 Mackie’s theory of causation continues to be influential. Richard Wright (1985, 2011) proposed a similar account for identifying causes which can be, and indeed is, used in legal contexts. Building on Hart and Honoré (1985), he defined a cause as follows: a condition \(c\) was a cause of \(e\) iff \(c\) was necessary for the causal sufficiency of a set of existing conditions that was jointly sufficient for the occurrence of \(e\). Causal sufficiency is here different from lawful sufficiency: the set of conditions must instantiate the antecedent of a causal law whose consequent is then instantiated by the effect. Wright’s account requires that we have causal laws—as opposed to laws—at our disposal and so it is only reductive if we have a reduction of the causal laws. Nevertheless, the idea that a cause is a necessary element of a sufficient set for an effect has been applied in legal cases to determine which event has caused another. In fact, this NESS test for causation has itself become influential in legal theory (see the entry on  causation in the law).