An updated and extended second edition supporting the findings of its well-known predecessor which claimed that courts employ common-sense notions of causation in determining legal responsibility.

If positivism is interpreted as requiring that nothing is law that does not conform to socially accepted criteria, it is inconsistent with positive law. This is because law purports to be morally in order. Hence it is always possible to argue against a certain interpretation of the law that it is morally indefensible and there is always a certain pressure within a legal system to render it morally defensible. In that way critical morality necessarily becomes a persuasive source of law.

The first text of Justinian’s sixth century Digest records that Ulpian, the leading lawyer from Syria and counsellor to successive emperors of the Severan age (AD 193-235), related the term ‘law’ to four elements: art, religion, ethics and philosophy.2 Law is the art of the good and equitable, of which lawyers can well be called priests. They cultivate justice and the knowledge of right and wrong, and aim, unless Ulpian is mistaken, at the true philosophy.3 He goes on to say (...) that private law is collected from three sources: natural law,4 the law common to all communities (ius gentium) and the law specific to each community (civil law).5 Gaius, a generation earlier, listed two sources: the civil law of each community and the ius gentium.6 He recognized, however, the existence of natural law which, so far as performing a ‘natural obligation’ is concerned, cannot be changed by civil law.7 At times he identifies natural law with ius gentium. (shrink)

1 Responsibility and self-control................................. 1 Michael Smith 2 The capacity to have done otherwise: an agent-centred view 21 Philip Pettit 3 Private law and private narratives.............................. 37 Arthur Ripstein 4 Honoré on responsibility for outcomes........................ 61 Stephen R. Perry 5 Responsibility and fault: a relational and functional approach to responsibility 81 Peter Cane 6 Obligations and outcomes in the law of torts............... 111 John Gardner 7 Unpacking “causation‘....................................... 145 Jane Stapleton 8 Private law: between visionaries and bricoleurs............... 187 William Lucy (...) 9 Appreciations and responses................................. 219 Tony Honoré Index................................................... 241. (shrink)

Here is an introduction to the intellectual challenges presented by law in the western secular tradition. Treating not just British law, but the whole western tradition of law, Professor Honore guides the reader through eleven topics which straddle various branches of the law, including constitutional and criminal law, property, and contracts. He also explores moral and historical aspects of the law, including a discussion of justice and the difference between civil and common law systems. The law, Honore argues, is mainly (...) concerned with the question of obedience to authority, and establishing the situations in which obedience is required and those in which it may be waived ought to be the central concern of all legal theorists. (shrink)

This is a thoroughly revised edition of the only full-scale work about possibly the most influential lawyer of all time, the Syrian Ulpian. Ulpian wrote a massive survey of Roman law in 213-17 AD and the author argues that his philosophy of freedom and equality make him a pioneer of human rights.