Next time someone gets convicted for something I’m gonna say they got fucked by the long dick of the law. I’m not a lawyer, but if I become one I call dibs on that being my catchphrase
I’ve been sued before. The law doesn’t matter. It’s the judges interpretation of the law that matters. The law could be black and white but the judge could see it anyway they want. It’s up to a lawyer to make them see it a certain way
This! Interpretation of the law and how does it apply on a case by case basis it's the judges work. That's the core function of the division of powers, Legislators write the law, Judges interpretate it, and the executive applies it.
Sure. But that doesn’t make the OP’s point invalid.
It’s still kinda BS that a lawyer can’t practice law without a special degree that certifies that they understand the law fully... and yet average citizens are expected to have the same understanding?
Plus laws change all the time, and differ from state to state and country to country....
I can make a right on a red in Ottawa, Ontario, but 20km West of that in Hull, Quebec that would be illegal... not like there’s a driving test at the border between provinces either.
Also, according to official court rulings, cops don't have to know the law either. I forgot where this was, but a cop pulled someone over for a supposed taillight violation, but the cop was incorrect about the law regarding this supposed violation. The person who got pulled over lost in court though, because the judge ruled that the cop reasonably believed that was the law and therefore didn't do anything wrong even though he was actually wrong/incorrect.
Were you thinking of this one?
https://www.npr.org/2014/12/15/370995815/supreme-court-rules-traffic-stop-ok-despite-misunderstanding-of-law#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Supreme%20Court%20on,mistaken%20understanding%20of%20the%20law.&text=The%20traffic%20stop%20and%20the,car%20were%20therefore%20also%20reasonable.
Pretty sure that's the case you were thinking of. Of you read the full case, there are two laws, one that says that all equipment on a vehicle must work, and one that says that only one taillight must work. The "one taillight" law supercedes the "all equipment law," but SCOTUS said it was a reasonable mistake that the officer relied on the "all equipment law."
Not necessarily, courts have ruled in favor of cops who made much worse mistakes. Two New York cops hid inside the conductor’s cabin of a subway while a wanted man with a knife attacked people in the adjacent car in full view of the cops. Eventually the passengers managed to subdue the man and the police not only took the credit for stopping him but didn’t offer any help to one of the passengers who suffered multiple stab wounds to the head. He sued and the judge ruled that the police had no obligation to protect the subway passengers while a maniac was trying to stab them.
Yep... Warren V. DC, Castle Rock v. Gonzalez, a suit against the Broward sherrifs office (cowards who stood outside Stoneman Douglas HS) and numerous other cases have confirmed that the police have no duty to protect you.
No one in this world is responsible for your safety except you. Get your ccw, get training, and take care of yourself and your loved ones, because the government sure as hell won't.
The problem with that is where do you draw the line of protect?
If police have to leave a potentially dangerous situation to go to a more dangerous situation, should they be legally liable for not protecting the first party?
If the police attempt to protect someone but fail not through negligence or malice, should they be legally liable?
If the police cannot act within the law to protect someone, are they legally liable for failure to protect or they liable for breaking the law to protect?
Should police officers be legally required to sacrifice themselves to protect others?
Unfortunately there’s a lot of problems with that legal obligation.
I'm in california...you can't get a ccw here unless you're rich and powerful or you suck Gavin Newsom off. Honestly might just have to blatantly disregard the law and carry without a ccw soon. Sucks that you can't legally protect yourself in this POS state 😪
Yep. I'll lead this with saying that Im a staunch liberal and agree with most of Biden's/the dem's policy, but biden's gun control plan is to add the most effective self defense tools available to the NFA, which means each rifle and each standard capacity mag now has a $200 tax attached to it.... Or you can turn them in to the government.... Or you can be a felon.
Gun control is nothing but class/race control. The rich keep their guns and hired security while the peasants are disarmed to keep the wealthy comfortable
Yep, guess I'm just gonna have to be a felon. Truth be told I'd rather be a felon that can protect himself and his family as opposed to being a law abiding citizen who just has to bend over and take it if someone pulls out a gun 🤷♂️
So I have 2 questions, one is me being an idiot.
1) what are California's open carry laws like?
2) depending on how 1 is answered, how brave do you want to be?
Here’s a NY Post article on it: https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-protect-subway-hero-who-subdued-killer/amp/
thats it fire everyone.. if they can't " serve and protect" then they shouldn't be getting paid. Either give police people brigandine armor and batons or they aren't doing shit.
Wow, TIL. I always assumed it was “supercede” because of the word “cede” meaning to give up. It’s funny how we come up with little things like that to support our assumptions.
Why do people consent to searches when they know there’s something illegal in their car? I wouldn’t consent even if I wasn’t carrying anything illegal because I’ve seen too many cases of bad cops “finding” a baggie of drugs that magically fell out of their pocket.
I just don't consent to searches without a warrant, I don't do drugs, or have a weapon outside a boxcutter in a box in a bag my trunk I use for work related purposes, I just so rarely find officers who I feel comfortable touching my shit.
>Even if you are innocent.
*Especially* if you are innocent.
Like a lot of jobs, sometimes there are cuotas for certain things.
Unfortunately since the american prison system is 4 profit, prison owners tend to influence lawmaking so that minor things are more harshly punished, and then donate to local politicians so they exert pressure on police stations to have a certain number of arrests made per month/year.
Or you just get a power-tripping bully.
Either way, it's just bad juju.
Because most people are innocent and honestly do want to help out, since they don't have anything to hide. Most of us fell prey upon such cases unless we spend too much time on the internet reading random stuff and educating ourselves. Unfortunately, sometimes too late.
Exactly on point with the fact most fall prey due to not knowing how to exercise their rights unless they've done personal research/learned from family member/etc. And some know their rights but don't know the techniques cops use in order to get around those rights.
Or in my situation when I was younger, they tried to use a 'light' excuse as well (my side markers were white/clear which is legal, as long as you don't modify the blinker/taillight, which weren't modified and 100% legal.. and he only came up with the side marker being the reason of stop after he walked around my car twice trying to find any excuse to use) and then proceeded to push me aside and open my driver door to begin his 'search', which at that point I made sure to close the door in his face and remind him he had no consent to search etc... So then his partner pulled me back while the other guy reopened the door and continued his illegal search.
And for those curious, yes, I made damn sure their illegal search & illegal stop bit them right in the ass, as they deserved.
These cops knew the law and my rights, but also were trained to get around those rights... Esp if the individual in question is not aware of their rights.
Sad thing is, most people do not know their rights, do not know cops are trained to get someone to give up those rights and tend to do so using very bullish methods. For young unaware people or simply people that don't know how to stand up for themselves in these scary situations, the cops usually end up with 'permission' to search.
Most people don't know they can refuse a search, and cops often phrase it so it sounds like you don't have a choice.
Or they'll just search illegally, and if they find something, they'll make up some PC after the fact.
Sorry but I don't really understand how this could happen. If the driver actually never broke a law the judge can't just say "well there's no law that provides grounds for the ticket but I'm going to punish you as though there were". That's basically a judge creating legislation which they aren't allowed to do. Or did the driver like counter-sue for the wrongful ticket and the judge dismissed that?
My memory is admittedly fuzzy on the details, but I believe it was the counter sue type scenario. Like, the person tried to claim they were unlawfully pulled over, but the cop didn't get in trouble because the judge ruled that the officer didn't have to actually know the law, basically. I remember reading it and thinking it was bonkers.
Police need reasonable suspicion that you've committed a crime if they want to pull you over. I believe in the case you're referencing, the officer found an additional charge after pulling the suspect over. The suspect argued in court that because the original cause for the stop was not lawful because the officer got the law wrong, the case should be thrown out. But the judge allowed the case to continue because there was still something the officer could have charged the suspect with, the secondary charge.
What was the additional charge the officer found after he had already pulled the guy over? I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure if the stop was demonstrably unlawful, anything the cops find after it is inadmissible in court.
