Everyone has surely heard of the principle that every person is as if obliged to know the laws of the country in which they are located, and that violating the law due to ignorance of it does not exempt one from liability. This principle has been known since the times of Ancient Rome and is adopted today by all states in the world.
It is easy to understand the origin of this principle in Ancient Rome, when all crimes were obvious, such as theft or murder. When committing such offenses, it is indeed impossible to excuse oneself by claiming ignorance of the existence of a law prohibiting it, as all people living in society know from early childhood that such acts are crimes. However, modern states have spawned so many laws that studying and precisely understanding all of them is possible only for a specialist for whom this is a professional activity, but not for the average person. Moreover, laws are constantly changing, which is simply impossible to keep track of. This contradicts another generally accepted principle of the legal system in most countries of the world – the realism of fulfilling the requirements of the legislation. For example, one cannot demand that a sea carrier drain the ocean to raise a sunken ship with valuable cargo. Nor can one be obliged to appear in court, before an investigator, or at a military enlistment office upon a summons within a minute (teleportation currently exists only in science fiction). Even in wartime, a deliberately impossible order is considered criminal, and the guilt lies with the commander who gave it. This legal principle is usually rarely remembered, but recently American lawyers successfully used it in court.
In the USA, the story of a woman from Texas became widely known; she wanted to vote in the 2016 presidential election but did not have the right to do so because she was under supervision (something similar to probation) due to a “tax crime.” She was unaware of this, no one had informed her that she could not vote, and she decided to go to the polls only because her mother convinced her to do so. But the court did not care; her ignorance was called “irrelevant” to the judicial process, and in 2018 she was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Only in 2022 did an appellate court review this decision based on the lack of evidence that she was aware she had no right to vote. Effectively, the court decided to go against the principle that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
Considering that the legal system in the USA relies on case law, it can be hoped that such decisions will become much more common in the future. This, in turn, will demonstrate to everyone that people have no obligation to follow and attempt to fulfill the deliberately impossible requirement of being familiar with the countless laws that stationary bandits try to use to intimidate them at every step.
