 What the law of causation needs to be if it is to serve the value(s) constituting the function of the rules in which causation appears, thus makes a considerable difference to what the law of causation is. As we proceed to describe what the law’s concept of causation is, we should be eclectic on what these values are. We shall thus regard as unsettled what most theorists regard as settled (not that they agree on how it is settled), and consider things not only from the perspective of those who think that criminal law and torts serve the ends of retributive and corrective justice, but also from the perspectives of those who think that these areas of law serve other values (both utilitarian and otherwise), or even no coherent set of values at all.