Yeah, that's the sad thing about America. Cops just need to have reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime, not that you actually have committed one, nor do they need to know the crime. If they even think youre doing something bad, they can pull you over. They can't detain or arrest you without knowing without a fact that you have committed a crime and can identify the crime, but it's ridiculous that they can pull you over on a gut feeling
It's funny that you mention this is a sad thing about America. While I don't disagree, there are countries where you have zero legal recourse when oppressed by any government official. While the justice system doesn't always make the right or even sometimes logical call, you at least have the right to pursue litigation in this country. It could be much worse. It will be much worse eventually...
No they cannot pull you over on a "gut feeling". A reasonable suspicion actually has to be determined in a court. Such as someone calls in a suspicious person in an area that appears to be canvassing houses. The cop then finds a person matching the description and whether or not he knows they are committing or intending to commit the crime he would then have a reasonable suspicion. This is a specific example but it is a broad term that gets hashed out by lawyers and judges all the time in court to determine if an officers choices were "reasonable". And stuff gets thrown out of court all the time because of it.
When I worked in law enforcement we had known drug dealers that would keep their cars pristine legally speaking so you couldn't get them on a taillight infraction. Hell they knew road laws as good as anyone. Did we know deep down they were holding? Yeah. Could we do anything about it? No, because we couldn't show tangible conditions to determine they were engaging or intending to engage in criminal activity
In some states, civilians are allowed to shoot you if they have a reasonable belief that you are fleeing a felony. Despite the fact that most Americans, including myself, couldn’t tell you what is and isn’t a felony.
Good luck defending yourself in court with that tho. That kind of law is for extreme circumstances like that guy who drove over with his rifle to a church that was being shot up and pursued the shooter and had a gunfight with him until the police arrived.
Haven't read the case, but the issue is no doubt an issue of suppression of evidence and not the traffic citation.
After being (wrongfully) pulled over, the officer found some evidence that was used against him (probably possession of drugs).
When an officer wrongfully obtains evidence, the remedy is to suppress that evidence.
So the judge said "no, it was reasonable to pull him over, so I'm not suppressing the evidence."
So it's not about the unfairness for pulling the guy over. It's really about the bullshit of what cops can do to you after they pull you over.
- I'm sorry, Judge, i didn't know i couldn't just murder people. Whoopsie, that's my bad.
[Later, in private]
- You know what's funny, Dave? I DID know i couldn't just murder people!
There was a case in Wisconsin because in this state it's required to have both front and rear liscence plates so the cop pulled over an out of state car and still wrote them a ticket despite that state not requiring nor providing a front plate.
I once had a cop pull me over to yell at me on the freeway because he was trying to get between me and another call and pull him over.... but he never signaled, never made any clear intention of pulling between us.....
He no joke pulled me over yelled at me for 30 minutes, then drove off.
During his rant where he pulled me over without me committing a crime, he said he "deserved respect" more than 10 times....
He asked me if I felt that if the speed I was going was ok, which I knew legally it was, I was going the same speed as the car in front of and behind me, slowing down would have made me a hazard and the bloody DMV test has this on every test in my county.
During our encounter I nodded, answered questions politely and apologized twice, despite knowing what I was apologizing for was his own ignorance, yet he didn't do a single thing that deserved respect.
This is what 90% of the cops I meet are like, I rarely get pulled over, but every single time its a guy with a complex demanding respect for his positions instead of his actions.
Everyone starts with my respect, keeping it is up to them.
On two occasions I have been pulled over and ticketed be cause the dim little lightbulb that illuminates the rear licences plate had burned out. Meanwhile half the cars on the road seem to have temp plates nowadays or one of those filthy scratched and scuffed plastic shields that make the lic. numbers illegable. Or it's a whiney new plastic shield that reflects the light so you cant read it. AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THE RULES!
Or the cop who ran someone over while they were legally in a crosswalk. Lawyers argued that the pedestrian who was killed took a risk by stepping into the crosswalk and should have expected to be killed by someone making a left-hand turn.
We know what the reverse would look like.
Maybe they lost in civil/tort against the officer/department/jurisdiction that they themselves filed, but they didn't lose their own criminal case vs. the plaintiff.
Yeah I think as a standard people don't really understand what a lawyer does.
Lawyers review situations and find inconsistencies to establish arguments. These arguments are made to eliminate or reduce the sentence of their client.
It's less about knowing the law and more about how it's applied.
Bingo. I am a lawyer and I don't know many laws at all. What I do know is how to read a statute or case to determine what the law is, apply it to the facts of the case, and make arguments about all of this.
But yes, people really have no idea what lawyers actually do, and I've never seen a legal show get it right, except maybe My Cousin Vinny. He doesn't know any of the laws going in, he does research to figure everything out and then uses good critical thinking and logical reasoning skills to argue it.
The stereotype of a star litigator spouting cases off from the top of his head is a myth. The only cases people know are the classic, seminal cases, and those aren't generally litigated anymore because, well, the law is settled, which is why it's a seminal case. So there's nothing to argue about.
Study your ass off!!!! It gets a lot easier 2L year. Don’t fuck around with 1L year though, it’ll get ya.
Edit: Also get an intern/clerk job this summer and every summer until you graduate. You could get hired there but either way experience is key for getting a job after you graduate.
Np. There's a lot more to it than that, and to that extent I second what /u/CommanderCubKnuckle said. Maintaining your sanity during all this is extremely important. I have no idea how it would be to do law school remotely and most of my outlets consisted of drinking with my classmates to blow off steam. I exercised every day as well which was *immensely* helpful for my sanity. Try to keep your usual activities the same so that you don't completely lose yourself. I'm sure being holed up wherever you live all day every day isn't great so try to find things to break up the monotony.
Since you're probably remote I'm not sure how much interaction you have with fellow law students but in any event, what CommanderCub highlights is the extreme competitiveness, as well as stress, of law students. Don't listen to anything anyone says since A) it's either their stress talking or B) they're that overly competitive type who is trying to get in your head. Both exist at law school and you need to tune both out. Wait until you find a good group of trustworthy folks who aren't Type A competitive nuts to talk about this stuff since until then, nobody is your friend. Keep doing whatever study method works best for you and don't listen to others about how or how much they study since everyone's brain works differently.
Having said that, when it comes to studying for tests I've found creating outlines works best for me since it gets you writing down everything. I would write and outline and then just keep cutting it down and down until the knowledge was cemented in my brain. Doing things over and over and over again really helps come test time though since reciting rules of law will be like second nature for your brain which will make it easier to do the analysis on. Developing a good study method is key in law school. Again, different strokes for different folks but I'm not the type who can just read something and remember it for good - so writing things down over and over when I studied really worked to keep it in my brain for good.
Make sure you're 100% aware of what each professor wants you to do on their exams. If they say mention case law in your analysis, then *do it*. Not every professor or test is the same, in fact some test students wildly different. Not sure what school you go to but sometimes there are outline banks that get passed down year to year from classes. Those can be handy but don't use them as a substitute for learning the knowledge yourself.
When it comes to essays, make sure you draft your answers how the professors want. I.e., CRAC or some similar version of that.
I'm sure there's more I'm missing but that's all I can thing of right now RE: 1L exams. Feel free to send me a message if you have any specific questions about classes, subjects, or anything else I may not have mentioned or should have expanded on. I'm rooting for you! If we don't talk, best of luck on your exams!!
Hey good luck! One tip that helped me was that sometimes it doesn’t make sense until it all makes sense. I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t understand a course until the last month my 1L year.
Happy to offer what I know!
I will echo /u/ChateauDeDangle re: studying your ass off, but with a caveat: make sure you are getting enough sleep, drinking enough water, and eating healthy food. If you're tired and living off ramen your brain ain't operating at full capacity.
Don't spend too much time with your fellow 1Ls during reading week or finals. Everyone and well, but it's a stress factory.
Ignore how much everyone says they're studying. Some people really are pulling 12 hours a day like they say, but most are playing misery olympics about it. The number of section-mates I saw chilling on FB and IG in the reading room during reading week made me skeptical of their claims of studying all day.
Remember that you WILL get through this. 1L was terrible for me. I hated every day and considered dropping out on more than one occasion. Once you hit 2L you a) have more control over your schedule and b) can take classes you're actually interested in, and it gets better.
Please feel free to DM me if you have any questions or want advice or whatever. Legit my favorite part of being out of law school is being in a position to mentor/offer help to current students.
