Defense of Others
The rules are the same when force is used to protect another from danger. Generally, the defendant must have a reasonable belief that the third party is in a position where they would have the right of self-defense. For example, a person who unknowingly chances upon two actors practicing a fight would be able to defend their restraint of the one that appeared to be the aggressor. However, in many jurisdictions a person who causes injury in defense of another may be liable to criminal and civil charges if such defence turned out to be unnecessary. Most courts have ruled that such a defense cannot be used to protect friends or family members who have engaged in an illegal fight. Likewise, one cannot use this to aid a criminal.
Defense of others is called pikuach nefesh in Jewish law. One may violate most negative commandments of the Torah in order to save someone's life.
Read more about this topic: Right Of Self-defense
Famous quotes containing the words defense of and/or defense:
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“Of all my Russian books, The Defense contains and diffuses the greatest “warmth”Mwhich may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract chess is supposed to be.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)