic Inquiry . 1 Fact and Fiction in Icelandic Control

1 Fact and Fiction in Icelandic Control Jonathan David Bobaljik and Idan Landau Abstract A rich literature on Icelandic syntax has established that infinitival complements of obligatory control (OC) verbs constitute a case assignment domain independent from the matrix clause, and in this differ systematically from all types of A-movement, which manifest case dependence/preservation. As Landau (...

Ignorance and Mistake of Criminal Law, Noncriminal Law, and Fact

After clarifying the distinction between mistakes of fact and mistakes of law, this article explores in detail an important distinction within the category of mistake of law, between mistake about the criminal law itself and mistake about noncriminal law norms that the criminal law makes relevant—for example, about the civil law of property (in a theft prosecution) or of divorce (in a bigamy pr...

Theory and Fact in the Law of Accidents

During the nineteenth century, the common law fashioned rules conditioning compensation for accidents on both causal agency and the fault of a party. This scheme of accident compensation has been under attack for nearly a century. Some of the battles have been fought within the common law itself; product liability emerged with Cardozo's opinion in MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co. 1 That decision h...

Standards of Persuasion and the Distinction between Fact and Law