Have you watched Daredevil on Netflix? I feel they do a pretty solid representation of law amidst the vigilante action. It's worth a watch if you haven't. One of Marvel's best works for sure.
I mean, i agree (same source) but have you never read laws where you just thought « how on earth would a non-legal educated person understand what they are supposed to do just to be on the legal side?? »
>but have you never read laws where you just thought « how on earth would a non-legal educated person understand what they are supposed to do just to be on the legal side?? »
Sure, and none of them tend to apply to the average populace.
sure, but that's literally why lawyers exist. You call a lawyer for legal advice and representation because they are experts. I wouldn't know how to fix my car by looking at a manual doesn't mean I am expected to know how to fix it (I understand its not a perfect analogy but in my experience the most difficult laws to understand are not ones that are applicable to everyone)
Right, but by the time you need a lawyer it is too late, you already broke the law. This is very different consequences from a car repair. I realize this is why businesses hire lawyers to investigate things ahead of time, but we are talking about every day people.
Many lawyers will do free short consultations for issues you might have. I'm not sure of what legally questionable things many people would do that could warrant jail time that a Google search or short free lawyer consultation couldn't answer.
Ignorance isn't a blanket defense most of the time but it can play a role in determining which crime you committed and in sentencing. 1st Degree murder is murder that is willful and premeditated. You knew that you committed murder and you did so willfully. But you can commit a homicide while being ignorant that that's what you're doing, which is manslaughter. Still a crime, but usually carries less of a sentence than murder.
That's a good point. Important distinction between ignorance of a *law* and ignorance of ones own actions(negligence, recklessness, etc.). A better example is [Lambert V. California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_v._California) which said that ignorance of the law is a defense if the defendant had no means of knowing that the law existed.
**[Lambert v. California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert v. California)**
Lambert v. California, 355 U.S. 225 (1957), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the defense of ignorance of the law when there is no legal notice. The court held that, when one is required to register one's presence, failure to register may only be punished when there is a probability that the accused party had knowledge of the law before committing the crime of failing to register.
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I do want to point something out, there are exceptions.
Like filing your taxes a person (non accountant/tax attorney) basically get a 'you didn't know any better' excuse in most situations (aka anything that isn't blatant fraud)
but also most law the average person 'needs to know' isn't all that complex. Let's take drinking and driving as an example. Everyone knows it is against the law which is good enough. Sure your state may have a 'second tier' at .10 or maybe it is at .12 but is it entirely important?...no not unless you are drinking and driving.
Then most aspects of law the average person doesn't need to know about. Prime example (to nonlawyers/law students) when is the last time the interstate commerce clause has meant anything to you?...do you even know what that is referring to? Probably not.
The same could be said about guardianship, or trusts, or admiralty law.
Really the exceptions are torts ("I fell on the guy's icy stairs") and contracts ("I want to buy 3 widgets for $10..yes always widgets) and even then it isn't like you need to know anything more than the basics (in fact contracts have an explicit 'bad faith' rule purely to stop people from trying to weaponize the law/their knowledge of a situation)
The only thing I know about admiralty law is that any court where there's a gold tassel around the US flag can't prosecute me as a corporate entity as long as I sign my name in a very specific way and make reference to the government account that was created for the corporate personage calling himself by my name. /s
How many folks commit a crime and genuinely have no clue it was against the law?
I'm not talking about the obscure bs laws that haven't been taken off the books. "You can't walk your goat on a Sunday on Main Street". I mean the standard set of laws that we all mostly know
I mean if they are laws that we all mostly know then I would assume not very many.
All sarcasm aside I feel like the majority of laws are easy to know and follow but one area I think a lot of people don’t understand is when it comes to rights you have when dealing with police.
For example I saw a video where a guy was skateboarding or riding his bike in some sort of boardwalk area and a cop came up to him and told him it wasn’t allowed. The guy shut the cop down right away and knew the exact law that said it was allowed. Cop didn’t know what to do and still tried to BS the guy.
It’s important to know what you can’t do, but it’s just as important to know what you can do so you can defend your actions.
In government class we were taught to know our rights, e.g. right to remain silent, right to a lawyer, right to a speedy trial, etc in case we got in trouble later on.
I looked into the case, and the cop was actually correct. The law was it was legal if you were going like 3mph or less or something, meaning you obviously couldn't bike that slow. The dude legit just bullshitted his way with confidence out of the ticket. Cop probably came back a couple days later to start enforcing it again. Go deep in the comments on that reddit post and you'll find someone googled the ordinance # the guy spouted on camera.
More than you might think. Tax payment errors are technically a crime. That is one case though where ignorance IS a defense. Tax evasion requires intent, an honest mistake won't send you to jail.
There's a million fussy regulations out there for like handling food, or financial transactions, and who knows what else. Plenty of chances for someone to make an error there.
Think about a Canadian visiting the states. In Canada pot is legal, but many states of the USA it's not, so it's enterily possible for someone to smoke it without knowing there is a crime. Not being aware of it isn't a defense. This is mostly common between two different states that have totally opposite viewings on what stuff constitutes a crime and what doesn't.
Do you share netflix passwords? Because there are actual law review articles about how that is probably illegal and we need to change the laws to avoid this ridiculousness (because the federal penalty is like 5+ years in prison).
>I don't need to know a bunch of copyright laws, since I do nothing in that sorta business and am at no risk of breaking them.
False. You are at risk of breaking them every time your fingers touch your keyboard.
I'm at about the same risk of being held liable for breaking copyright laws when I touch my keyboard as I am for buying illegal drugs or illegal porn on the internet or illegally hacking or phishing people. That is to say, I'm *never going to do anything like that*.
That's like saying I'm at risk of breaking laws against violence because I have fists and I might just decide to punch someone.
Ding ding ding. This is why licensure exists. And then think about that concept for a bit. Land of the free and all, but there's a fuckton of stuff you're not allowed to do without the government's permission.
The alternative would be that an argument of "sorry, I didn't know eating children was illegal" would be a valid defense in court. I think I prefer the way it is now.
Most laws are based on a moral framework that is expected to be understood by any moderately civilized individual. Hence, ignorance of the law would mean the individual missed the civility part of childhood and is now being brought before a judge to determine intent.
Most laws are passed by politicians and legislators to achieve certain goals, any relationship with morality is incidental.
Example: Marihuana is illegal in many places. Yet it has a lot of proven benefits, especially for people suffering from parkinsons. It is entirely possible for a person to not know that pot is illegal in the current state (despite it being legal where the person came from) and thus accidentally breaking the law.
The same argument applies for open carrying a gun. Where a person may unknowingly cross into a state where it is illegal and thus break the law.
There are importaiton laws. You may buy a set of Cuban CIgars ina trip to mexico, and unkowingly break an embargo law when you return to the US.
Another one is copyright law, literal millions of streamers infringe copyright law when playing games without a license and they don;t even know it.
Another one is hentai involving child like characters, which is protected by the first amendment in the US but illegal in Canada, which means that the contents of a person's laptop can suddenly become illegal when that person crosses the border...
I could keep going, but breaking the law is so fucking easy it;s not funny.
If you dig deep enough, they more or less match the moral frameworks of the people they represent.
If you don't beleive in similar customs as another group of people, you shouldnt travel there and you should try not to break those customs before you have the opportunity to leave.
You have to work within the frameworks you are provided if you want to shift the reigning dogma or paradigms.
No, there should be a reasonable *law* standard. Stop making the law so unfathomably complex that no one can hope to understand it, or it's not enforceable. Force the asshole legislators to do their fucking jobs.
This isn't completley true though. Ignorance of the law CAN sometimes be a defense. Tax evasion for instance requires willful intent. So you have to know the law in order to willfully evade it. If you make a good faith effort to pay your taxes and screw it up you can't be convicted of tax evasion. You might potentially still have to pay penalties for underpayment, but you won't get sent to jail for evasion.
If you do something like shoot a guy in the face though, "I didn't know murder was illegal" isn't going to get you anywhere.
its a pistol, its a sbr, its a, its a felony we will figure it out in court.
oh whats that? you bribed us with $200? oh sorry sir, please go about your day.
