ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand the law on duress and necessity and discusses the law on mistake. It explores the law on self-defence and explains the law on consent. The chapter analyses critically the scope and limitations of the general defences and the reform proposals for the general defences. It also explores the law to factual situations to determine whether liability can be avoided by invoking a defence. The logic which appears to underlie the law of duress would suggest that if trouble did unexpectedly materialise and if it put the defendant into a dilemma in which a reasonable man might have chosen to act as he did, the concession to human frailty should not be denied to him.’ ‘The law has to draw a line at some point in the criteria which it accepts as sufficient to satisfy any defence of duress or necessity.
