In most cases, liability in tort law is all-or-nothing—a defendant is either fully liable or not at all liable for a claimant's loss. By contrast, this paper defends a causal theory of partial liability. I argue that a defendant should be held liable for a claimant's loss only to the degree to which the defendant's wrongdoing contributed to the causing of the loss. I ground this principle in a conception of tort law as a system of corrective justice and use it to critically evaluate different mechanisms for “limiting” liability for consequences of wrongdoing and for “apportioning” liability between multiple wrongdoers.

This paper hypothesizes that the paradox Hart confesses to in Ch. X of Essays on Bentham was the result of metaethical ambivalence. Hart eclectically yokes together metaethically incompatible elements from two disparate models of “normativity of law” with different sources of normativity: the impinging model based on a cognitivist metaethic and the projectivist model based on a noncognitivist metaethic. The “sources” of normativity in the two models are different. On the impinging model the source of normativity is a reason-giving objective moral requirement, and on the projectivist model, the source of normativity is a motivationally affective conative attitude. The metaethical configuration of the rule of recognition in Essays on Bentham constrained Hart to postulate a “source” of normativity metaethically congruous with the impinging model. However, the “source” of normativity Hart seemed keen to advance—he makes an “attitude” the source of normativity—was only congruous with the projectivist model.

There is an emerging consensus among political philosophers that state legitimacy involves something more than—or perhaps other than—political obligation. Yet the principle of fair play, which many take to be a promising basis for political obligation, has been largely absent from discussions of the revised conception of legitimacy. This paper shows how the principle of fair play can generate legitimate political authority by drawing on a neglected feature of the principle—its stipulation that members of a cooperative scheme must reciprocate specifically by submitting to the scheme's rules.