Even better, the Supreme Court rules a long time ago that police CAN be ignorant of the law. So fuck you if you don’t know the law, unless you are a cop enforcing it
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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Cops:
Cops are literally selected for a lack of intellect. Being too smart can disqualify you from police service under some police chiefs/sheriffs.
Oddly enough, we select what a cop does based on capability. If you need UC and co-int for for fed-level stuff, Lem and Eddie are gonna get killed.
Low-performers typically wash out to metro :-p
Cops when you cite law: "What are you? A lawyer? Fuck off"
While I do think information about the law should be made more accessible through actual government systems instead of having to ask ChatGPT (especially in countries where precedent is a vital part of it), I still agree with the statement that you don't have to know about it to break it (as I hope everyone does).
I would add that making ignorance of the law a valid excuse would be a logistical farce. Mens rea is a real thing that's examined during a criminal trial. The defendant's state of mind can absolutely factor into their sentence or even whether they're convicted at all; "ignorance of the law is not an excuse", ignorantia juris non excusat, even has some exceptions under US law. But you could not possibly for every crime burden the prosecution with proving that the defendant 1) committed the act 2) intended to commit the act, and now 3) knew the act they were committing was a crime. Mens rea, while necessary in a fair system, is hard enough; condition (3) would make it functionally impossible to convict anyone who didn't a) explicitly refer to what they were doing as a crime, b) receive a formal education in the relevant area of law, or c) commit a crime literally everyone is expected to know like murder or armed robbery.
Yup! And honestly, most illegal things you might do accidentally are not spur of the moment situations, and frankly even in an imperfect system you're unlikely to get the book thrown at you right away. There are abuses, of course, and stamping them out is an absolutely laudable goal, but if you want to set up a business, or think you've discovered a novel financial instrument, or (hypothetically of course) wanted to train an LLM algorithm on the totality of an absolutely vast corpus of information without the rights-holders' consent, then if you can't be arsed to get legal clarity in advance I have less sympathy for you and you've earned your consequences.
well said
I remember reading that there's at least one place in the US where the book of laws is copyrighted and not available anywhere. You have to buy it. I want to say in Georgia somewhere.
South Carolina actually appears to be the most restrictive, but it's just as likely in Georgia as well.
I mean, if you want to have access to all of the court opinions interpreting a law (which is arguably more important because some decisions completely change what laws actually do) you're going to be paying Thompson Reuters or somebody else like that a monthly subscription fee for the privilege pretty much everywhere in the US. Being able to know in a really detailed and specific way what is and isn't legal is absolutely paywalled in this country.
Just to be pedantic.
This is mostly case law which is largely civil.
The "ignorance of the law is no excuse" bullshit is largely applied to criminal.
That being said, 1312.
Justice protects but does not bind.
Tyranny binds but does not protect.
Also perhaps pursuant to your interests, Three Felonies A Day: How The Federal Government Targets Innocent People
The difference between the Justice System and the Legal System
One tries to provide social equality .... the other is a rich man's game
"Tries to"
They try harder the more money you use .... just like the other system.
If recent world events have taught me anything, it's that ignorance is the best and unbeatable defense.
No excuse. You lazy fucks.
/S
On top of this, there are norms that are in a way part of the law (as in: if you ignore them, you are liable), and they are commercial, so you have to pay through the nose for them.
The world makes more sense when you learn that laws are just the attempted formalization of customs and norms. At best, an attempt to steer those norms. Customs have always prevailed over laws. Our efforts to be a world of laws peaked in the 80s and 90s, I think, and now we're going back the other way.