영국형법상 인과관계에 관한 학설과 판례 검토

This article concerns with the Causation theory in the English Criminal Law. Even though ‘adequacy theory’ and ‘objective attribution theory’ has been confronted till now, the English causation theory has never been introduced to us. So I will introduce it in this article. In the English Criminal Law too causation occurs only in result crime, and conduct crime has nothing to do with causation. Causation include factual causation and legal causation, and the former concerns with sine qua non theory(but for test), the latter is the major point in the causation theory. Legal causation has some elements as follows. First, one’s behavior must contribute in some significant way to its occurrence. Second, the contribution that actor makes must be more than insignificant or de minimis. Third, as well as making a ‘not insignificant’ contribution, one’s causal role must also be salient. But when a ‘novus actus interveniens’ happens, it intervene to break the causal chain leading from actor to the eventual harm. There are some cases in a novus actus interveniens: natural events, victim’s behavior, and other person’s behaviors. It is impossible to generalise comprehensively about the principles governing the attribution of causation. The rich detail of the cases defied their reduction entirely to simple rules: sometimes, in analysing new situation, the best technic may be simply to argue by analogy to one or more decided cases. Nonetheless, at the risk of oversimplication it is offered the general guidelines to causation problems where there are intervening causes.