# Justification and Personal Imputation

Law I · Foundations of Criminal Law and the Theory of the Offence · https://tryals.app/learn/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation

## Justification

**Formal** unlawfulness means contradiction with the legal order. Its **material** counterpart means harm or endangerment to a protected legal good.

A **cause of justification** removes unlawfulness entirely. The act becomes fully **lawful**.

An **excuse** leaves the act unlawful but removes personal blame.

### Self-Defence and Necessity

**Article** **20.4** sets out **three** requirements:

1. **Unlawful aggression.**
2. **Rational necessity of the means employed**.
3. **Absence of sufficient provocation**.

If aggression is present but another requirement fails, **Article** **21.1** allows an **incomplete exemption**.

Under **Article** **20.5**, necessity requires that the harm caused is **not greater** than the harm avoided.

## Personal Imputation

**Three** requirements must be present for personal culpability:

| Requirement | Defect |
|---|---|
| **Capacity** | Severe anomaly, intoxication, or minority (Article **20**) |
| **Knowledge of unlawfulness** | Mistake of prohibition |
| **Exigibility** | Insurmountable fear |

Modern doctrine grounds culpability in **normal motivability**.

> **Common pitfall:** describing an exempt person under **Article** **20.1** as acting lawfully. The act remains unlawful; only personal reproach fails.

## Practice questions

8 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Why does it matter whether an exemption removes unlawfulness or only personal imputation, if in both cases the defendant is acquitted?

A. Only the first makes the act lawful, barring defence against it, participation, and civil liability
B. Only the second excludes criminal liability entirely, while the first allows only an incomplete exemption
C. Only the first requires insurmountable fear, while the second requires rational necessity of means used
D. Only the second removes material harm to legal goods, whereas the first affects only formal unlawfulness

**Answer:** A. Only the first makes the act lawful, barring defence against it, participation, and civil liability

**Why:** Because the two answers say different things about the **act**, not just about the person. A justification makes the act lawful, so nobody may defend against it, nobody can be a participant in it and civil liability is generally excluded. An excuse leaves the act unlawful: defence against it is lawful, a capable participant can still be liable, and a security measure may follow.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation/why-does-it-matter-whether-an-exemption-removes-unlawfulness-or-only

### 2. Where harm is caused in a state of necessity, those in whose favour the harm was averted may be civilly liable even though nobody is criminally liable.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, and it is the exception that shows the rule. Justification generally removes civil liability along with criminal liability; in the state of necessity the Code makes the **beneficiaries** answer civilly in proportion to the harm they were spared. The loss is shifted from the person whose property was sacrificed to the people it was sacrificed for.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation/where-harm-is-caused-in-a-state-of-necessity-those-in-whose-favour

### 3. Which are true of the requirements for exemption on grounds of incapacity?

A. Article 20.3 covers a perceptual alteration whenever in life it arises
B. Article 20.1 requires that the psychic anomaly prevented the person understanding the unlawfulness of the act or acting on that understanding
C. Someone who becomes intoxicated in order to commit the offence cannot rely on Article 20.2
D. Article 20.2 requires full intoxication, not merely some degree of it

**Answer:** B. Article 20.1 requires that the psychic anomaly prevented the person understanding the unlawfulness of the act or acting on that understanding; C. Someone who becomes intoxicated in order to commit the offence cannot rely on Article 20.2; D. Article 20.2 requires full intoxication, not merely some degree of it

**Why:** The fourth drops the temporal condition. Article 20.3 covers alterations in perception **from birth or childhood** that gravely alter the person's awareness of reality; a perceptual alteration acquired later is dealt with, if at all, under a different heading. The third option is the *actio libera in causa* qualification, which runs through the whole of this stage.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation/which-are-true-of-the-requirements-for-exemption-on-grounds-of

### 4. Complete the account of the last two stages.

**Answer:** Conduct is formally unlawful when it contradicts the legal order and materially unlawful when it harms or endangers a **legal good**. Where the essential requirement of a justification is present but another is missing, Article 21.1 provides an **incomplete** exemption. Article 20.6 exempts a person acting under **insurmountable** fear. The modern reformulation of what culpability rests on, replacing the claim that the person could have acted otherwise, is normal **motivability**.

**Why:** The last blank is where the philosophy meets the courtroom. **Normal motivability** asks whether the person was accessible to the norm's demand in the way an ordinary addressee is, a question about capacity that evidence can address, instead of asking whether they could have acted otherwise, which no trial can establish about anybody.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation/complete-the-account-of-the-last-two-stages

### 5. Under Article 14.3, an insurmountable mistake about the unlawfulness of the act reduces the penalty by one or two degrees.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False**, and the two halves of the paragraph are the other way round. An **invincible** mistake about unlawfulness excludes criminal responsibility altogether; it is the **vincible** mistake that leads to a reduction by one or two degrees. Swapping them converts a full acquittal into a discount.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation/under-article-14-3-an-insurmountable-mistake-about-the-unlawfulness

### 6. A cause of justification makes an act entirely lawful, whereas an excuse merely removes personal blame. What follows from this distinction when evaluating a third party who assists the actor?

A. The assistant to an excused actor remains fully liable for an unlawful act
B. The assistant to a justified actor is liable if they lacked pure motives
C. An assistant shares the excuse because personal defects transfer laterally
D. An assistant is excused only if the principal actor acted in self-defence

**Answer:** A. The assistant to an excused actor remains fully liable for an unlawful act

**Why:** Because justification removes the objective unlawfulness of the conduct itself, no unlawful base exists for secondary participation. Excuses operate strictly in personam; the underlying deed remains a legal wrong that third parties cannot lawfully assist.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation/a-cause-of-justification-makes-an-act-entirely-lawful-whereas-an

### 7. Under Article 19 of the Criminal Code, below what age is a person not criminally responsible under that Code?

**Answer:** 18

**Why:** **Eighteen.** Those below it are not outside the law but outside this Code: they answer under the separate organic law on the criminal responsibility of minors, which has its own catalogue of measures and its own procedure. Minority is therefore not an ordinary exemption inside Article 20 but a boundary drawn before Article 20 is reached.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation/under-article-19-of-the-criminal-code-below-what-age-is-a-person-not

### 8. Sort each case by the kind of exemption it involves.

**Answer:**

- A cause of justification: Repelling armed robber, Swerving to save child
- Absence of capacity: Acute psychotic episode, Involuntary intoxication
- Another excuse, leaving the act unlawful: Acting under dire threat, Unavoidable legal error

**Why:** The middle and right columns both end in acquittal and are different findings. A defect of capacity is a claim about what the person could do; the excuses in the third column concede full capacity and say that conformity could not be demanded in the circumstances, or that the person did not know the conduct was forbidden.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/law-i/justification-and-personal-imputation/sort-each-case-by-the-kind-of-exemption-it-involves