Causalità e diritto: paradigmi e alcune questioni teoriche

: The essay focuses on some aspects of the relation between the notion of “cause (causality, causation)” and law. The preliminary distinction among the concept of “cause” and other categories (i.e. “beginning” and “origin”) allows to highlight three patterns of causality: the deterministic model (including its fundamental projection on Kelsen’s legal theory), the probabilistic framework and, finally, the theoretical outlook based on the uncertainty of the scientific knowledge. The analysis of these schemes as well as of their legal corollaries highlights the inescapable conceptual circle among the notion of “cause” and other elements (such as the adoption of conceptual paradigms and the relevance of the social context) and, at a philosophical-legal level, shows the logical and operational plausibility of a “pragmatic” idea of causality.