necessity

(nə-sĕs'ĭ-tē)
n., pl., -ties.

1. 1. The condition or quality of being necessary.
   2. Something necessary: The necessities of life include food, clothing, and shelter.
2. 1. Something dictated by invariable physical laws.
   2. The force exerted by circumstance.
3. The state or fact of being in need.
4. Pressing or urgent need, especially that arising from poverty.

idiom:

of necessity

1. As an inevitable consequence; necessarily.

[Middle English necessite, from Old French, from Latin necessitās, from necesse, necessary. See necessary.]

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noun

1. That which provides a reason or justification: call, cause, ground (often used in plural), justification, occasion, reason, wherefore, why. Idioms: why and wherefore. See start/end.
2. Something indispensable: condition, essential, must, need, precondition, prerequisite, requirement, requisite, sine qua non. See necessary/unnecessary.
3. A condition in which something necessary or desirable is required or wanted: exigence, exigency, need. See necessary/unnecessary.

Idioms beginning with necessity:
necessity is the mother of invention

In addition to the idiom beginning with necessity, also see make a virtue of necessity; of necessity.

n

Definition: need, essentiality
Antonyms: desire, want

A proposition is necessary if it could not have been false. We can contemplate various possibilities describing how things might have been but are not; if in all these possibilities a proposition is true, then it is true in all possible worlds or true of necessity. See also necessary/contingent truths, modality, modal logic.

The fundamental explanation of the necessity of a proposition is controversial, and some have doubted whether the category is a useful aid to thought (see Quine). A relatively clear class of necessary propositions would be those that are analytic (see analytic/synthetic) since they seem ‘trivially’ true. More substantive problems arise with apparently synthetic necessary truths: classical examples include the proposition that every number has a successor, or nothing can appear red and green all over at the same time. The possibility of synthetic a priori truth is the basic problem faced by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. conventionalist theories suggest that we deem certain propositions to be necessary by linguistic convention (‘invention is the mother of necessity’). Other theories stress the imaginative block we encounter when we try to imagine the possibility of such propositions being true, although if this block is a contingent aspect of our psychologies, the explanation seems to undermine the idea of necessity rather than to explain it. A category of particular interest recently has been that of propositions which are ‘metaphysically necessary’, yet not in any sense a priori: the proposition that heat in a gas is motion of molecules, or that water is H₂O, for example.

A rather different set of philosophical problems also arises with the idea of the necessary unfolding of events in time; in many philosophies the march of events has been seen as inexorable, or pre-ordained, and this is held to have consequences for how we react to problems of choice, or how we think of what has already happened. See also free will, laws of nature. The cluster of considerations focusing on the cosmological argument seek to show that if anything exists contingently, then something must exist of necessity.

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

A defense asserted by a criminal or civil defendant that he or she had no choice but to break the law.

The necessity defense has long been recognized at common law and has also been made part of most states' statutory law. Although no federal statute acknowledges the defense, the Supreme Court has recognized it as part of the common law. The rationale behind the necessity defense is that sometimes, in a particular situation, a technical breach of the law is more advantageous to society than the consequence of strict adherence to the law. The defense is often used successfully in cases that involve a trespass on property to save a person's life or property. It also has been used, with varying degrees of success, in cases involving more complex questions.

Almost all common-law and statutory definitions of the necessity defense include the following elements: (1) the defendant acted to avoid a significant risk of harm; (2) no adequate lawful means could have been used to escape the harm; and (3) the harm avoided was greater than that caused by breaking the law. Some jurisdictions require in addition that the harm must have been imminent and that the action taken must have been reasonably expected to avoid the imminent danger. All these elements mirror the principles on which the defense of necessity was founded: first, that the highest social value is not always achieved by blind adherence to the law; second, that it is unjust to punish those who technically violate the letter of the law when they are acting to promote or achieve a higher social value than would be served by strict adherence to the law; and third, that it is in society's best interest to promote the greatest good and to encourage people to seek to achieve the greatest good, even if doing so necessitates a technical breach of the law.

The defense of necessity is considered a justification defense, as compared with an excuse defense such as duress. An action that is harmful but praiseworthy is justified, whereas an action that is harmful but ought to be forgiven may be excused. Rather than focusing on the actor's state of mind, as would be done with an excuse defense, the court with a necessity defense focuses on the value of the act. No court has ever accepted a defense of necessity to justify killing a person to protect property.

Most states that have codified the necessity defense make it available only if the defendant's value choice has not been specifically contradicted by the state legislature. For example, in 1993 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected the necessity defense of two people who were prosecuted for operating a needle-exchange program that was intended to reduce the transmission of AIDS through the sharing of contaminated hypodermic needles (Massachusetts v. Leno, 415 Mass. 835, 616 N.E.2d 453). Their actions violated a state law prohibiting the distribution of hypodermic needles without a physician's prescription. In rejecting the defense, the court held that the situation posed no clear and imminent danger. The court reasoned that citizens who disagree with the legislature's policy are not without remedy, as they can seek to have the law changed through popular initiative.

