Causal analysis for attributing responsibility in legal cases

Abstract

An important challenge in the field of law is the attribution of responsibility and blame to individuals and organisations for a given harm. Attributing legal responsibility often involves (but is not limited to) assessing to what extent certain parties have caused harm, or could have prevented harm from occurring. This paper presents a causal framework for performing such assessments that is particularly suitable for the analysis of complex legal cases, where the actions of many parties have had a direct or indirect effect on the harm that did occur. This framework is evaluated by means of a case study that applies it to the Baby P. case, a high-profile case of child abuse leading to the death of a child that has been the subject of a number of public inquiries in the UK. The paper concludes with a discussion of the framework, including a roadmap of future work and barriers to adoption.