Unexcused Reasonable Mistakes: Can the Case for Not Excusing Mistakes of Law Be Supported By the Case for Not Excusing Mistakes of Morality?

Abstract

Legal systems routinely deny excuses for reasonable mistakes of law, a practice frequently challenged by the parity thesis, which holds that blameless legal ignorance should excuse just as blameless nonmoral ignorance does. One promising defense of this doctrine attempts to assimilate legal ignorance to moral ignorance, drawing on quality-of-will accounts wherein blameless moral ignorance fails to excuse because it constitutes or reveals a failure to care adequately about what is morally significant. However, this normative rationale does not extend across legal ignorance broadly. While individuals acting under blameless moral ignorance—or blameless legal ignorance concerning mala in se offenses—often display an objectionable lack of moral concern, agents who commit blameless legal mistakes regarding mala prohibita offenses typically do not. Even under the assumption of a general pro tanto moral obligation to obey legitimate law, epistemically faultless ignorance of a regulatory statute does not reveal a blameworthy worldview or an indifference to morally relevant considerations. Consequently, the strict-liability approach applied to moral ignorance cannot provide a general justification for denying excuses for mistakes of law, leaving the doctrine unjustified for typical mala prohibita violations where parity with nonmoral factual ignorance should prevail. – AI-generated abstract.