ABSTRACT

Causation in pure lawyering, particularly its purest form, advocacy, is not about knowledge or truth. This chapter examines the differences between conceptions of causation in law and the sciences, consider some aspects of lawyering in which putting aside the former and adopting the latter makes sense, and reflect on the difficulties in doing any of that. Attributing blame and responsibility through the translation of a historical set of events into a legal outcome in which the actions of the defendant caused the injury to the plaintiff is at the heart of pure lawyering. Pure lawyering rejects "stuff happens" for a normative judgment of blame and responsibility. Causation is one of the more difficult pieces of pure lawyering to nail down. It is the element within a legal theory that links the breach of a duty to the injury. One of the most satisfying aspects of being a lawyer is acting as someone's counselor.