Michael Moore and the Mysteries of Causation in the Law

Michael Moore believes that causation of harm is central to criminal desert, and he believes that whether or not a criminal defendant has caused a harm is a metaphysical question rather than a matter of policy. I do not believe in the materiality of causation to criminal desert, but in this article I assume that causation is material and asked whether Moore has satisfactorily resolved the stock vexing questions by recourse to metaphysics. I conclude that he has not, and his scalar notion of causation, and his substitution of counterfactual dependence for causation in cases of omissions and prevention, produces counterintuitive results