ABSTRACT
If we aim to improve our understanding of the relationship between legal causation and scientific or medical causation, then attempts designed to identify epistemological essences or focus on the putatively discrete categories of law, science and medicine are likely to provide only limited assistance. From observations of law and science in practice, images of causation would seem to be epistemologically confusing and inconsistent. The following discussion is intended as an exploratory examination of how judges in a variety of legal settings (primarily personal injury cases) construct accounts of legal and scientific causation against a background of rhetorical resources and practical constraints. As an empirical generalisation, determining matters of causation in legal settings involves the management of a more heterogeneous assortment of concerns, constraints and resources, than is usually the case with the treatment of causation in scientific and medical contexts - perhaps with the exception of scientific controversies. In particular, those in the legal system tend to place greater emphasis on the apportionment of responsibility and explaining specific instances - the case at hand - rather than, as is often the case in scientific settings, making generalisations about classes of
relationships.' However, as we shall see, on occasion even the causal pronouncements in specific legal settings and judgments appear designed to have more general social implications.
