{"id":6765,"date":"2010-12-06T13:07:50","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T18:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=6765"},"modified":"2021-05-07T18:29:59","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T22:29:59","slug":"qotd-ignorance-of-the-law-is-overwhelmingly-common-and-getting-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/12\/06\/qotd-ignorance-of-the-law-is-overwhelmingly-common-and-getting-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Ignorance of the law is overwhelmingly common, and getting worse"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>The maxim \u201cIgnorance of the law is no excuse\u201d made sense back in the days when the only kind of acts that were illegal were genuine crimes that caused palpable harm to innocent victims: murder, rape, theft, etc.<\/p>\n<p>But with the growth of the regulatory state, every individual is now subject to thousands of pages of densely written federal, provincial and municipal statutes and regulations. The law is also embodied in innumerable judicial decisions. And it\u2019s all in continual flux: Regulations are passed without parliamentary debate, and courts release new judgments daily.<\/p>\n<p>There is probably not a single law professor, judge or legislator in Canada who has even a passing familiarity with, let alone full comprehension of, all the laws we are required to obey. The average joe doesn\u2019t stand a chance. We are all potential offenders every day, no matter how law-abiding we might wish to be.<\/p>\n<p>Given this welter of law, how should those responsible for enforcing it conduct themselves?<\/p>\n<p>Karen Selick, <a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2010\/12\/06\/karen-selick-in-the-era-of-big-government-ignorance-of-the-law-is-an-excuse\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Drop that pig and put your hands in the air&#8221;, <em>National Post<\/em><\/a>, 2010-12-06<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The maxim \u201cIgnorance of the law is no excuse\u201d made sense back in the days when the only kind of acts that were illegal were genuine crimes that caused palpable harm to innocent victims: murder, rape, theft, etc. But with the growth of the regulatory state, every individual is now subject to thousands of pages [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,10,41],"tags":[343,322,217,417],"class_list":["post-6765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-liberty","category-quotations","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-nannystate","tag-rights","tag-victimlesscrime"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1L7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6765"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65610,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions\/65610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}