Judges often invoke ‘common sense’ when deciding questions of legal causation. I draw on recent work in experimental psychology to refine the commonsense theory of legal causation developed by Hart and Honore in Causation in the Law. I show that the two main principles of abnormality and choice that Hart and Honore identified are empirically well-founded; I also show how experimental studies into causal selection can be used to specify these principles with greater precision than before. This approach can help provide legal scholars with a plausible new set of hypotheses to use in re-examining the decided cases on legal causation. If correct, the new commonsense theory that I develop has important implications not only for debates within legal scholarship, but also for judicial practice on issues of legal causation in criminal and private law.

中文翻译：

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法律中的常识因果关系

法官在决定法律因果关系问题时经常援引“常识”。我利用最近在实验心理学方面的工作来完善由哈特和奥诺雷在法律因果关系中发展的法律因果关系常识理论。我表明，哈特和奥诺雷确定的异常和选择的两个主要原则在经验上是有根据的；我还展示了如何使用因果选择的实验研究来比以前更精确地指定这些原则。这种方法可以帮助法律学者提供一套合理的新假设，用于重新审查有关法律因果关系的已决定案件。如果正确的话，我发展的新常识理论不仅对法学界的辩论具有重要意义，而且对刑法和私法中法律因果关系问题的司法实践也具有重要意义。