This volume of essays is based upon a conference on liability and responsibility sponsored by the Department of Philosophy of Bowling Green State University in 1988. Other invited essays have been added.

Our aims in holding a conference on the theme of liability and responsibility in law and morals were twofold. First, we hoped that our participants, from different viewpoints and with different emphases, would be able to shed light on this most troublesome area of interconnection between law and morals. The whole concept of responsibility in morals is a difficult one, and problems there seep into and infect the discussion of liability in law. In order to avoid a scattering of essays upon all sorts of issues to do with responsibility and so to focus our considerations, we decided to concentrate upon four areas. One, of course, had to be conceptual in character, even though all contributors could be expected in part to be attempting conceptual clarification; the remaining three areas – contract, torts, and punishment – we chose because some of the most interesting work being done in legal philosophy today occurs there.

Our second aim in holding our conference, and in inviting additional contributions, was to show the interdisciplinary character of much of the work in our four areas of concentration.