Definition
A Latin maxim meaning "the proximate cause, not the remote cause, is looked to" (or, more literally, "the proximate, not the remote, is regarded"). The principle instructs courts to identify the direct and immediate cause of a harm or legal consequence rather than tracing liability back through every antecedent contributing factor. The cause immediately producing the result is the legally operative one; causes that are merely background conditions or distant links in a causal chain are disregarded.
The maxim operates most prominently in tort law, where it grounds the doctrine of proximate causation. A defendant is not liable for every consequence that traces through an unbroken chain from their conduct; liability attaches only where the causal connection between act and harm is sufficiently close and direct. Courts invoking the maxim ask whether the harm was the natural and probable result of the defendant's act, not whether the act was somewhere in the ancestry of the harm.
The phrase functions as a shorthand for a limitation principle: once the remote cause is identified and set aside, the proximate cause determines legal responsibility.
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Common Confusion
The maxim is sometimes treated as if it resolves all causation questions by itself, but it does not. It states a preference for proximate over remote causation; it does not define where the line falls between them. That boundary is determined by the substantive proximate cause doctrine — including tests of foreseeability, directness, and the scope of the risk — which the maxim summarizes but does not replace. Researchers should not treat the Latin phrase as an independent analytical framework separate from the proximate causation doctrine it encapsulates.
The term is also occasionally confused with the related but distinct question of but-for causation (cause-in-fact). The maxim speaks to legal or proximate causation — the policy-laden question of how far liability extends — not to factual causation, which asks whether the defendant's act was a necessary condition of the harm at all.
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Why It Matters in Research
This maxim is the Latin root of proximate cause doctrine, and tracing it through historical sources reveals how courts justified limiting tort liability before modern negligence doctrine was fully theorized. Researchers working in 19th-century common law materials will encounter the phrase frequently as a doctrinal touchstone in cases involving negligence, nuisance, and contract damages — often where a modern court would simply cite proximate causation doctrine without Latin.
The Bouvier's entry for this maxim is anomalous and unreliable: the text provided associates the phrase with explosive novelty devices under English law, which is almost certainly a scanning or editorial error in the digitized edition, not a genuine definition of the maxim. Researchers should treat that specific Bouvier's passage with caution and not rely on it as a substantive gloss on the maxim's legal meaning.
The maxim pairs directly with its counterpart principle in damages law, where remoteness of damage limits recovery to consequences that are not too remote from the breach or wrong. In contract contexts, this intersects with the rule from Hadley v. Baxendale limiting recoverable damages to foreseeable consequences — a related but distinct doctrinal line that historical sources sometimes blur together with the tort causation maxim.
Because the phrase appears in both tort and contract contexts, researchers should note which body of law is operative when they encounter it. The weight given to "proximity" varies between these contexts, and conflating them produces analytical error.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary lists the maxim but the surviving digitized entry text is plainly corrupt — it associates the phrase with explosive paper devices under English law, which bears no relationship to the maxim's accepted legal meaning. This appears to be a digitization or compilation error. Researchers should not rely on that Bouvier's passage and should instead consult the maxim's treatment in common law treatises and case reporters directly.
The maxim itself has a long and stable history in Anglo-American legal writing. It appears in early equity and common law authorities as a general principle of legal causation, and its substance was consistently understood to mean that courts look to the immediate rather than the distant cause. The principle was standard enough that treatise writers often cited it without extended comment, treating it as established doctrine rather than a contested proposition.
Historical dictionaries generally agree on the core meaning while differing in how broadly they apply it — some restrict it to tort, others treat it as a general maxim applicable wherever causation is at issue.
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Jurisdictional Note
The underlying proximate causation doctrine this maxim encapsulates applies across common law jurisdictions, but its contours — particularly the role of foreseeability — vary significantly between American tort law and English tort law, and among U.S. states. The Latin maxim itself appears more frequently in historical and civil law-influenced sources; modern courts state the same principle in English without invoking the phrase.
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