Quickie: Ignorance of the Law

Ignorance of the law is no excuse...or so they say. But if the Supreme Court, our country's highest legal minds, can't agree on what a law says and means, how can the rest of us be expected to understand it?

[informationwarfare]

Most government agents don't even know all the laws. Ask any of then what a law is and they will go "uhhhh" and then direct you to someone else. So sick of this bureaucratic nightmare.

[TheGnarlyDoug]

My understanding is that the "ignorance of the law is no excuse" argument has been misrepresented from the original context beyond all reason. By my understanding that statement was supposed to apply for Natural Law, and the concept was that even if you didn't know the Positive Law if a land stated that murder or theft was illegal for example you still had no excuse because it was an obvious violation that any human being would know to follow. It was never supposed to be an argument that was applied to laws of Man that were not based on Natural Law, and that Positive Law advocates using it this way have pulled off a very widely accepted strawman.

[theatheistpaladin]

The latter seems to be majority of the time.

[recklessmess]

As an attorney, the only time I've ever run across the "ignorance is no excuse" claim is when it involves traffic violations or strict liability laws. Ignorance is often an excuse in many areas of law, such as tax law. For example, Section 6664 of the Internal Revenue Code provides exceptions for reasonable cause. In many of the Tax Court cases I've read, the judge often excoriates certain violators due to their levels of education. "So and so was a licensed CPA and should have known that his position wasn't reasonable, " whereas people who have little reason to understand specific provisions of the code are often given a pass on penalties.

[artemiswyrm]

I wish I could like this video more than once

[DanielSmith-lqxu]

Yes! It's good to see that someone else gets it. The presumption of innocence should apply to questions of law as well as questions of fact. If a law is vague and it's not clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a law actually makes a certain act illegal, then we must assume that it doesn't. I wish more judges would punish lawmakers who make vague laws.

[SargeRho]

In a decent world, ignorance of the law wouldn't be an excuse, because the law wouldn't be so screwed up. Unfortunately, we seem to have ended up in Craptasia. However, there are cases where ignorance of the law is indeed no excuse. If you blatantly violate copyright law, for example, and go "I didn't know I couldn't do that!", you don't have a particularly strong defense.

[blujay]

People talk about the executive branch being overpowered and broken (and it is), but never want to discuss the most broken branch of all -- the judicial branch.

The Supreme Court is a JOKE! They're supposed to "Uphold the constitution of the USA" but you have Bryers who says he "looks to foreign law" to inform his decisions, Ginsberg who has recommended that the Egyptians not adopt a constitution like the United States' and going back even further, we've had justices like Marshall who would say things like: "Do what you think is right and let the law catch up."

How can we fix the supreme court?

[TheAnarchoAtheist]

Exactly! I'm facing a life sentence for murdering someone! How was I supposed to know it was against the law!? Smh

[gilbet]

What they do is interpret the law by a momentum of consensus of all the courts and all the Justices who came before them. That way, nobody can say they are wrong without saying that he majority of all of the courts throughout history were wrong. But since that's how the majority of people define right and wrong, it's never wrong by that definition. That's how the rulings are abke to stray so far away from the words that were originally written.

[khaorix]

I'd be much more inclined to apply the "ignorance of the law defense is not an excuse' line if the law was always crystal clear.

For example, law on murder is cystal clear. Don't kill other people. If you do, that's a crime. Got it.
Laws on traffic regulations in my country at least is crystal clear. Don't go faster than the speed on the pannel, and if there is no pannel there is a clear way of knowing how fast you can druve. Got it.

Tax laws though? Fuck me.

[travisretriever]

I'm still waiting for the statist "response" to this one...