“Ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Without that rule, ANYONE who commits a crime can just say, “I didn’t know...” And get off scott-free.
No.
This is applied to administrative rules that have been criminalized, not to the penal code.
In the example from the final paragraph, a man turns old tires into a facility (I assume with their knowledge, given the report as written). The facility is not licensed to receive tires for disposal. The man who turned the tires in is fined, despite the fact that the facility managers are responsible for the actual breach of the administrative rule.
In other words - he was fined for what someone else did.
If he surreptitiously abandoned the tires at the facility, he would still be charged - at least for littering or dumping.
And cops do get off scot free as long as they operated”in good faith” Try that for your defense next time you get a ticket.
““Ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Without that rule, ANYONE who commits a crime can just say, “I didn’t know...” And get off scott-free.”
The federal register of laws exceeds 80,000 pages - and growing.
Do you know them all?
Do you know how many you’ve violated?
Yet you think you should be found guilty?
I disagree.
When current Federal Law and enforced Regulations are entire libraries’ worth of books, and every one of us commits 3 or more technical felony violations of the law daily, it certainly IS a valid argument to ask “How was I to know “x” was a crime ??
That quote is all well and good if the only laws are pretty intuitive, like "Thou shall not kill" and "thou shalt not steal" . Unfortunately, it is a little more complicated than that now.
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Without that rule, ANYONE who commits a crime can just say, “I didn’t know...” And get off scott-free.”
Bullcrap only a lawyer could love. That made sense when laws had some semblance of sanity. Today you can violate a dozen laws just working in your yard, stopping to take a photograph, or pursuing some normal work relater activity.
There is no conceivable way someone can learn and interpret the body of law out there today.
Its generally impossible for a layman to even research it, even if they know a topic.
This is especially true in view of the layer of complexity added when modern laws simply authorize some regulatory agency to promulgate thousands of pages of dense regulations.
Next, for that to make sense, the law has to mean something so someone who reads it. When you abandon the principle that a law must by its very wording, be understandable, how can you hold someone to account for it.
No, “ignorance of the law is no excuse” needs to head to the garbage can. The method of putting it there is jury nullification. Refuse to convict.
The article clearly stated that this would not apply to criminal and drug laws. Look, even the ACLU is on board with what this Republican-controlled legislature is trying to do.