Orange County, CA | November 3, 1998 General |
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On Unser, Responsibility and LawBy Frank PerdicaroCandidate for Member, City Council; City of Fountain Valley |
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A letter to OCR responding to criticism of Bobby Unser's actions.Mon Oct 12 10:11:37 PDT 1998
On Unser, Responsibility and Law
Mr. Moser begins his castigation of Bobby Unser with the statement that ignorance of the law is not valid excuse. Is this ancient wisdom really that wise? Our country was formed around this idea, but the notion is invalid today.
The idea that every man should behave in accordance to law, even if the exact text of the law is not know, is an outgrowth of the idea of a Constitution. The US Constitution lays down a framework and and all laws flow from it. All laws are related to the simple ideas clearly stated in the Constitution, so every man has a duty to understand and obey these ideas. This is itself was a reaction to the law of kings, where edits could be issued for any reason at any time. It was impossible to know what was in the king's mind; it was not possible to behave according to any know set of rules; one's life and liberty were always in danger.
Try and draw a connection to today. Take some time and venture down to the Orange County Law Library in downtown Santa Ana. Read the laws so ignorance REALLY cannot be an excuse. Start with the regulations and ordinances for you city. This is probably a thick book, but one that could be finished in a day. Then start on the laws of the State of California. The text of the laws occupies about fifty linear feet of shelf space. Given enough coffee, you might get through the laws in a month.
But the text of the laws is only part of it. The true nature of law is shown in case law. Case law is the set of legal decisions made on the basis of the text of the law, and is the day-to-day law use in the courtroom. The case law for the State of California occupies about one thousand linear feet of shelf space. This will take you a year to read.
We all know the US Government has grown large in the past few decades. The size and complexity of the government can only be comprehended by reading the laws, and regulations that have the effect of law, that rule our lives every day. Unfortunately, it would take about a century to read the laws and regulations now in effect, so any person actually attempting to understand the law would be dead before he finished.
Ignorance of the law is an excuse, because it is fundamentally impossible to know the law. This was not always the case, but it certainly is the case today.
We have reached the point foreseen by James Madison when he wrote
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by
Bobby Unser is acting in the best of American traditions, taking personal risk to protest an unjust, irrational and vile situation. |
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