The necessity defense has been used with sporadic and very limited success in the area of civil disobedience since the 1970s. The most common circumstances involve public protests against abortion, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons. Virtually all abortion protesters who have tried to avail themselves of the defense have lost. The courts have reasoned that because the right to an abortion is constitutionally protected, it cannot simultaneously be a legally recognized harm justifying illegal action. In these cases the courts have also denied the defense on the basis that the criminal act of protest would not stop abortions from occurring; that the harm caused by the act was greater than the harm of abortion; and that legal means of protest, such as demonstrating outside of the clinic rather than entering the clinic or trespassing on its property, were available. Consequently, according to the courts, there was no necessity for the protesters to break the law. In the vast majority of cases in which protesters, trespassing on property, blocked the entrance to nuclear plants, the courts have denied the necessity defense on the grounds that there was no imminent danger and that the trespassing protesters could not reasonably have believed that their actions would halt the manufacture of nuclear materials (see, e.g., State v. Marley, 54 Haw. 450, 509 P.2d 1095 [Haw. 1973]). The defense has also been denied in civil disobedience cases involving protests against U.S. policy abroad, the homeless problem, lack of funding for AIDS research, harmful logging practices, prison conditions, and human and animal rights violations.

Necessity has been used successfully by inmates who escape from prison under certain circumstances. In Spakes v. State, 913 S.W.2d 597 (Tex. Crim. App. 1996), the highest criminal court in Texas allowed the jury to be instructed on the necessity defense before deliberating the verdict for an inmate whose three cellmates had planned an escape and threatened to slit his throat if he did not accompany them. The defendant inmate argued that because of the terribly violent crimes of which his cellmates had been convicted (one had bragged about chopping his girlfriend up with an ax), he accompanied them and escaped. Even though he made no attempt to return himself to custody when he was separated from his cellmates, the court still allowed the defense. In contrast, most jurisdictions have held that an escapee must make an attempt to surrender or report to authorities as a condition for asserting the necessity defense. These courts have reasoned that once the immediate threat is no longer present, the action of escape is no longer necessary, and consequently it should end.

IN BRIEF: Something badly needed.

After getting sick from drinking the water, they understood the necessity of boiling it first.

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Quotes:

"Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity." - Hannah Arendt

"We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity." - Albert Camus

"Arguably the only goods people need these days are food and happiness." - Sir Terence Conran

"Necessity has no law." - Oliver Cromwell

"Must! Is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! thy father, if he had been alive, durst not have used that word." - Elizabeth I

"Make yourself necessary to somebody." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

See more famous quotes about Necessity

See words rhyming with "necessity."

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - nødvendighed, fornødenhed, trang

idioms:

• by necessity    af nødvendighed
• of necessity    af nødvendighed

Nederlands (Dutch)
noodzakelijkheid, noodzaak, armoede

Français (French)
n. - nécessité, besoin, impératif, choses essentielles, (Philos) nécessité

idioms:

• by necessity    par nécessité
• of necessity    nécessairement

Deutsch (German)
n. - Notwendigkeit, Bedürfnis, Unvermeidlichkeit, Not

idioms:

• by necessity    notwendigerweise
• of necessity    notgedrungen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ανάγκη, αναγκαίο

idioms:

• by necessity    κατ' ανάγκην
• of necessity    κατ' ανάγκην, αναγκαστικά

Italiano (Italian)
necessità

idioms:

• by necessity    necessariamente
• of necessity    necessariamente

Português (Portuguese)
n. - necessidade (f), pobreza (f), exigência (f)

idioms:

• by necessity    por necessidade
• of necessity    necessariamente

Русский (Russian)
необходимость

idioms:

• by necessity    по необходимости
• of necessity    по необходимости

Español (Spanish)
n. - necesidad, indigencia

idioms:

• by necessity    por necesidad, forzosamente
• of necessity    por fuerza, forzosamente

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - nödvändighet, behov, nödvändigt ting, (livs)villkor

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
需要, 必然, 必需品

idioms:

• by necessity    必须, 必要
• of necessity    必然地, 不可避免地

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 需要, 必然, 必需品

idioms:

• by necessity    必須, 必要
• of necessity    必然地, 不可避免地

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 불가피성, 필수품, 궁핍

idioms:

• by necessity    필요성이 있어서

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 必然, 必要, 緊急の要, 欠乏, 貧困, 必要不可欠なもの, 必要性, 必然性

idioms:

• by necessity    やむをえず
• of necessity    必然的に

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) ضرورة, عوز‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮מצרך חיוני, הכרח, צורך, נחיצות, עוני, נצרכות, כפייה או הגבלה הנחשבים לחוק הטבע השולט בכל פעולות אנוש‬

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