ABSTRACT
After the French Revolution, the criminal law was codified in the French Criminal Code. Defences can be categorised as either providing an excuse or a justification. An excuse focuses on the defendants themselves: their personalities and their mental health. The traditional concept of self-defence thus falls within this defence. The old Criminal Code did not lay down a general defence of necessity, but there were certain offences that could not be committed where the person acted through necessity. Criminal liability will only be imposed if defendants acted of their own free will. People of extremely low intelligence may have no free choice and fall within the defence of insanity. There is no general defence of intoxication in French criminal law. A person is not criminally liable who proves that he believed, because of a mistake of law which he was not in a position to avoid, that he could legitimately carry out the act.
