Cause
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
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In its natural sense, causation means making something happen. It refers to the
notion that one thing, such as the making or interpreting a statute, will bring
about an effect. It is also used in this chapter in a special sense to refer to two
processes involving causation. Before a law is made or interpreted it refers to
the process of trying to predict the effect that will ensue. After a law is made
interpreted it refers to the process of trying to detect the effect that did in fact
ensue.
Causation enters the process of forming law in the following way.
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Law is
made to change the world. Any possible law that a legislature might make, and
any possible meaning of an ambiguous term that a court might choose as
legally correct, will cause an effect.
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Consequently, the rational approach to
forming law entails predicting the effects that each law on a subject or each
interpretation of a law will cause. This is a necessary precondition for the next
step in the rational process, which is to evaluate the effects of each possible
law or interpretation to see which causes the best effect. Then the legislature or
court enacts this law, or chooses this meaning of a law as legally correct. In
other words making and interpreting law are performed according to a simple
decision making rule: the best law or the best interpretation of a law is the one
that causes the best effect. This, as has been argued, consists of the effect that
yields the highest net benefit.
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It is, as we have also said, impossible to be
more rational than this.
While cause applies to any action for forming law, that is, to making and
interpreting common law and statute law, much of the subsequent discussion
focuses on making statute law. In part this is because it is the most significant
part of forming law, and in part because what is said about making statute law
applies to the other tasks, either directly or with appropriate modification.
Effects
There are three important propositions concerning effects that have already
been explained, and so can just be noted here. First, there are many synonyms
___________________
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William Ross Wallace “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle is the Hand that
Rules the World”
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Passmore (1981), and Magat (1984). See also Chambliss (1967), Akers and
Hawkins (1975)
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Magat and Schroeder (1984)
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This is called the net benefit rule. It is discussed in Chapter 11 Nature of
Net Benefit.
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