Bénédict Winiger, Responsibility, Restoration And Fault
| Pages | 286-288 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2019.0561 |
| Author | |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
This is the English translation of Winiger's German book,
At the outset, a distinction is drawn between responsibility and liability, which helps to better understand the nature and purpose of this research project: while liability is based on a legal system, with laws generally accessible to most people, there are, of course, no official rules for responsibility and neither is there any official organ that decides on whether a course of conduct was responsible. Whereas individuals can privately decide for themselves whether conduct may be described as being responsible, a finding of liability involves a judge-made decision that is binding on the parties to the conflict. It is against this backdrop that the author examines “the question of which criteria allow each and every individual member of society to say whether she or he finds a course of conduct responsible” (4).
The first part of the book contains three individual chapters that are dedicated to texts from Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. In summary, these chapters are general, brief and descriptive rather than analytical and detailed. The point is not to provide an in-depth account and explanation of the legal historical development that occurred, or to engage with the vast series of debates relevant to these texts or their interpretation. Readers should therefore not expect rigorous, comprehensive discussion of the multiple issues arising from these ancient sources and which contain fertile terrain for scholarly analysis. Rather, this section of the book is aimed at giving a brief summary of some of the major achievements of certain legal systems that spanned centuries. The value of such an historical perspective lies in the fact that these texts, especially those that deal with liability, are among the earliest available sources on the broader issue of responsibility. Therefore, as the author points out, we “should take advantage of these stores of experience when analysing responsibility” (75).
Against this background, the book moves on to focus on its central question, namely: in the context of conduct that caused...
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