Causation
A legislature typically has a number of ways in which it can legislate on a topic.
Each version of the proposed statute will be beneficial but in a different way
such as differences in the type and degree of benefits and costs. Obviously to
appraise each version of the statute to determine the best it is necessary for
legislators to do their best to predict the outcome or effect (meaning a raft or
cluster of effects) that the proposed version will cause. Thus when making
law, causation is our label for the task of predicting the effect that any version
of a statute will cause when enacted. When interpreting law it refers to
predicting the effect that any interpretation of law will cause if declared by a
court to be the legally correct meaning of the provision in question.
Unfortunately, because the science of legislative behaviour is not fully
understood there is no certainty in the task of causation. However, to make the
best possible prediction there are three requirements. (i) It is necessary to be
familiar with the various types of effects that a statute or meaning can cause.
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(ii) It is necessary to understand the social science concerning causation in
general and the science of legislative causation in particular, which is referred
to as legislative impact analysis.
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(iii) It is necessary to understand how to take
into account the uncertainty involved in predicting causation.
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Evaluation
Evaluation underpins the measurement of the net benefit of the options before
a legislature or court. There are two problem areas here. (i) There is a problem
in determining the values to be deployed in the process of measurement. Given
that law is a social product the ideal is to use values that represent as
accurately as possible the values of society.
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(ii) There is a second problem in
that the items constituting net benefit are not always capable of being
measured. And even if an item can be measured it may not be measured in a
way that enables it to be compared and computed with some other item. This
is the problem of incommensurability.
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3 Using Law
Introduction
Every legal rule changes the world. This function of a legal rule is fundamental
to the analysis. It is relevant to using law because it dictates the structure of a
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Chapter 16 Effects
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Chapter 13-15
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Chapter 13-15
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Chapters 17-22
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Chapter 12 Measurement of Net Benefit
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