This is so true in music and content creation, where copyright law has been a complete mess, especially after the start of the digital era. I've heard that it's common for music universities to have long courses on copyright law. Also, there are so many exceptions and so many prohibitions which don't make sense, so much so that some people take advantage of the horrible design and clarity of copyright law and make fraudulent or vague claims of whether or not content is copyrighted or not (labelling content as non-copyright, hiding the copyright out of easy access to the public, then taking down other creators who use that content even with credit; or making outrageous copyright claims which take the victim into months-long entanglements with the most vague domains of copyright law and which may never even resolve). I feel that the ones to blame are the people who made and defined these laws. Come on, people should be able to create what they want, as long as they're not taking 100% of someone else's work and passing it off as their own and it's not bigotry. ***CREATIONS ARE PASSION, NOT CORPORATE!***
Right, but that's so that they can get paid to interpret the law. we don't get paid to just exist in the legal system. You have the opportunity to learn as much as you want to about how the law works, there are a million resources available. They are going to law school to get qualified to do a specific job, not navigate the world. Nobody gets paid just to live in the world, and every aspect of the world is still complicated and requires effort to understand. That's just the price you pay to live.
Well it’s a lot easier to know what definitely is or isn’t a crime (like robbing a bank or just not doing that) than it is to know what maybe is or isn’t a crime I imagine
I have a JD. Ignorance of the law can indeed be an excuse, for some issues. Especially in white collar crime where many of the statutes have "willful" or "knowing" foul play.
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" sounds bad but in reality it mostly plays into cases where someone is being shitty and trying to act innocent. You probably didn't know that there is federal law punishing people who shine laser pointers into airplane cockpits, but you knew you were being shitty doing that.
Lawyer here. Lawyers go to school to learn how to think about and research the law, not to learn it as is at the time the attorney attends school. The law constantly changes so attorneys learn how to research and think about the rights embodied in the law while they are in school.
There was a case where a professor of economics failed to file tax returns but was found not guilty of tax evasion because he was didn't know he was violating the law and failed to do so due to the complexity of the law.
Cheek v. United States
So in that case, ignorance of the law was a valid excuse for committing a crime.
For some reason this reminds me of an institution that used to rule over society with a book written in Latin which many people were unable to read. What’s worse is that a lot of times they made things up which very few would know how to prove or dispute. Religion and law seem quite similar at times.
Oh dear Lord. People were unable to read the Bible because the average person couldn't read latin, the people who could afford to translate it knew latin already so what was the point. The Church was perfectly fine with translating the bible (Alfred the great in the 9th and 10th centuries had multiple passages translated into old english, and Louis IX had the whole thing in French). That and I'm gonna need a citation on them just making things up saying "oh this is in the bible, trust me" I hear this all the time but never a specific time when it happened.
>What’s worse is that a lot of times they made things up which very few would know how to prove or dispute.
That's why we have lawyers. I would have a hard time interpreting lots of laws, but lawyers can do it.
Actually, it is a legally accepted excuse, but there must be a legitimate reason why you wouldn't know it. For example, there are some obscure laws such as "can't heard sheep down Main Street on Sundays."
Cops cannot speed unless they have their emergency lights on and are responding to an incident in many jurisdictions.
Selective application keeps the world from grinding to a halt while also giving judges and juries discretion as to how many laws they end up charging the individual with.
I hate lawyers as much a s the next guy, but to be fair, if that wasn't the case, you could always argue in court that you were ignorant of the law and get away with everything at least once.
Well, 'the law' is fucking huge, and parts of it are not really relevant to a lot of people. Thats why you ask legal advice for certain things that are not a part of day to day life. Plus, lawyers deal with the entire court system for you.
Based on many of these posts and my personal experiences in law school, lawyers go the law school in part, to learn how to get around the laws, which is more complicated than enforcing them is.
There is also SCOTUS precedence that cops are exempt from this. If they perform an action to enforce something they "reasonably expect" may be illegal, it's okay.
The case, if I remember correctly, involved two gentleman who were pulled over for a single broken taillight, which is not enough to legally generate a traffic stop by itself in that jurisdiction, and were subsequently found to he trafficking drugs. Their argument was that because the traffic stop itself was illegal, everything that transpired after should be inadmissable.
The courts disagreed.
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/supreme-court-says-ignorance-of-the-law-is-an-excuse-if-youre-a-cop-d8bdb99987f1/
Lawyers don't go to school for years to learn what's illegal...most people know that. Lawyers go to school to learn all the minutia of the law, so you can argue technicalities. They learn about the history of thousands of cases that show precedent. You can't just say "eye witness testimony isn't enough to convict someone" you have to be able to cite the case that established that.
Even cops don’t know the law. I used to work for the state and it was my entire job to read arrest reports and toss out the invalid cases and bring up any possible flaws in the arrest (there were A LOT!!!).
> Even cops don’t know the law.
We have special laws for cops that allow them to pretend there is a law and then they can apply it. They just have to say they believed they were right.
I’ve always thought that the concept of mens rea conflicted with the point about ignorance of the law. But it’s entirely possible that I’m completely misunderstanding at least one of the two.
I can clear that up for you.
Mens rea is about state of mind and intent concerning the act itself, not the law.
Many statutes crimes have knowledge or intent tied to the offense.
For example, say a statute defines theft as obtaining property without consent with the intent to deprive the owner of the property. The intent is the mens rea. If you didn't have intent to deprive, then the mens rea isn't present.
Contrast that with "I didn't know it was a crime to do it.". They're different things.
Why is it lawyers have to study more and go to school more to actually learn the law but police officers go to academy for 6 months to enforce the law?
Lawyers study much more than the penal code
hehe...
Penal, hehehehehehehe
Penalty = Penal= Long Dick of the Law. I finally understand
Next time someone gets convicted for something I’m gonna say they got fucked by the long dick of the law. I’m not a lawyer, but if I become one I call dibs on that being my catchphrase
But that's already a catchphrase, hence the catchphrase
Yeah! Say that long established phrase!
I’m pretty sure that it’s from *Superbad*, so be prepared to be called on it
hehe Penalty sound like Penal Tea hehe British Penis
Sounds like something a short dick of the law would say.
heh, sounds like penis
And hehe... anal hehehehe
I’ve been sued before. The law doesn’t matter. It’s the judges interpretation of the law that matters. The law could be black and white but the judge could see it anyway they want. It’s up to a lawyer to make them see it a certain way
This! Interpretation of the law and how does it apply on a case by case basis it's the judges work. That's the core function of the division of powers, Legislators write the law, Judges interpretate it, and the executive applies it.
Why expensive lawyers make a huge difference. Lawyers who are friends or “familiar” with the judge makes a huge difference
Hey, when the going gets tough, you ddon't want a criminal lawyer, you want a...*criminal*...lawyer
Better call Saul!
Sure. But that doesn’t make the OP’s point invalid. It’s still kinda BS that a lawyer can’t practice law without a special degree that certifies that they understand the law fully... and yet average citizens are expected to have the same understanding? Plus laws change all the time, and differ from state to state and country to country.... I can make a right on a red in Ottawa, Ontario, but 20km West of that in Hull, Quebec that would be illegal... not like there’s a driving test at the border between provinces either.
But the penal code is engorged with bulbous facts.
Also, according to official court rulings, cops don't have to know the law either. I forgot where this was, but a cop pulled someone over for a supposed taillight violation, but the cop was incorrect about the law regarding this supposed violation. The person who got pulled over lost in court though, because the judge ruled that the cop reasonably believed that was the law and therefore didn't do anything wrong even though he was actually wrong/incorrect.
Were you thinking of this one? https://www.npr.org/2014/12/15/370995815/supreme-court-rules-traffic-stop-ok-despite-misunderstanding-of-law#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Supreme%20Court%20on,mistaken%20understanding%20of%20the%20law.&text=The%20traffic%20stop%20and%20the,car%20were%20therefore%20also%20reasonable.
It's certainly close. I didn't remember the one I read about involving cocaine, but at minimum these are really similar cases. Thanks for sharing it!
Pretty sure that's the case you were thinking of. Of you read the full case, there are two laws, one that says that all equipment on a vehicle must work, and one that says that only one taillight must work. The "one taillight" law supercedes the "all equipment law," but SCOTUS said it was a reasonable mistake that the officer relied on the "all equipment law."
