Necessity
In U.S. criminal law, necessity may be either a possible justification or an exculpation for breaking the law. Defendants seeking to rely on this defense argue that they should not be held liable for their actions as a crime because their conduct was necessary to prevent some greater harm and when that conduct is not excused under some other more specific provision of law such as self defense. Except for a few statutory exemptions and in some medical cases there is no corresponding defense in English law.
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Famous quotes containing the word necessity:
“He says a man may perhaps answer, that the necessity of things held by him, is not a stoical necessity, but a Christian necessity, &c. But this distinction I have not used, nor indeed have ever heard before, nor could I think any man could make stoical and Christian two kinds of necessity, though they may be two kinds of doctrine”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“With my desire to write he seemed in full sympathy, and in urging our early marriage he argued that my first necessity was leisure in which to develop and to master my craft. It appeared to me that with such a man as teacher and guide I could not fail, and it was in a queer mixture of young love and vaulting ambition that I became a wife.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)