  The scaling laws describing the roughness development of crack surfaces are
incorporated into the Griffith criterion. We show that, in the case of a
Family-Vicsek scaling, the energy balance leads to a purely elastic brittle
behavior. On the contrary, it appears that an anomalous scaling reflects a
R-curve behavior associated to a size effect of the critical resistance to
crack growth in agreement with the fracture process of heterogeneous brittle
materials exhibiting a microcracking damage.