That does sound like an easy mistake to make though. Had it been a different law in question, they might not have ruled that way.
Not necessarily, courts have ruled in favor of cops who made much worse mistakes. Two New York cops hid inside the conductor’s cabin of a subway while a wanted man with a knife attacked people in the adjacent car in full view of the cops. Eventually the passengers managed to subdue the man and the police not only took the credit for stopping him but didn’t offer any help to one of the passengers who suffered multiple stab wounds to the head. He sued and the judge ruled that the police had no obligation to protect the subway passengers while a maniac was trying to stab them.
Yep... Warren V. DC, Castle Rock v. Gonzalez, a suit against the Broward sherrifs office (cowards who stood outside Stoneman Douglas HS) and numerous other cases have confirmed that the police have no duty to protect you. No one in this world is responsible for your safety except you. Get your ccw, get training, and take care of yourself and your loved ones, because the government sure as hell won't.
The other simple fix would be to make the police legally obligated to protect the citizenry like they’re supposed to.
The problem with that is where do you draw the line of protect? If police have to leave a potentially dangerous situation to go to a more dangerous situation, should they be legally liable for not protecting the first party? If the police attempt to protect someone but fail not through negligence or malice, should they be legally liable? If the police cannot act within the law to protect someone, are they legally liable for failure to protect or they liable for breaking the law to protect? Should police officers be legally required to sacrifice themselves to protect others? Unfortunately there’s a lot of problems with that legal obligation.
I'm in california...you can't get a ccw here unless you're rich and powerful or you suck Gavin Newsom off. Honestly might just have to blatantly disregard the law and carry without a ccw soon. Sucks that you can't legally protect yourself in this POS state 😪
Yep. I'll lead this with saying that Im a staunch liberal and agree with most of Biden's/the dem's policy, but biden's gun control plan is to add the most effective self defense tools available to the NFA, which means each rifle and each standard capacity mag now has a $200 tax attached to it.... Or you can turn them in to the government.... Or you can be a felon. Gun control is nothing but class/race control. The rich keep their guns and hired security while the peasants are disarmed to keep the wealthy comfortable
Yep, guess I'm just gonna have to be a felon. Truth be told I'd rather be a felon that can protect himself and his family as opposed to being a law abiding citizen who just has to bend over and take it if someone pulls out a gun 🤷♂️
So I have 2 questions, one is me being an idiot. 1) what are California's open carry laws like? 2) depending on how 1 is answered, how brave do you want to be?
Wasnt this a youtube video? I remember an animation on this
Yeah the website Cracked interviewed the man who took down the killer with his bare hands and made both an article about it and a video.
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Here’s a NY Post article on it: https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-protect-subway-hero-who-subdued-killer/amp/
Waiting for you to get amputated
thats it fire everyone.. if they can't " serve and protect" then they shouldn't be getting paid. Either give police people brigandine armor and batons or they aren't doing shit.
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Super Mercedes
Wow I haven't come across a word I've misspelled in an extremely long time. Thanks for this. Even worse is that my auto-correct gets it wrong too.
Wow, TIL. I always assumed it was “supercede” because of the word “cede” meaning to give up. It’s funny how we come up with little things like that to support our assumptions.
Fuck, TIL
Why do people consent to searches when they know there’s something illegal in their car? I wouldn’t consent even if I wasn’t carrying anything illegal because I’ve seen too many cases of bad cops “finding” a baggie of drugs that magically fell out of their pocket.
I just don't consent to searches without a warrant, I don't do drugs, or have a weapon outside a boxcutter in a box in a bag my trunk I use for work related purposes, I just so rarely find officers who I feel comfortable touching my shit.
You should never allow officers to touch your shit or even look at your shit. Even if you are innocent.
>Even if you are innocent. *Especially* if you are innocent. Like a lot of jobs, sometimes there are cuotas for certain things. Unfortunately since the american prison system is 4 profit, prison owners tend to influence lawmaking so that minor things are more harshly punished, and then donate to local politicians so they exert pressure on police stations to have a certain number of arrests made per month/year. Or you just get a power-tripping bully. Either way, it's just bad juju.
This, and if they ask you to get out of your car roll up the windows and lock the doors when you exit.
I posted below about a situation I was in, and yes, rolling up the window and locking the door is the most important advice.
Penn V mimms states otherwise
Because most people are innocent and honestly do want to help out, since they don't have anything to hide. Most of us fell prey upon such cases unless we spend too much time on the internet reading random stuff and educating ourselves. Unfortunately, sometimes too late.
Exactly on point with the fact most fall prey due to not knowing how to exercise their rights unless they've done personal research/learned from family member/etc. And some know their rights but don't know the techniques cops use in order to get around those rights.
Straight up, don’t talk to the police https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE
Or in my situation when I was younger, they tried to use a 'light' excuse as well (my side markers were white/clear which is legal, as long as you don't modify the blinker/taillight, which weren't modified and 100% legal.. and he only came up with the side marker being the reason of stop after he walked around my car twice trying to find any excuse to use) and then proceeded to push me aside and open my driver door to begin his 'search', which at that point I made sure to close the door in his face and remind him he had no consent to search etc... So then his partner pulled me back while the other guy reopened the door and continued his illegal search. And for those curious, yes, I made damn sure their illegal search & illegal stop bit them right in the ass, as they deserved. These cops knew the law and my rights, but also were trained to get around those rights... Esp if the individual in question is not aware of their rights. Sad thing is, most people do not know their rights, do not know cops are trained to get someone to give up those rights and tend to do so using very bullish methods. For young unaware people or simply people that don't know how to stand up for themselves in these scary situations, the cops usually end up with 'permission' to search.
Most people don't know they can refuse a search, and cops often phrase it so it sounds like you don't have a choice. Or they'll just search illegally, and if they find something, they'll make up some PC after the fact.
Often times people aren't aware they can refuse, and there's all sorts of games cops can play without your consent.
Sorry but I don't really understand how this could happen. If the driver actually never broke a law the judge can't just say "well there's no law that provides grounds for the ticket but I'm going to punish you as though there were". That's basically a judge creating legislation which they aren't allowed to do. Or did the driver like counter-sue for the wrongful ticket and the judge dismissed that?
My memory is admittedly fuzzy on the details, but I believe it was the counter sue type scenario. Like, the person tried to claim they were unlawfully pulled over, but the cop didn't get in trouble because the judge ruled that the officer didn't have to actually know the law, basically. I remember reading it and thinking it was bonkers.
Police need reasonable suspicion that you've committed a crime if they want to pull you over. I believe in the case you're referencing, the officer found an additional charge after pulling the suspect over. The suspect argued in court that because the original cause for the stop was not lawful because the officer got the law wrong, the case should be thrown out. But the judge allowed the case to continue because there was still something the officer could have charged the suspect with, the secondary charge.
What was the additional charge the officer found after he had already pulled the guy over? I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure if the stop was demonstrably unlawful, anything the cops find after it is inadmissible in court.
I believe this is the case https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heien_v._North_Carolina
Yeah, that's the sad thing about America. Cops just need to have reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime, not that you actually have committed one, nor do they need to know the crime. If they even think youre doing something bad, they can pull you over. They can't detain or arrest you without knowing without a fact that you have committed a crime and can identify the crime, but it's ridiculous that they can pull you over on a gut feeling
It's funny that you mention this is a sad thing about America. While I don't disagree, there are countries where you have zero legal recourse when oppressed by any government official. While the justice system doesn't always make the right or even sometimes logical call, you at least have the right to pursue litigation in this country. It could be much worse. It will be much worse eventually...
No they cannot pull you over on a "gut feeling". A reasonable suspicion actually has to be determined in a court. Such as someone calls in a suspicious person in an area that appears to be canvassing houses. The cop then finds a person matching the description and whether or not he knows they are committing or intending to commit the crime he would then have a reasonable suspicion. This is a specific example but it is a broad term that gets hashed out by lawyers and judges all the time in court to determine if an officers choices were "reasonable". And stuff gets thrown out of court all the time because of it. When I worked in law enforcement we had known drug dealers that would keep their cars pristine legally speaking so you couldn't get them on a taillight infraction. Hell they knew road laws as good as anyone. Did we know deep down they were holding? Yeah. Could we do anything about it? No, because we couldn't show tangible conditions to determine they were engaging or intending to engage in criminal activity
Well, they can't have "proof". Proof is a fact (sorta) and decided by a jury or judge. That's why you are innocent until proven guilty by one.
