Novus Actus and Beyond: Attributing Causal Responsibility in the Criminal Courts

Abstract

Glanville Williams’ influential 1989 article on causation, “Finis for Novus Actus?”, addressed two pertinent questions: (1) when, and on what grounds, may a person be judged to bear causal responsibility for harms most immediately brought about by the subsequent action of another person (the locus classicus of the novus actus interveniens doctrine), and (2) how should questions of causation be resolved in cases where the potential cause in question constitutes an omission? This article revisits these questions through an engagement with the major causation cases decided by the criminal courts in England and Wales the past decade: the Supreme Court's judgment in R. v Hughes (2013) and the Court of Appeal judgments in R. v. Wallace (2018), R. v. Broughton (2020) and R. v. Field (2021). The discussion of these cases is set in the broader context of a critique of H.L.A. Hart and Tony Honoré’s influential doctrinal-theoretical framework for findings of legal causation, the autonomy doctrine, on which Williams had built his arguments, and draws inter alia on Joel Feinberg’s views on “causing voluntary actions”. .

Keywords: Causal responsibility, factual causation, legal causation, novus actus interveniens, intended consequences and remoteness, autonomy doctrine, causation by omission, causing voluntary actions, Joel Feinberg, H.L.A. Hart, Tony Honoré, R. v. Hughes, R. v. Wallace, R. v. Broughton, R. v. Field.