We have legislative sessions year after year, and more and more laws are added to the books as time passes. It’s been long held that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law, else every Tom, Dick, and Harry could commit crimes with impunity simply by claiming they did not know what they did was unlawful.
The problem is, eventually, whether 100 years from now or a millennium from now (who knows, we might even be there now), we are going to get to the point where the number of laws on the books is going to exceed the capabilities of the human brain to remember, with books of statutes so large it would take half of a lifetime to be able to read them, and the remaining half to be able to comprehend them, as laws are not that often written the way a normal person would speak the language.
At what point does the presumption of knowledge of the law become unreasonable? At what point will judges have to admit that there is no way possible, due to limitations of the human brain, for people to know every law that applies to them?
I don’t think that will ever happen. That then opens the door for possible pleas of ignorance for anyone who does anything wrong. Murder someone? Sorry judge, I didn’t know I couldn’t stab him. Rape someone? I really thought it was okay. She only said no quietly. Steal something? Well, it was just sitting there and I had no idea it was someone else’s property. The list is endless.
I do think that knowing the laws of activities you’re engaged in are well within the bounds of the human mind. If I were to go fishing at the local public lake, it’s incumbent upon me to know what type of license I need, what baits I can use, whether I can keep the fish, what lengths they can be, etc. People who never fish don’t ever have to worry about knowing those laws.
In general the lawbooks do get larger, but they also deal with more and more specific issues.
If the legislature passes a law on the acceptable ratio of wheat to barley in chicken feed, chicken farmers will need to know that, but the average joe can ignore it. Especially because legislatures, despite how much we rag on them, often include provisions like making the above only apply to farmers with more than 10 chickens, and an exception if corn is used in place of wheat, etc, etc. Which means the law will apply to even fewer people, although the size of the lawbook just increased by several more provisions.
So I don’t think we’ll ever reach the point of ignorance being an excuse, not because that’s a necessary provision for reasons stated in the OP, but because it’s unnecessary, because many of those “too many” laws will apply in specific situations where it’s reasonable for someone to know about them, and the regular citizen doesn’t need to worry about them.
Don’t forget that, year after year, older laws are also repealed, replaced or simply become irrelevant due to social changes. Though, as the overall complexity of society and its actions and interactions increases, it is to be expected that more laws are needed to regulate its behavior.
Haven’t we already passed that point long ago, as evidenced by the existence and narrow specialisation of modern professional lawyers? But then again, as already mentioned, most of the laws don’t apply to any given person, in any case (e.g., investment bankers have zero need for oil rig safety regulations and vice versa). Basic, non-specialist laws such as criminal codes are unlikely to reach the level of technicality and complexity you refer to.
It’s also easier today than ever before for laymen to learn about the law, even though the lawbooks are bigger. If you’re thinking of raising chickens, for instance, you can just type into Google “laws about chicken farming in Cleveland, OH”.
And even in those rare cases where ignorance should be an excuse, well, the law doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s just one part of an entire system which also includes humans at many levels (police, prosecutors, judges, juries, the executive, etc.). And if any of those humans thinks that your excuse is reasonable, they can let you off with a warning, or choose not to prosecute you, or find you not guilty despite your deeds, or pardon you, or whatever. The law doesn’t need to state all of the exceptions, because it’s built into the system that humans can do that.
I think laws that have strict liability could be sympathetic to an ignorance defense. First thing that comes to mind is possession of a feather from a migratory bird. If you are walking on a trail and happen to pick one up, ignorant of its origin, that in and of itself could be a misdemeanor.
But that would be ignorance of providence, not of the law.
If I hand you $1000 that I just stole from someone else, you can get off the hook for having stolen property by showing that you didn’t know it was stolen, not by showing that you didn’t know that stealing was against the law.
First, really? I double checked to make sure I was using the right “p” word, and I guess spellcheck decided that I was talking about either divine protection or the capital or Rhode Island. I feel a bit dumb…
I haven’t ever had this happen to me, so, honestly, I don’t know how it would play out, but I would imagine the defense would be easier to say, “I didn’t know it was a migratory bird feather, I thought it came from a starling”, than to say, “I didn’t know that possessing migratory bird feathers was illegal.”
ETA: But, yeah, the migratory bird treaty doesn’t make alot of sense to alot of people. “Hey, I picked this feather up when those geese went flying off”… That would certainly be knowledge of where the feather came from, with little knowledge that those feathers are illegal.
Wouldn’t knowingly receiving stolen property be a strict liability? That was my point, if you didn’t know it was stolen, then that’s a better defense than claiming to not know that receiving stolen goods is illegal.
A mistake of fact doesn’t negate the strict liability imposed for migratory birds. That’s the nature of strict liability.
Possession of stolen property on the other hand is not strict liability. There must be a showing of knowing or should have known by the totality of the fact pattern. The phrase “knowingly receiving stolen property be a strict liability” doesn’t really make sense because the nature of strict liability means that mens rea isn’t required.
So has anyone here legally suffered from being ignorant of the law? It seems that in the few situations where it may have happened in my life I was warned and I promptly stopped doing it.
Does a lack of awareness that you even posses such a feather count? If I roll my tent up, and it happens to scoop up a crow feather in the process, if I then go to roll out my tent in front of a park ranger, and that crow feather comes out, would I have any defense there?
I’m not sure that the migratory bird treaty actually fits all that well anyway. It’s not just a law, it’s a treaty. It’s got stupid provisions in it that could likely be hammered out by a single legislative body, but having it require 2 countries (though I assume we would be negotiating directly with canada, rather than with britain as it was in 1916) and then ratification makes it a bit harder to adjust to reflect reality.
I was not quite getting the difference you were pointing out in the strict liability of feather possession. On that particular law though, I would think that removing the strict liability would be a better option than allowing people to get away with not knowing the law (as easy as that would be, it being a treaty and all). Make the state prove that the possessor knew that these were feathers that were illegal to posses. Also, take geese off of it, seriously. (and crows, wtf?) Replace the fairly broad restrictions with restrictions on specific birds that actually need protection.
In any event, while I’d be in favor of changes to the specific law, that’s not really the point. The point us that there are a narrow set of types of laws where an ignorance defense would be sympathetic.
That’s a poor example, as I read in ACAB that handling stolen goods within 24 hours of the theft makes you an accomplice. (Sorry, no better cite - I’m sure a UK legal type will be along shortly. Handling stolen goods is itself a crime.)