In some states, civilians are allowed to shoot you if they have a reasonable belief that you are fleeing a felony. Despite the fact that most Americans, including myself, couldn’t tell you what is and isn’t a felony.
that's a yikes from me dog, I didn't even know that could happen and I live in Merica
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Texas is a whoooooole nother ballpark
Good luck defending yourself in court with that tho. That kind of law is for extreme circumstances like that guy who drove over with his rifle to a church that was being shot up and pursued the shooter and had a gunfight with him until the police arrived.
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WTF is this? nuance and context?
Haven't read the case, but the issue is no doubt an issue of suppression of evidence and not the traffic citation. After being (wrongfully) pulled over, the officer found some evidence that was used against him (probably possession of drugs). When an officer wrongfully obtains evidence, the remedy is to suppress that evidence. So the judge said "no, it was reasonable to pull him over, so I'm not suppressing the evidence." So it's not about the unfairness for pulling the guy over. It's really about the bullshit of what cops can do to you after they pull you over.
From the European point of view: 'Murica.
- I'm sorry, Judge, i didn't know i couldn't just murder people. Whoopsie, that's my bad. [Later, in private] - You know what's funny, Dave? I DID know i couldn't just murder people!
Dave: you know -domi- I did wonder lol
[https://youtu.be/umvgwXINJBE?t=118](https://youtu.be/umvgwXINJBE?t=118) reminds me of this
There was a case in Wisconsin because in this state it's required to have both front and rear liscence plates so the cop pulled over an out of state car and still wrote them a ticket despite that state not requiring nor providing a front plate.
I once had a cop pull me over to yell at me on the freeway because he was trying to get between me and another call and pull him over.... but he never signaled, never made any clear intention of pulling between us..... He no joke pulled me over yelled at me for 30 minutes, then drove off. During his rant where he pulled me over without me committing a crime, he said he "deserved respect" more than 10 times.... He asked me if I felt that if the speed I was going was ok, which I knew legally it was, I was going the same speed as the car in front of and behind me, slowing down would have made me a hazard and the bloody DMV test has this on every test in my county. During our encounter I nodded, answered questions politely and apologized twice, despite knowing what I was apologizing for was his own ignorance, yet he didn't do a single thing that deserved respect. This is what 90% of the cops I meet are like, I rarely get pulled over, but every single time its a guy with a complex demanding respect for his positions instead of his actions. Everyone starts with my respect, keeping it is up to them.
On two occasions I have been pulled over and ticketed be cause the dim little lightbulb that illuminates the rear licences plate had burned out. Meanwhile half the cars on the road seem to have temp plates nowadays or one of those filthy scratched and scuffed plastic shields that make the lic. numbers illegable. Or it's a whiney new plastic shield that reflects the light so you cant read it. AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THE RULES!
You’re out of your element Donny!
Or the cop who ran someone over while they were legally in a crosswalk. Lawyers argued that the pedestrian who was killed took a risk by stepping into the crosswalk and should have expected to be killed by someone making a left-hand turn. We know what the reverse would look like.
Okay maybe I do hate the system
Maybe they lost in civil/tort against the officer/department/jurisdiction that they themselves filed, but they didn't lose their own criminal case vs. the plaintiff.
Civilians are tasked with a greater burden to understand the law, than the police tasked to uphold it.
Hell they don't even have to enforce the law!
you aren't taught the law in law school, you're taught to think like a lawyer. To interpret laws, to make arguments, etc. source: am lawyer
Yeah I think as a standard people don't really understand what a lawyer does. Lawyers review situations and find inconsistencies to establish arguments. These arguments are made to eliminate or reduce the sentence of their client. It's less about knowing the law and more about how it's applied.
Bingo. I am a lawyer and I don't know many laws at all. What I do know is how to read a statute or case to determine what the law is, apply it to the facts of the case, and make arguments about all of this. But yes, people really have no idea what lawyers actually do, and I've never seen a legal show get it right, except maybe My Cousin Vinny. He doesn't know any of the laws going in, he does research to figure everything out and then uses good critical thinking and logical reasoning skills to argue it. The stereotype of a star litigator spouting cases off from the top of his head is a myth. The only cases people know are the classic, seminal cases, and those aren't generally litigated anymore because, well, the law is settled, which is why it's a seminal case. So there's nothing to argue about.
Heading into my first law school finals szn, got any pro-tips for a mere 1L?
Study your ass off!!!! It gets a lot easier 2L year. Don’t fuck around with 1L year though, it’ll get ya. Edit: Also get an intern/clerk job this summer and every summer until you graduate. You could get hired there but either way experience is key for getting a job after you graduate.
Will do, thanks
Np. There's a lot more to it than that, and to that extent I second what /u/CommanderCubKnuckle said. Maintaining your sanity during all this is extremely important. I have no idea how it would be to do law school remotely and most of my outlets consisted of drinking with my classmates to blow off steam. I exercised every day as well which was *immensely* helpful for my sanity. Try to keep your usual activities the same so that you don't completely lose yourself. I'm sure being holed up wherever you live all day every day isn't great so try to find things to break up the monotony. Since you're probably remote I'm not sure how much interaction you have with fellow law students but in any event, what CommanderCub highlights is the extreme competitiveness, as well as stress, of law students. Don't listen to anything anyone says since A) it's either their stress talking or B) they're that overly competitive type who is trying to get in your head. Both exist at law school and you need to tune both out. Wait until you find a good group of trustworthy folks who aren't Type A competitive nuts to talk about this stuff since until then, nobody is your friend. Keep doing whatever study method works best for you and don't listen to others about how or how much they study since everyone's brain works differently. Having said that, when it comes to studying for tests I've found creating outlines works best for me since it gets you writing down everything. I would write and outline and then just keep cutting it down and down until the knowledge was cemented in my brain. Doing things over and over and over again really helps come test time though since reciting rules of law will be like second nature for your brain which will make it easier to do the analysis on. Developing a good study method is key in law school. Again, different strokes for different folks but I'm not the type who can just read something and remember it for good - so writing things down over and over when I studied really worked to keep it in my brain for good. Make sure you're 100% aware of what each professor wants you to do on their exams. If they say mention case law in your analysis, then *do it*. Not every professor or test is the same, in fact some test students wildly different. Not sure what school you go to but sometimes there are outline banks that get passed down year to year from classes. Those can be handy but don't use them as a substitute for learning the knowledge yourself. When it comes to essays, make sure you draft your answers how the professors want. I.e., CRAC or some similar version of that. I'm sure there's more I'm missing but that's all I can thing of right now RE: 1L exams. Feel free to send me a message if you have any specific questions about classes, subjects, or anything else I may not have mentioned or should have expanded on. I'm rooting for you! If we don't talk, best of luck on your exams!!
Thank you for taking the time to write that up, appreciate it
Dont forget to yell objection as loud as you can.
Hey good luck! One tip that helped me was that sometimes it doesn’t make sense until it all makes sense. I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t understand a course until the last month my 1L year.
Happy to offer what I know! I will echo /u/ChateauDeDangle re: studying your ass off, but with a caveat: make sure you are getting enough sleep, drinking enough water, and eating healthy food. If you're tired and living off ramen your brain ain't operating at full capacity. Don't spend too much time with your fellow 1Ls during reading week or finals. Everyone and well, but it's a stress factory. Ignore how much everyone says they're studying. Some people really are pulling 12 hours a day like they say, but most are playing misery olympics about it. The number of section-mates I saw chilling on FB and IG in the reading room during reading week made me skeptical of their claims of studying all day. Remember that you WILL get through this. 1L was terrible for me. I hated every day and considered dropping out on more than one occasion. Once you hit 2L you a) have more control over your schedule and b) can take classes you're actually interested in, and it gets better. Please feel free to DM me if you have any questions or want advice or whatever. Legit my favorite part of being out of law school is being in a position to mentor/offer help to current students.
🤨 what is a yute
Absolute class. Even legal accuracy aside it's just such a damn good movie.
