Examples of Coercion and Duress

The actions that people carry out, it is usually assumed, are carried out in the fullness of their knowledge and under the full exercise of the Will. However, there are actions that are carried out by people consciously, but violated by threats of serious and imminent harm, so it cannot be assumed that the behavior is full.

It cannot be expected that the person responds and assumes the consequences of those actions, so that he stops being guilty for them. When a person acts in such a situation, it is said that he is under the effect of coercion Or the coercion.

Means of coercion

The terms of coercion and coercion come from Latin, and are indispensable in the law to be able to really assume the culpability and the responsibility. The means of coercion can be material in the case of physical violence, or immaterial when the violence is moral or psychological.

Through these resources it is that a person can get another to perform a behavior that he wishes, in the event that he does not resort to the path of

persuasion and that of the manifestations in which the individual will is transformed through dialogue and words: there are occasions in which the boundary between persuasion and coercion is quite fine, and justice must intervene to determine each case.

Legitimate and illegitimate coercion

The fact of live in society imposes on the individual certain constraints, which are generally psychological, which dispose of the acceptance of certain social rules: the pressure, to say the least, is that if you do not outcast.

However, it is assumed that the fact of marginalization on the part of the rest of the people is not enough, and for the most important questions the coercion is through violence or deprivation of the things most important to the person: property, the Liberty and life.

The democratic societies They are characterized because the State is the only body capable of exercising coercion in a legal way. Those who question the repressive character of the State precisely go against this attribution, considering that in the absence of these constraints, people's relationships will be peaceful for all modes.

Difference between duress and coercion

Sometimes the concepts of coercion and coercion are considered as synonyms; such as those voluntary actions in which the subject is not free to determine his behavior because he acts threatened by a serious and imminent evil against himself or against a third party.

If there is any difference, it is that when you speak of coercion you are referring to a direct and objective pressure, constituting a mechanism of pressure on an individual, while coercion is instead indirect and objective, seeking a sense of risk but without doing it in a verifiable way, much more subtle and difficult to demonstrate in Legal procedures.

Here is a list of situations that can be categorized as duress or coercion:

1. A person who takes advantage of someone about to die, forcing him to sign a will in which he expresses a coerced will.
2. A person who shows up every day at another's work, without threatening him directly but harassing him with his constant presence.
3. Threatening calls are an example of coercion.
4. Legal coercion, which is exercised by the State through the rule of law.
5. Torture is the quintessential instrument of coercion.
6. The coercion carried out by some social corporations (unions, businessmen, religious institutions) before the State, forcing it to impose its interests.
7. A person who marries another under duress from her family.
8. Internet threats, in many cases anonymous, can still lead to actions carried out under duress.
9. An apartment owner who cuts off the water forcing his tenant to leave it.

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