Does English law recognize the defence of necessity?
Necessity is accounted for in the English law as a general defence which can be integrated and is very closely associated with the duress of circumstance and lesser so the duress of threat. Firstly in reference to the duress of circumstance the defendant can be compelled to act in compulsion due to the circumstance he may find himself in and as shown in Northen Ireland v Lynch (1975) the duress of threat can be seen as a type of necessity in overall broadness.
The defences labelled out above are all not available for murder or the attempt of murder (Source 3 lines 4-5) however can be for manslaughter due to the offence needing no mens rea to rid a body of a life.
The defence of necessity has been recognised in many cases such as in F v West Berkshire Health Authority (1990) whereby a woman who lacked mental capacity had a sterilisation operation carried out due to the fact of a doctors thinking that there was high risk of her getting pregnant and it could cause psychiatric harm to the patient. The courts said that the doctors were indeed justified in carrying out the operation and in my opinion a general defence of necessity was further recognised.
The integration of necessity into the duress of circumstance is of a wide substantial debate both by the courts and by parliament. The duress of circumstance is whereby the defendant commits a criminal offence due to the circumstances he found himself in and the only way to save himself from death or serious bodily harm was to take the action he did. The reason it can be seen to integrate into necessity is due to the fact you need to take an action to prevent a greater harm to yourself or others including relations (Ortiz 1986). The facts of duress and necessity have caused a somewhat confusion as some may label it as duress of necessity but for obviousness this is not the case. One factor to this debate that must be pointed out is that of Woolf LJ in Conway (1998). Here Lord Woolf stated that “Whether duress of circumstance is called duress or necessity does not matter”. He spoke of the indicated defences having the same limitation in a sense that if you do not do this the abstract would happen.
