Ignorance of the Law is No Defence
Copyright © 2021 By Yusuf Shehu Usman
Away from security issues, I think that the axiom which states that ignorance of the “law is not a defence” needs to be more critically interrogated and redefined to bring it in consonance with common sense and a fair sense of justice, equity, and good conscience.
As the axiom is couched, it appears to be too presumptuous and dangerously generalised to fit into the realities of our times. It places a burden or imputes on the citizens the onerous responsibility to know every law or regulation passed by the legislature.
It is unfair, as it impracticable in real life for even the lawyers who make a living out of practising the law or even the legislators who enact them for the guidance of the society, to claim or ascribe to themselves knowledge of all the laws in the statute books.
I reckon that it is a fact that even God who created us and laid down spiritual laws to regulate our affairs, does not punish anyone for violating His laws unless and until He sends messengers to expound the laws and bring them to the knowledge and awareness of people whose affairs the law is intended to regulate. It is a trite fact that God does not punish violaters of the law until the law has been brought to their knowledge.
I also remember a statement that is credited to Chief Justice Abbott: “God forbid that it should be imagined, that an attorney, or a counsel, or even a judge, is bound to know all the law.”
Therefore, if even lawyers are not in expected to know all the laws, how reasonable is it to assume that non-lawyers (members of the public) should know all the laws?
Where would we place the illiterate members of our society (and they are in the majority in some societies) who cannot even read the law, let alone understand its purport?
Is it fair, just, or reasonable to impute to them the knowledge of something they are incapable of understanding?
I think this axiom should not be used as an object of injustice and oppression of members of the society.
Editor’s Note
Edited by Dr. Leesi Ebenezer Mitee
Publisher & Editor-in-chief, Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information Advocacy website
Dr. Leesi Ebenezer Mitee is an Associate Professor of Law. He holds a multidisciplinary PhD in international human rights law, legal information technology (aspects of legal informatics), indigenous customary law, and indigenous rights and LLM in transborder comparative analysis of free access to public legal information. He is a former legal research national consultant to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on the 1998 PCASED project that provided the juridical foundations for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 1998 Moratorium which culminated in a regional multilateral treaty: ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons, their Ammunition and other Related Matters 2006. He devised the <.officiallaws) official public legal information generic top-level domain (gTLD) system for easy identification of the reliable versions of the laws published online worldwide; developed the system of nationally networked one-stop official public legal information websites (the NOPLIW system) for the optimal findability and management of online law databases; invented the human rights-based public access-adequate huricompatisation model of ascertainment of indigenous customary law (huricompatisation); formulated the new human rights-advocacy approach (NHRAA) that consists of a set of ten onerous criteria for the formal universal recognition of new human rights; and pioneered the global advocacy of the formal universal recognition of the right of free access to public legal information as a substantive or stand-alone human right in 2017 (https://publiclegalinformation.com). His New Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information Book Series consists of 22 (twenty-two) modern academic article-style independent but interconnected chapters of the following four books:
Developments in Human Rights Law and the Proposed Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information: The New Human Rights-Advocacy Approach and the Ten Criteria for the Formal Recognition of New Human Rights (Volume 1) — ISBN 9789083108520 (eBook) and 9789083108506 (paperback);
The New Human Rights-Based Huricompatisation Model of Ascertainment of Indigenous Customary Law: Strategies for Adequate Local and Global Public Access (Volume 2) — ISBN 9789083108568 (eBook) and 9789083108544 (paperback);
Innovative Technological Mechanisms for Adequate Web-Based Access to National and Global Public Legal Information (Volume 3) — ISBN 9789083108513 (eBook) and 9789083108582 (paperback); and
A Model Empirical Study of the Current State of Governmental Provision of Free Access to Nigerian Public Legal Information (Volume 4) — ISBN 9789083108551 (eBook) and 9789083108537 (paperback).
The Human Right of Free Access to Public Legal Information Advocacy (HURAPLA) website (https://publiclegalinformation.com) contains details of the availability of these books and valuable legal information resources.
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