2 Concept of Liability

Three preliminary clarifications:1. Liability is anterior to its consequences. A person incurs liability the moment the wrong is done (or the risk-creating condition arises); the fine, damages or injunction are the enforcement of the liability. Liability is the burden; sanction is its execution.2. Liability is not necessarily fault-based. Common intuition ties liability to blame ("he is liable because he was careless"), but a large share of modern liability — vicarious, strict, absolute — attaches without personal fault. Law distributes losses by policy, not only by blame.3. Liability answers "who bears the consequence" — which may be someone other than the actor: the master for the servant, the State for its officer, the owner of a dangerous thing.The great bifurcation runs between civil liability (enforced at the suit of an injured party, aiming at compensation or restitution of the right) and penal/criminal liability (enforced by the State, aiming at punishment). From this trunk grow the branches this unit studies.