This article explores the theoretic implications of prima facie and how it relates to defeasibility, a principle that can be applied to justify the failure to fulfill a legal obligation when there is a duty to comply with another obligation in a context in which the two are incompatible. We will start from the support of the concept by analyzing the role and the importance of context in legal reasoning; then, we will arrive at specific guidelines on how it works in judicial practice by providing some hypothetical and judicial examples.