Liability: meaning, kinds, conditions, theories and the measure of liability
LUG-102 Jurisprudence — Legal Method, Indian Legal System and Basic Theory of Law, Unit V: Liability and negligence. · LLB · 60 min
Liability is the far side of a duty: the position of a person who has broken a duty and must answer for it. This lecture gives Salmond's definition and his division into civil and criminal, remedial and penal liability, the general conditions of liability (a wrongful act, damnum and injuria, causation and mens rea), the theories of liability (fault, strict and absolute, vicarious), the measure of civil and criminal liability, Salmond's kinds of obligations and, in a slide, the liability of the State and of corporations. Every paper since 2018-19 has asked a two-mark definition or a seven-mark essay on this topic.
Objectives
- Define liability in the words of Salmond, Markby and Austin and distinguish it from a right, a duty and a sanction.
- Distinguish civil from criminal and remedial from penal liability, and explain when the same act attracts both.
- Explain the general conditions of penal liability: actus reus, mens rea, causation and the maxim actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea.
- Compare the fault, strict, absolute and vicarious theories of liability with their leading cases.
- Classify obligations by source (contractual, delictal, quasi-contractual, innominate) and by parties (solidary obligations).
Slides
- What liability is: Salmond, Markby, Austin
- Civil and criminal liability
- Remedial and penal liability (Salmond)
- Conditions of penal liability I: the wrongful act (actus reus)
- Conditions of penal liability II: mens rea, and motive
- Causation and remoteness
- Theories of liability: fault, strict, absolute, vicarious
- The measure of civil and of criminal liability
- Obligations and their kinds (Salmond)
- Liability of the State and of corporations
- Putting it together: the examiner's map of liability
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