Liability and its Conditions — KSLU Jurisprudence Notes

Liability and its Conditions

Liability (Salmond) is the bond of necessity between the wrongdoer and the remedy of the wrong. Kinds: civil and criminal; remedial and penal. The classic conditions of penal liability:

1. Act (actus reus) — a voluntary act or culpable omission; thoughts alone are never punished.
2. Mens rea — the guilty mind: intention, recklessness, or (for some offences) negligence; displaced only where statute creates strict liability.
3. Causation — the act must cause the harm without a novus actus interveniens [a new intervening act] breaking the chain.

Mens rea family, precisely distinguished: intention (desire of the consequence) ≠ motive (the ulterior reason — legally irrelevant to liability, relevant to sentence); malice in law means a wrongful act done intentionally without just cause, not spite; recklessness is conscious risk-taking; negligence is inadvertent failure to take due care.