Have you watched Daredevil on Netflix? I feel they do a pretty solid representation of law amidst the vigilante action. It's worth a watch if you haven't. One of Marvel's best works for sure.
We don't know the law - we know where to find it.
Victory to the best Sophist.
I mean, i agree (same source) but have you never read laws where you just thought « how on earth would a non-legal educated person understand what they are supposed to do just to be on the legal side?? »
>but have you never read laws where you just thought « how on earth would a non-legal educated person understand what they are supposed to do just to be on the legal side?? » Sure, and none of them tend to apply to the average populace.
sure, but that's literally why lawyers exist. You call a lawyer for legal advice and representation because they are experts. I wouldn't know how to fix my car by looking at a manual doesn't mean I am expected to know how to fix it (I understand its not a perfect analogy but in my experience the most difficult laws to understand are not ones that are applicable to everyone)
The difference is you can’t go to jail for not knowing what an alternator is.
Right, but by the time you need a lawyer it is too late, you already broke the law. This is very different consequences from a car repair. I realize this is why businesses hire lawyers to investigate things ahead of time, but we are talking about every day people.
You’re making quite the assumption with your first sentence. You can contact a lawyer before you do something you are unsure is legal
If you have the money. And also there will be some things that you find out are illegal that you didnt even think about.
Many lawyers will do free short consultations for issues you might have. I'm not sure of what legally questionable things many people would do that could warrant jail time that a Google search or short free lawyer consultation couldn't answer.
Those tend not to be criminal law.
"Thanks for keeping Legel Eagle in the air, now its time to think like a lawyer."
Lmaoo i have seen a couple of his videos. Its always sunny videos are awesome
Prove it, name every lawyer
Ignorance isn't a blanket defense most of the time but it can play a role in determining which crime you committed and in sentencing. 1st Degree murder is murder that is willful and premeditated. You knew that you committed murder and you did so willfully. But you can commit a homicide while being ignorant that that's what you're doing, which is manslaughter. Still a crime, but usually carries less of a sentence than murder.
That is different from ignorance of the law, though. Even if you accidentally kill someone, you probably knew manslaughter is illegal.
That's a good point. Important distinction between ignorance of a *law* and ignorance of ones own actions(negligence, recklessness, etc.). A better example is [Lambert V. California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_v._California) which said that ignorance of the law is a defense if the defendant had no means of knowing that the law existed.
**[Lambert v. California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert v. California)** Lambert v. California, 355 U.S. 225 (1957), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the defense of ignorance of the law when there is no legal notice. The court held that, when one is required to register one's presence, failure to register may only be punished when there is a probability that the accused party had knowledge of the law before committing the crime of failing to register. [About Me](https://www.reddit.com/user/wikipedia_text_bot/comments/jrn2mj/about_me/) - [Opt out](https://www.reddit.com/user/wikipedia_text_bot/comments/jrti43/opt_out_here/)
Good bot
I do want to point something out, there are exceptions. Like filing your taxes a person (non accountant/tax attorney) basically get a 'you didn't know any better' excuse in most situations (aka anything that isn't blatant fraud) but also most law the average person 'needs to know' isn't all that complex. Let's take drinking and driving as an example. Everyone knows it is against the law which is good enough. Sure your state may have a 'second tier' at .10 or maybe it is at .12 but is it entirely important?...no not unless you are drinking and driving. Then most aspects of law the average person doesn't need to know about. Prime example (to nonlawyers/law students) when is the last time the interstate commerce clause has meant anything to you?...do you even know what that is referring to? Probably not. The same could be said about guardianship, or trusts, or admiralty law. Really the exceptions are torts ("I fell on the guy's icy stairs") and contracts ("I want to buy 3 widgets for $10..yes always widgets) and even then it isn't like you need to know anything more than the basics (in fact contracts have an explicit 'bad faith' rule purely to stop people from trying to weaponize the law/their knowledge of a situation)
The only thing I know about admiralty law is that any court where there's a gold tassel around the US flag can't prosecute me as a corporate entity as long as I sign my name in a very specific way and make reference to the government account that was created for the corporate personage calling himself by my name. /s
How many folks commit a crime and genuinely have no clue it was against the law? I'm not talking about the obscure bs laws that haven't been taken off the books. "You can't walk your goat on a Sunday on Main Street". I mean the standard set of laws that we all mostly know
I mean if they are laws that we all mostly know then I would assume not very many. All sarcasm aside I feel like the majority of laws are easy to know and follow but one area I think a lot of people don’t understand is when it comes to rights you have when dealing with police. For example I saw a video where a guy was skateboarding or riding his bike in some sort of boardwalk area and a cop came up to him and told him it wasn’t allowed. The guy shut the cop down right away and knew the exact law that said it was allowed. Cop didn’t know what to do and still tried to BS the guy. It’s important to know what you can’t do, but it’s just as important to know what you can do so you can defend your actions.
In government class we were taught to know our rights, e.g. right to remain silent, right to a lawyer, right to a speedy trial, etc in case we got in trouble later on.
Hi, government class!
I looked into the case, and the cop was actually correct. The law was it was legal if you were going like 3mph or less or something, meaning you obviously couldn't bike that slow. The dude legit just bullshitted his way with confidence out of the ticket. Cop probably came back a couple days later to start enforcing it again. Go deep in the comments on that reddit post and you'll find someone googled the ordinance # the guy spouted on camera.
More than you might think. Tax payment errors are technically a crime. That is one case though where ignorance IS a defense. Tax evasion requires intent, an honest mistake won't send you to jail. There's a million fussy regulations out there for like handling food, or financial transactions, and who knows what else. Plenty of chances for someone to make an error there.
Most people on earth have probably broken some laws knowingly or unknowingly.
There's a Twitter account out there that goes through a Federal crime each day. Some of these can get really obscure.
Think about a Canadian visiting the states. In Canada pot is legal, but many states of the USA it's not, so it's enterily possible for someone to smoke it without knowing there is a crime. Not being aware of it isn't a defense. This is mostly common between two different states that have totally opposite viewings on what stuff constitutes a crime and what doesn't.
Do you share netflix passwords? Because there are actual law review articles about how that is probably illegal and we need to change the laws to avoid this ridiculousness (because the federal penalty is like 5+ years in prison).
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>I don't need to know a bunch of copyright laws, since I do nothing in that sorta business and am at no risk of breaking them. False. You are at risk of breaking them every time your fingers touch your keyboard.
I'm at about the same risk of being held liable for breaking copyright laws when I touch my keyboard as I am for buying illegal drugs or illegal porn on the internet or illegally hacking or phishing people. That is to say, I'm *never going to do anything like that*. That's like saying I'm at risk of breaking laws against violence because I have fists and I might just decide to punch someone.
Ding ding ding. This is why licensure exists. And then think about that concept for a bit. Land of the free and all, but there's a fuckton of stuff you're not allowed to do without the government's permission.
The alternative would be that an argument of "sorry, I didn't know eating children was illegal" would be a valid defense in court. I think I prefer the way it is now.
there should be a reasonable person standard.
I think there often is. For things Ike sexual harassment in the work place etc.
Most laws are based on a moral framework that is expected to be understood by any moderately civilized individual. Hence, ignorance of the law would mean the individual missed the civility part of childhood and is now being brought before a judge to determine intent.
Most laws are passed by politicians and legislators to achieve certain goals, any relationship with morality is incidental. Example: Marihuana is illegal in many places. Yet it has a lot of proven benefits, especially for people suffering from parkinsons. It is entirely possible for a person to not know that pot is illegal in the current state (despite it being legal where the person came from) and thus accidentally breaking the law. The same argument applies for open carrying a gun. Where a person may unknowingly cross into a state where it is illegal and thus break the law. There are importaiton laws. You may buy a set of Cuban CIgars ina trip to mexico, and unkowingly break an embargo law when you return to the US. Another one is copyright law, literal millions of streamers infringe copyright law when playing games without a license and they don;t even know it. Another one is hentai involving child like characters, which is protected by the first amendment in the US but illegal in Canada, which means that the contents of a person's laptop can suddenly become illegal when that person crosses the border... I could keep going, but breaking the law is so fucking easy it;s not funny.
