Responsibility to faultless agents thus if crp is not simply false it at best has a number of important exceptions and given these exceptions showing that an act or policy violates crp is not sufficient to show that it is unjust in short cra fails moreover the sorts of cases just discussed the cases where we routinely ascribe responsibility to faultless agents typically share a number of important features with product liability cases specifically in both these cases and product liability cases it is typically true that (1)the agent in question performed some relevant voluntary acts (the parents voluntarily had a child ; the pet owner voluntarily acquired a pet ; the company voluntarily manufactured a product ; etc.);(2) that for which the agent is held responsible is something that the agent created,or acquired or that in any event is something that in some reasonably straightforward sense can be regarded as “that agent’s own”(the child is his or her child ; the pet is his or her pet ; the product is his ,her or its product; etc.)and (3)the relevant agent is held responsible where,but only where,the entity causing the harm (the child,or pet,or product,or etc.)was itself,even if only in an entirely nonmoral sense, “at fault”(the child was misbehaving or at least being careless the product was defective etc )and the fact that product liability cases share these important features with the other cases I have described cases where ascribing responsibility to faultless agents seems noncontroversial allows us I think to draw a stronger conclusion we can now say not merely that a particular argument viz cra fails to show that sl is unjust to companies but that it is highly unlikely that any persuasive argument in support of that conclusion could be constructed in short we can now regard it as reasonable to hold that in fact sl is not unjust to companies for the simikarities between product liability cases and these other noncontroversial cases gives strong support to the view that including product liability cases within crp class of exceptions is not merely possible but morally correct
Even this stronger conclusion of course entails only that sl is compatible with considerations of justice it does not entail that sl is required by considerations of justice and this means that even if opponents of sl cannot argue that sl is unjust they can still argue on other grounds that it is not the best policy in short the argument of this section even if it is correct as far as it goes is not and does not claim to be the final word on sl but in this connection I would like to note the following though if I am right arguments of the sort criticized in section II above fail as arguments
หน้า11 against cra that does not mean they are entirely worthless it simply means they could not meet cra charge that sl is unjust but if the justice of sl is no longer at issues as it is not if the argument of the current section is successful so that the question of whether sl is an appropriate policy must be debated on other grounds then those sorts of arguments including the purely consequentialist arguments are back in the game and when those sorts of arguments are added to the argument presented in this section I think they give significant support to the view that sl is not simply morally permissible but morally desisble
I would like to conclude with a very brief consideration of one final questiob given that the cases where it seems legitimate to ascribe responsibility to faultless agents share a number of important features is there a single principle underlying these cases and if so what is it my extremely tentative answer is that there is indeed a single principle a principle that goes something like this
It is morally justifiable to require any entity given moral agent status (which includes in the present context, “artificial persons ” such as companies) to take responsibility for his,her,or its own person and all extensions thereof.
Admittedly this is extremely vague if nothing else an adequate exposition would require a detailed explanation and defense of what is and what is not to be counted as an “extension”. but this is a topic for another occasion.