Governments see that if ignorance of the law were allowed to excuse a man for any act whatever, it must excuse him for transgressing all statutes whatsoever, which he himself thinks inconsistent with his rights and liberties.
Spooner warns that allowing ignorance of the law as an excuse could undermine all legal statutes.
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The answer is, that they are as reliable for that purpose as are the majority; they are as much presumed to have associated, and are as likely to have associated, for that object, as are the majority; and they have as much interest in such…
It would also be making them consent to what they regard as the destruction of their own rights.
From the sale of that justice which every citizen has a right to demand, it was an easy transition to withhold or deny it.
Yet the codes of the most celebrated kings are very small, and were little more than compilations of immemorial customs.