RESPONSIBILITY IN LAW AND MORALITY

Vol. 14 No. 2 (February 2004)

RESPONSIBILITY IN LAW AND MORALITY by Peter Cane. Oxford and Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, June 2003. xii, 303 pp. Paper Ł17.95. ISBN: 1-84113-400-7.

Reviewed by Vladimir Wozniuk, Department of History and Political Science, Western New England College.

Anyone expecting to find direct engagement with classic philosophers on the topic of responsibility and how it binds together legal and moral principles will not likely feel comfortable with this book: the emphasis here is more on legal reasoning than on the relationship of law to morality per se. Peter Cane, a widely respected expert on tort law and professor at the Australian National University, utilizes mostly modern treatments of the issues to make his case that it is legal thinking about responsibility that informs perspectives on moral responsibility. According to the author, a "major claim" of the study is that "the literature of common law provides extremely valuable (and, perhaps, indispensable) material for developing a thorough understanding of complex concepts such as responsibility, both in their legal version and more generally" (p. 9). The volume's target audience is scholars of modern legal philosophy and public law, and so the volume is only tangentially related to matters of general interest to political scientists.

Nine chapters of rather dense prose are, however, fitted with useful summaries that condense the author's arguments. After an introduction on responsibility and morality, followed by a chapter on "nature and functions of responsibility," Cane covers three subjects with respect to responsibility - culpability, causation, and personality. He then draws the study to its conclusion with three somewhat wider ranging chapters on "grounds and bounds of responsibility," "realising responsibility," and "responsibility in public law."

In narrowing the scope of the study to modern legal reasoning about law and morality, Cane obviates engagement with the massive amount of historical and philosophical literature on the topics under discussion. This, however, at times creates an impression of austerity, as, for example, when he does cite Kant, but only in passing (p. 23), or when he cites Kant from a recent scholarly study (Weinrib 1995) but leaves the task of differentiating between views in the two sources to the reader (p. 189).

While I understand that this book was not intended principally for political scientists or those with broader interests - for example in classical or religious ethics - I would like to suggest that a future, revised edition that includes direct engagement with the shortcomings of classic philosophy on the topic of responsibility would make it more accessible for these wider audiences. A brief introductory chapter introducing - even if only perfunctorily - some of the problems of morality and responsibility recognized by philosophers such as Nietzsche (The Genealogy of Morals) and Foucault (Madness and Civilization), as well as Kant, could achieve such a result. As it stands, this incisive and highly erudite study will likely find its principal usefulness among advanced students of public law and the philosophy of law.

REFERENCES:

Foucault, Michele. 1988. MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION : A HISTORY OF INSANITY IN THE AGE OF REASON. New York: Vintage Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1999. ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS. Douglas Smith (Translator). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Weinrib, Ernest J. 1995. THE IDEA OF PRIVATE LAW. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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