This chapter discusses general principles of liability as they apply across the various offences and provide for the doctrines by which a person may commit, participate in, or otherwise be found responsible for those crimes. They include forms of liability such as aiding and abetting, which are familiar to all domestic criminal lawyers, as well as principles like command responsibility, which are specific to international criminal law.

Responsibility is a key moral concept but it is often used ambiguously, such as a firm being considered a responsible part of the community, having corporate social responsibility, or being responsible for harms. This chapter provides a clear framework that distinguishes between the different ways the term is used and shows how it can be applied in practical terms. It starts with an exposition of the Volkswagen diesel scandal to illustrate the various meanings of the term, contrasting notions of legal liability from moral wrongs. The relationship of cause, blame, and fault to moral responsibility is evaluated. It is noted that people may adopt institutional values when working in a role, and whether that approach remains valid even when someone else takes responsibility. The nature of company and institutional codes and compliance issues are discussed, and positive acts are contrasted to deliberate avoidance. The doctrine of double effect is evaluated, where an outcome is foreseeable but unintended. The concluding case deals with the tragic loss of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes and the attempt to shift blame from the company to individuals, especially foreign pilots.

This chapter analyses how an international wrongful act accrues from the violation of a due diligence obligation and its consequences. The first part discusses due diligence obligations against secondary rules of ARSIWA concerning the existence of a wrongful act. It is argued that violations of due diligence obligations stem from omissions and that the difficulty of establishing responsibility for failure of due diligence typically concerns the application of rules governing the breach, rather than rules of attribution of conduct. Accordingly, a critical reappraisal of the genealogy of Article 14(3) of ARSIWA and breaches of preventive obligations is undertaken; the chapter argues that the ILC wrongly conceptualised the ‘event’ to be prevented as a secondary rule, this way confusing the relationship between prevention and due diligence. The rest of the chapter examines due diligence obligations against other relevant secondary rules, such as circumstances precluding wrongfulness (specifically, force majeure and distress), the relationship between due diligence and complicity, and how reparation is to be accorded following a breach of due diligence obligations.

Surgical patients undergo multiple transitions of care, from home to the operating room, to a recovery unit to a ward, and so on. Each transition poses a risk of medication error if the current medications are not reconciled or managed appropriately in the new phase of care. Home medications may be suspended, stopped, substituted for, or need to be continued, often in the face of changing preoperative guidelines. Admission and discharge medication reconciliations are at high risk for inaccuracies and for mis-information for the patient as well as the patient's primary provider. Intraoperative medication management is largely but not exclusively, under the control of the anesthesiologist, who serves as the sole agent for the prescription, dispensing, preparation, administration, documentation and monitoring of the anesthetic medications. Common errors include syringe or vial swaps, omissions (e.g., no redosing of antibiotics), wrong route, wrong dose, and even wrong choice of medication. Medication errors occur in approximately every 2 anesthetics, most are of little to no harm, but each has the potential for significant injury. Medication errors also can be made by a surgeon or OR nurse; communication failures between care team members often contribute.

In this chapter, I introduce the topic of negative action. I provide a rough account of the distinction between positive and negative actions, of the distinction between two commonly-discussed kinds of negative behaviour (omitting and refraining), and of what distinguishes negative actions from mere failures to do something. Then, drawing on this discussion and the discussion of Chapter 1, I articulate the problem of negative action: negative actions seem to be genuine actions; actions seem to be events; but (at least some) negative actions seem to be, not events, but absences thereof. I trace the widespread acceptance of the latter claim to Deflationism, the view – often held only implicitly – that negative action sentences express negative existentials.

At this moment, the literature and discourse on command responsibility is incredibly convoluted and controverted. I will show how these knots were produced by an underlying inadvertent contradiction with the culpability principle. The contradiction was created by surface-level doctrinal reasoning that did not adequately consider the deontic dimension. The subsequent twists and turns to deny, obscure, evade, or resolve this contradiction have led to increasingly complex and obscure claims about command responsibility.

The inquiry demonstrates the problems of inadequate attention to deontic limits. It also shows how deontic analysis can help us better understand the trajectory of the command responsibility debate. We can see old controversies in a new light and generate new prescriptions. I argue that command responsibility can be restored to its simple and elegant origins if it is recognized as a mode of accessory liability. As a result, the causal contribution requirement should be respected. This solution is not perfect, but I will show that this is the best reconciliation of the text, precedents, and the culpability principle. By resolving the core contradiction, the myriad complications and mystical evasions about command responsibility become unnecessary.

This chapter examines the nature of trusteeship and the possible actions for breach that can be brought by the beneficiaries. Breach can arise by commission [actively commiting a breach of trust]or by omission [failing to carry out a duty owed by the trustee]. The duties of a trustee arise either under common law or under statute or under the trust instrument. A trustee is liable for any breach of trust that causes a loss to the beneficiaries and must restore the equivalent value. The trustee will only be liable for a breach that caused the loss to the fund and the claimant must establish a causal link. The liability of trustees is joint but the beneficiaries can choose to only sue one trustee but in some cases the court may indemnify a trustee such as where one trustee has acted fraudulently. The beneficiaries may be able to claim interest as well as compensation from the fund. Trustees may be able to rely on an exemption clause which will exonerate them from liability. If there is no exemption clause trustees may be able to rely on other defences such as consent of the beneficiaries or the statutory defence under s.62 Trustee Act 1925.

This chapter recommends that we study silence not merely as the absence of speech but also as the presence of non-speech, thereby featuring discursive absences as manifestations of active avoidance. By highlighting hesitations, the use of euphemisms, the use of effectively elusive generics, and the lexical gaps surrounding default assumptions we habitually take for granted, it offers an introduction to the sociological study of absence.

Although propaganda is typically thought of as something created through tangible words or images, it can also occur via the absence of such stimuli. This chapter illustrates how such “propaganda-by-omission” can be created. The particular focus is on “topical silences,” those cases where failure to include information relevant to a certain topic can skew the recipient’s understanding of that topic in a propagandistic way. Such selectivity constitutes a type of “framing” driven by ideology including sociopolitical myths. Using as a case study the current diplomatic tension between the United States and North Korea, the chapter lays out a step-by-step procedure for analyzing such propagandistic silences. The discussion includes important caveats about “truth” and authorial intent and ends with practical advice for researchers and citizen activists.