The Plank of Carneades case is not just an example of two seamen who find themselves in the water after the shipwreck and are faced with the dilemma of sacrificing one of them, but can be used as a metaphor for all those similar extreme situations when one person's life needs to be sacrificed to preserve the life of another. Examples when a person finds himself in such extreme circumstances when he has to choose between his own death or the sacrifice of another person to preserve his life, has been subjected to numerous discussions throughout history in different variations. Today, European continental criminal law systems and common law systems are very different in dealing with the above-mentioned necessity problems. The European continental criminal law systems in the majority follow the pluralistic theory and distinguish between two types of necessity, where one of them is dealing with existential distress cases and acknowledges perpetrator the necessity defense in such cases. Common law systems on the other hand, under the influence of precedent judgments, still advocate a far more conservative approach, where the perpetrator is not acknowledged the necessity defense.
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