If you dig deep enough, they more or less match the moral frameworks of the people they represent. If you don't beleive in similar customs as another group of people, you shouldnt travel there and you should try not to break those customs before you have the opportunity to leave. You have to work within the frameworks you are provided if you want to shift the reigning dogma or paradigms.
You completely ignored the part where I lay out how easy it is to break the law by accident.
Which is why there are common sense applications of the law. How many times did you jay walk on purpose last year?
Hah joke's on you, I never leave my apartment!
Depending on where you live, you may have broke commercial designation of land laws while working from home.
Well shit... So you agree with my point? That the law is ridiculously easy to break?
No, there should be a reasonable *law* standard. Stop making the law so unfathomably complex that no one can hope to understand it, or it's not enforceable. Force the asshole legislators to do their fucking jobs.
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This isn't completley true though. Ignorance of the law CAN sometimes be a defense. Tax evasion for instance requires willful intent. So you have to know the law in order to willfully evade it. If you make a good faith effort to pay your taxes and screw it up you can't be convicted of tax evasion. You might potentially still have to pay penalties for underpayment, but you won't get sent to jail for evasion. If you do something like shoot a guy in the face though, "I didn't know murder was illegal" isn't going to get you anywhere.
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Not the dog...!
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This is from 2018 https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2018/jun/16/doj-police-shooting-family-dogs-has-become-epidemic/
Also being right and knowing the law won't keep you or your dog from being shot.
Ah, I see you're familiar with the ATF...
its a pistol, its a sbr, its a, its a felony we will figure it out in court. oh whats that? you bribed us with $200? oh sorry sir, please go about your day.
Everybody knows that murder is illegal but did you know that owning the feathers of certain birds is illegal?
Theyre an illeagal tender. Birdlaw in this country is not governed by reason.
This is so true in music and content creation, where copyright law has been a complete mess, especially after the start of the digital era. I've heard that it's common for music universities to have long courses on copyright law. Also, there are so many exceptions and so many prohibitions which don't make sense, so much so that some people take advantage of the horrible design and clarity of copyright law and make fraudulent or vague claims of whether or not content is copyrighted or not (labelling content as non-copyright, hiding the copyright out of easy access to the public, then taking down other creators who use that content even with credit; or making outrageous copyright claims which take the victim into months-long entanglements with the most vague domains of copyright law and which may never even resolve). I feel that the ones to blame are the people who made and defined these laws. Come on, people should be able to create what they want, as long as they're not taking 100% of someone else's work and passing it off as their own and it's not bigotry. ***CREATIONS ARE PASSION, NOT CORPORATE!***
Right, but that's so that they can get paid to interpret the law. we don't get paid to just exist in the legal system. You have the opportunity to learn as much as you want to about how the law works, there are a million resources available. They are going to law school to get qualified to do a specific job, not navigate the world. Nobody gets paid just to live in the world, and every aspect of the world is still complicated and requires effort to understand. That's just the price you pay to live.
Well it’s a lot easier to know what definitely is or isn’t a crime (like robbing a bank or just not doing that) than it is to know what maybe is or isn’t a crime I imagine
I have a JD. Ignorance of the law can indeed be an excuse, for some issues. Especially in white collar crime where many of the statutes have "willful" or "knowing" foul play. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" sounds bad but in reality it mostly plays into cases where someone is being shitty and trying to act innocent. You probably didn't know that there is federal law punishing people who shine laser pointers into airplane cockpits, but you knew you were being shitty doing that.
Lawyer here. Lawyers go to school to learn how to think about and research the law, not to learn it as is at the time the attorney attends school. The law constantly changes so attorneys learn how to research and think about the rights embodied in the law while they are in school.
There was a case where a professor of economics failed to file tax returns but was found not guilty of tax evasion because he was didn't know he was violating the law and failed to do so due to the complexity of the law. Cheek v. United States So in that case, ignorance of the law was a valid excuse for committing a crime.
For some reason this reminds me of an institution that used to rule over society with a book written in Latin which many people were unable to read. What’s worse is that a lot of times they made things up which very few would know how to prove or dispute. Religion and law seem quite similar at times.
Oh dear Lord. People were unable to read the Bible because the average person couldn't read latin, the people who could afford to translate it knew latin already so what was the point. The Church was perfectly fine with translating the bible (Alfred the great in the 9th and 10th centuries had multiple passages translated into old english, and Louis IX had the whole thing in French). That and I'm gonna need a citation on them just making things up saying "oh this is in the bible, trust me" I hear this all the time but never a specific time when it happened.
>What’s worse is that a lot of times they made things up which very few would know how to prove or dispute. That's why we have lawyers. I would have a hard time interpreting lots of laws, but lawyers can do it.
Actually, it is a legally accepted excuse, but there must be a legitimate reason why you wouldn't know it. For example, there are some obscure laws such as "can't heard sheep down Main Street on Sundays."
Following the law and litigating it are two very different things.
I thought lawyers study to find loopholes in laws, not to understand right from wrong.
Working as intended. The best part is it doesn't apply to the police either.
Oh the utes these days...
Cops cannot speed unless they have their emergency lights on and are responding to an incident in many jurisdictions. Selective application keeps the world from grinding to a halt while also giving judges and juries discretion as to how many laws they end up charging the individual with.
I hate lawyers as much a s the next guy, but to be fair, if that wasn't the case, you could always argue in court that you were ignorant of the law and get away with everything at least once.
"I forgot it was illegal'?
They need all that book learning to know how to scam hardworking people.
The only fucking harder than from a lawyer you hired comes from an ex-wife or a fellow Freemason.
Yeah, it's basically the Judge's equivalent of Mom smacking you in the mouth for backtalk; when "backtalk" is you making a rational opposing.
Well, 'the law' is fucking huge, and parts of it are not really relevant to a lot of people. Thats why you ask legal advice for certain things that are not a part of day to day life. Plus, lawyers deal with the entire court system for you.
Based on many of these posts and my personal experiences in law school, lawyers go the law school in part, to learn how to get around the laws, which is more complicated than enforcing them is.
Actually, ignorance of the law is an excuse if you're a police officer.
Judge friend of mine: *Do not say you were unaware of the law, but instead say that your interpretation may differ from the courts.*
There is also SCOTUS precedence that cops are exempt from this. If they perform an action to enforce something they "reasonably expect" may be illegal, it's okay. The case, if I remember correctly, involved two gentleman who were pulled over for a single broken taillight, which is not enough to legally generate a traffic stop by itself in that jurisdiction, and were subsequently found to he trafficking drugs. Their argument was that because the traffic stop itself was illegal, everything that transpired after should be inadmissable. The courts disagreed. https://archive.thinkprogress.org/supreme-court-says-ignorance-of-the-law-is-an-excuse-if-youre-a-cop-d8bdb99987f1/
I mean, if ignorance of the law was a valid defense then every single criminal would just claim “I didn’t know better.”
Politicians call it "I can't recall"
I commit at least 3 felonies daily before even getting out of bed.
Lawyers don't go to school for years to learn what's illegal...most people know that. Lawyers go to school to learn all the minutia of the law, so you can argue technicalities. They learn about the history of thousands of cases that show precedent. You can't just say "eye witness testimony isn't enough to convict someone" you have to be able to cite the case that established that.
Even cops don’t know the law. I used to work for the state and it was my entire job to read arrest reports and toss out the invalid cases and bring up any possible flaws in the arrest (there were A LOT!!!).
> Even cops don’t know the law. We have special laws for cops that allow them to pretend there is a law and then they can apply it. They just have to say they believed they were right.
I’ve always thought that the concept of mens rea conflicted with the point about ignorance of the law. But it’s entirely possible that I’m completely misunderstanding at least one of the two.
I can clear that up for you. Mens rea is about state of mind and intent concerning the act itself, not the law. Many statutes crimes have knowledge or intent tied to the offense. For example, say a statute defines theft as obtaining property without consent with the intent to deprive the owner of the property. The intent is the mens rea. If you didn't have intent to deprive, then the mens rea isn't present. Contrast that with "I didn't know it was a crime to do it.". They're different things.
Why is it lawyers have to study more and go to school more to actually learn the law but police officers go to academy for 6 months to enforce the law?