PHL370H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Mens Rea, Justice As Fairness
Document Summary
Ignorance of the law shouldn"t get you off the hook. We have to distinguish ignorance of the law that is reasonable and not reasonable. This view of reasonableness seems unfair, because you"re holding people accountable while ignoring individual circumstances. However there is difficulties in applying the historical views such that it would be challenging to get an individuals history. It is also hard to base punishment on how good of a job someone did in finding a right answer, but we need to know how high the stakes were for the individuals. Treat mistake of law as ignorant of fact; model them the same way. In terms of its implications of which you did an offence there is no general justification or excuse to ignorance. So the way in which ignorance matters is that in many ways, being ignorant of something means you didn"t commit the offence in the first place.
