Consent
Consent may be a complete or partial defense to assault. In some jurisdictions, most notably England, it is not a defense where the degree of injury is severe, as long as there is no legally recognized good reason for the assault.This can have important consequences when dealing with issues such as consensual sadomasochistic sexual activity, the most notable case being the Operation Spanner case. Legally recognized good reasons for consent include; surgery, activities within the rules of a game (Mixed martial arts), bodily adornment (R v Wilson), or horseplay (Jones and others). However, any activity outside the rules of the game is not legally recognized as a defense of consent. In Scottish Law, consent is not a defense for assault.
Arrest and other official acts
Police officers and court officials have a general power to use force for the purpose of effecting an arrest or generally carrying out their official duties. Thus, a court officer taking possession of goods under a court order may use force if reasonably necessary.
Punishment
In some jurisdictions such as Singapore, judicial caning and other forms of corporal punishment are a part of the legal system. The officers who physically administer the punishment have immunity from prosecution for assault.
In the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, corporal punishment administered to children by their parent or legal guardian is consider an exception to the crime of assault unless it is considered excessive or unreasonable. What constitutes "reasonable" varies in both statutory law and case law. Unreasonable physical punishment may be charged as assault or under a separate statute for child abuse.
Some states also permit the use of less severe corporal punishment for children in school. In English law, s58 Children Act 2004, limits the availability of the lawful correction defense to common assault under s39 Criminal Justice Act 1988.
Prevention of crime
This may or may not involve self defense in that, using a reasonable degree of force to prevent another from committing a crime could involve preventing an assault, but it could be preventing a crime not involving the use of personal violence.
Defense of property
Some jurisdictions allow force to be used in defense of property, to prevent damage either in its own right, or under one or both of the preceding classes of defense in that a threat or attempt to damage property might be considered a crime (in English law, under s5 Criminal Damage Act 1971 it may be argued that the defendant has a lawful excuse to damaging property during the defense and a defense under s3 Criminal Law Act 1967) subject to the need to deter vigilantes and excessive self-help. Furthermore, some jurisdictions, such as Ohio, allow residents in their homes to use force when ejecting an intruder. The resident merely needs to assert to the court that he felt threatened by the intruder's presence.
This defense is not universal: in New Zealand (for example) homeowners have been convicted of assault for attacking burglars.
All text of this article available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).