3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

happen, and the time for defense is now . A p~+e-emptive strike against a feanxi aggressor
is illegal force used too soon, and retaliation against an assailant who has already harmed
but no longer poses a threat is illegal force used too late; therefore, justifiable self-defense
must be neither too soon nor too late. If a defender confronts an attacker who no longer
poses a threat, he or she in effect becomes the attacker. Justifiable self-defense also
presumes that the defendant has no other means of escape from the assailant. ~ ~ Finally,
the defense must be proportional to the attack : a defender who shoots someone who has
punched him risks using excessive force, thereby negating the claim to self-defense .~ 2
In a pre-emptive strike, the "defender" calculates that the enemy is planning to
attack or most likely to attack in the future. The defender then reasons that it is wiser to
strike first than to wait until the actual aggression . Such pre-emptive strikes are
universally illegal because they are not based on actual aggression : they are based on a
forecast of how the enemy is likely to behave in the future . These considerations bear
crucially upon understanding the mindset of activists who armed themselves for defensive
purposes during the civil rights movement. They also bear on how the claim to self-
defense was sometimes abused .
By "civil rights movement," I mean the period roughly from the landmark
~ ~In English common law, this concept is known as "duty to retreat." See Richard
Maxwell Brown, No Duty to Retreat : Violence and Values in Americ n Hictnr~~~
Society (Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) .
~ 2A ~, on the other hand, might well be justified . Because of the respective
difference in genders, a woman who resorts to shooting a male assailant might
legitimately claim self-defense. See Universi of Pittsbur¢h law Review,~~ note 3 .