NECESSITY

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 for murder.

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necessity

Noun

  1. The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite.
  2. The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want.
  3. That which is necessary; a requisite; something indispensable.
  4. That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral; fate; fatality.
  5. The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism.
  6. Greater utilitarian good; used in justification of a criminal act.
  7. Indispensable requirements (of life).


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: necessity
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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