ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the several limiting conditions of justified self-defense. It explores imminence triggers the very harsh necessity and proportionality requirements of the self-defense justification as well as its strict asymmetry. The chapter demonstrates that alternative accounts, according to which the limiting conditions of self-defense are “internal” to the rights of culpable aggressors and thus solely derived from those rights, are counter-intuitive at best and inconsistent at worst. Accordingly, the limiting conditions on self-defense, like necessity, imminence, proportionality, and the subjective element of the self-defense justification, are partly external to the rights of culpable aggressors. The chapter shows that the insights about rights forfeiture, the limiting conditions, and justification garnered in particular from the discussion of self-defense can be straightforwardly applied to justifying the punishment of the guilty. It argues that the distinction is important to generate the intuitively correct results in a variety of cases.
