ABSTRACT
The notion of causation is pivotal to law as well as to medicine, yet the concept of causation is one where legal and medical minds do not necessarily meet. The reason may lie in the two-faceted nature of this concept, for causation can be defined as referring to either origins of phenomena or to the consequential relationship between two events, one of which is claimed to have brought about the other. Therefore, how the nature and function of causation is understood depends on whether emphasis is placed on causation in the sense of sources and constituent elements, or on causation in the sense of a relationship between occurrences. This is why concepts of legal and medical causation, though they seem similar, have different contents. As a result, dialogue between the two disciplines tends to be in parallel, with messages between them interpreted in each profession's own, different way.
