Self-Defence, Necessity and Duress: Understanding the Relationship

Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 143-165

  Horder, Jeremy ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85007591274     PISSN: 08418209     EISSN: 20564260     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0841820900001727     Document Type: Review

References (69)

1. This is so, for example, in England and Wales: see R. v. Howe, [1986] Q.B. 626 [hereinafter Howe].
2. The significance of the distinction between necessity and duress will be explained in due course.
3. Suzanne Uniacke, Permissible Killing: The Self-Defence Justification of Homicide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
4. P.R. Glazebrook, "Structuring the Criminal Code: Functional Approaches to Complicity, Incomplete Offences and General Defences" in A.P. Simester & A.T.H. Smith, eds., Harm and Culpability (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) 196.
5. Uniacke, supra note 3 at 32-34.
6. English law conceals the requirement for both necessity and proportionality in the notion that the force used defensively must have been "reasonable."
7. Uniacke, supra note 3 at 158ff.
8. A variety of authorities discussing the matter are helpfully given by J.C. Smith & B. Hogan, Criminal Law, 8th ed. (London: Butterworths, 1996) at 264.
9. H.L.A. Hart & A.M. Honore, Causation in the Law, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) at 361.
10. text accompanying note 40.
11. R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974) at 34-35, cited by Uniacke, supra note 3 at 73.
12. Where the objective justification in question is moral rather than legal see J. Horder, "Redrawing the Boundaries of Self-Defence" (1995) 58 Mod. L. Rev. 431-435.
13. R. Dudley and Stephens (1884), 14 Q.B. 273 [hereinafter Dudley and Stephens].
14. J.C. Smith & B. Hogan, supra note 10 at 257-258;
15. J.C. Smith, Justification and Excuse in the Criminal Law (London: Stevens, 1989) at 78-79.
16. Uniacke, supra note 3 at 15-17.
17. Criminal Code s.34(2).
18. See generally, J. Raz, Practical Reason and Norms, 2d ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 15
19. J. Gardner, "Justifications and Reasons" in Simester & Smith, supra note 5.
20. The argument ofThe Law Reform Commission of Canada, Criminal Law The General Part: Liability and Defences (Working Paper No.29) (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada 1982), at 90-91, cited by Uniacke, supra note 3 at 31.
21. C. Coke, Co.Inst. 127a/b on the conviction for mayhem in the following case: "A young strong and lustie rogue, to make himself more impotent, thereby to have the more colour to begge or to be relieved without putting himself to any labour, caused his companion to strike off his left hand."
22. See the discussion by Uniacke of these examples supra note 3 ch. 4.
23. Uniacke, supra note 3 at ch.
24. This last qualification is necessary to account for cases in which someone has been posing an unjust threat that would justify the use of force to negate it, but ceases to pose the threat before the use of the force actually becomes necessary. In such a case, clearly, once the threat has ceased to exist die use of force is no longer justified in self-defence.
25. See Uniacke, supra note 3 at 26-29, 145-46.
26. Supra note 17.
27. This kind of argument is frequently encountered in textbook commentary: see, e.g., Smith & Hogan, supra note 10 at 258.
28. See Horder, supra note 16 at 432;
29. Uniacke, supra note 3 at 181-82.
30. See text infra note 54.
31. Supra note 17.
32. Supra note 1.
33. Smith & Hogan, supra note 10 at 251 (footnotes added). The passage is taken from Smith, supra note 18 at 77-78.
34. Uniacke, supra note 3 at 164-77.
35. As Uniacke points out {supra note 3 at 168.
36. Hart & Honore\ supra note 11.
37. see P. Foot, "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect" in P. Foot, Virtues and Vices, and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 2.
38. Raz, supra note 21 at 90-91, 196-97.
39. See Uniacke, supra note 3 at 14-15.
40. Raz, supra note 21 at 27.
41. See Uniacke, supra note 3 at 172-76.
42. Indeed, it follows that conditions of necessity sometimes create exclusionary reasons for action (see Raz, supra note 21 at 35-39), in That it would be wrong in some circumstances even to consider acting on the balance of reasons.
43. A. Brudner, "A Theory of Necessity" (1987) 7 Oxford J. of Legal Stud. 339;
44. M. Bayles, "Reconceptualising Necessity and Duress" in M. Corrado, ed., Justification and Excuse in the Criminal Law (New York: Garland, 1994) at 492.
45. See generally, J. Griffin, Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
46. J. Finnis, J. Boyle & G. Grisez, Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
47. See Griffin, supra note 55 at 98-102.
48. United States v. Holmes, 26 Fed. Cas. 360 (1841 59. See Griffin, supra note 55.
49. P. Pettit, "Consequentialism and Respect for Persons" (1989) 100 Ethics 116.1 am not relying on this distinction in quite this form here. My contrast is between honouring innocent life, and promoting innocent life or lives (not promoting the value of innocent life).
50. See generally, J.J. Thomson, "Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem" (1975-6) 59 The Monist 204.
51. J.M. Taurek, "Should the Numbers Count" (1976/1977) 6 Phil. & Publ. Affairs 293.
52. See further, R.M. Dworkin, "Rights as Trumps" in J.Waldron, ed., Theories of Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) 153.
53. See Brudner, supra note 54 at 363.
54. Uniacke, supra note 3 at 11.
55. Raz, supra note 21 at 34.
56. Which is not to say, of course, that such a reason could not be outweighed by other reasons, in appropriate circumstances. On the distinction between operative and auxiliary reasons, see Raz, supra note 21 at 33-35.
57. Clearly, objective values can also be my values, but then they are not solely my values.
58. F. V. West Berkshire Health Authority, [1989] 2 All E.R. 545;
59. S. Gardner, "Necessity's Newest Inventions" (1991) 11 Oxford J. of Legal Stud. 125.
60. J. Horder, "Criminal law: Between Determinism, Liberalism and Criminal Justice" (1996) Current Legal Prob. 159.
61. G. Lamond, "Coercion, Threats, and the Puzzle of Blackmail" in Simester & Smith, supra note 5 especially at 220.
62. Smith & Hogan, supra note 10 at 238
63. Things might be different, of course, if someone else in the queue consented to be injured, so that the woman would not be harmed by the madman, but I am assuming that this is not the case.
64. S. Uniacke, "Killing Under Duress" (1989) 6 J. of Applied Phil. 53 at 55-61.
65. J. Horder, Provocation and Responsibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
66. S. Uniacke, "What are Partial Excuses to Murder" in S. Yeo, ed., Partial Excuses to Murder (Sydney, NSW: Federation Press, 1991) 1.
67. See Glazebrook, supra note 5 at 203-11.
68. A. McColgan, "In Defence of Battered Women who Kill" (1993) 13 Oxford J. of Legal Stud. 508.
69. The insane, for example, are exempted from liability, rather than excused, in part because they are not amenable to questions of desert in regard to excuse. See Horder, supra note 71.