Yeah, it mentions in the article that the issue here is causation - the connection between the bad act and the bad outcome. In criminal law there have to be two things to say that someone caused something: actual cause and proximate cause. Actual cause means that the outcome wouldn't have happened but for the action in question (e.g. there wouldn't have been an accident if this guy hadn't been driving drunk
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Using the same "but for" logic, couldn't you argue that this chain of events wouldn't have even happened had it not been for the drunk driver, driving? I know that if I lost someone cause of a drunk driver, I would find it a hard pill to swallow cause there is a chain of events that removes responsiblity from said driver.
Sounds almost like a butterfly flaps its wings in China, you get rain in New York.
Sounds almost like a butterfly flaps its wings in China, you get rain in New York.
That's the idea - we don't blame the butterfly, even when it is a "but for" cause. Similarly, the criminal has to be both the "but for" cause and the proximate cause.
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Sounds almost like a butterfly flaps its wings in China, you get rain in New York.
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That's the idea - we don't blame the butterfly, even when it is a "but for" cause. Similarly, the criminal has to be both the "but for" cause and the proximate cause.
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