Who is supposed to teach the law to the citizens? As I understand, in general, not knowing the law does not excuse violating it. That should apply to most if not all jurisdictions in most cases with very few exceptions. From personal experience, never in my life has school, family or anyone ever actually taught me any laws or showed me where I could consult them myself, and I have already reached legal age a couple of years ago. So my question is, who, by law or morality, is supposed to teach citizens the law so that they can be aware and abide by it? Answers can be generalized to include most jurisdictions or be specific.
The answer from @user6726 is a good one. But, I'd like to add to it by pointing out that the body of law applicable to an individual is usually much, much smaller than the entire body of law. I'm a lawyer who has been in private practice for almost 25 years with an extremely diverse practice compared to the average lawyer, and I've never even looked at perhaps 80% of the laws on the books in the states where I practice, and even less elsewhere. By statutory and regulatory volume, the vast majority of statutory and regulatory law is applicable to either the internal operations of government, or to the way in which regulated industries and business transactions are conducted. And, it is customary for people in situations in all of those situations to have professional intermediaries such as lawyers, realtors, brokers, architects, general contractors, accountants, tax preparers, and consultants to assist them in complying. Some of the more technical areas encountered by average people (e.g. traffic laws) are areas in which training is mandated before you can get a driver's license. Many other areas of occupational and industry regulations are similarly distinguished by having a licensing requirement to make sure that everyone involved knows that a new body of law applies to them. You only need to know about nuclear power plant regulations, for example, if you build a nuclear power plant and will soon learn if you try to do so that you need a license to do that. Even within areas of law that have broad applicability like tax law and criminal law, a lot of the law has only narrow application. For example, most people don't need to know the rules for determining the taxable income of a life insurance company, or the criminal laws pertaining to people who have security clearances to review top secret national security information. The body of &quot;private law&quot; governing the rights of individuals vis-a-vis other private individuals, and of criminal law that an ordinary person is in a position to violate, is very modest. And much of the law in this area is devoted to determining how serious an offense is and what the penalty should be, and what law enforcement is allowed to do in order to investigate these violations, and not to what is legal and illegal in some regard. For example, intentionally, recklessly or negligently offensively touching or causing injury to someone else's property or person, is almost always either a crime and/or a civil wrong called a tort for which you can be sued. Some versions of this conduct are more serious (e.g. rape or murder), some are less serious (e.g. pinching someone on Saint Patrick's Day for not wearing green). But the overriding concept, once you strip away the details, is pretty simple. Likewise, damaging or taking property that isn't yours, intentionally, recklessly or negligently, is almost always either a crime and/or a civil wrong called a tort for which you can be sued. Add the notion that you have to honor your promises in most circumstances and shouldn't lie or deceive in most circumstances, you have to follow authoritative signs and directions from legal authorities, and you have to figure out if you owe income taxes or not each year with professional help, if necessary, and you are well on your way to knowing what you need to know to obey the law. Even within &quot;private law&quot; there are lots of areas like patent law, product liability law, and oil and gas property rights, that the average person doesn't need to know. Knowing that if you are injured by someone else you should think about talking to a lawyer is usually good enough. These bare bones may prevent you from doing things that are legal close to the boundaries of what is allowed sometimes, but having standards higher than the bare legal minimum is rarely a deep impediment to living a decent life. It should also be enough to let you have some intuition that you are in a gray area and need to confer if you aren't sure if something is illegal or not. There are more complicated areas that many average individuals do have to deal with to some extent. The law governing privacy, copyright and speech comes to mind, for example. But, you can go a very long way on some very basic principles. Most law that applies to ordinary people flows from simple moral intuition.
No For the same reason that requiring a licence to drive might, in some circumstances, result in harm to a person who cannot drive because they don’t have a licence. The city (or any government) has legislative immunity for the laws they put in place even if those laws have negative consequences to some people. All laws have negative consequences to some people, for example, laws against theft are extremely prejudicial to thieves. Similarly, the executive is immune for exercising their discretion in the enforcement of the law. This is the basis of the police not having a general duty to protect. However, police have a specific duty to protect when they have taken an individual into their care and control.
This happened recently in Washington state, when the state Supreme Court ordered the state government to comply with a constitutional funding mandate (McCleary v. Washington, 2012). The state did not comply for 6 years and was fined ($100,000 per day) for 3 years. I don't recall that the state paid a penny, and the courts did not demand payment of fines for that period. Public opinion did not have any obvious effect, but you could take this to Politics SE to get a lot of opinions as to whether public opinion mattered. The federal government can't get involved, unless they (the federal government) first make a federal issue out of it, perhaps because of some law suit. Power of enforcement is essential non-existent, given a sufficiently non-cooperative state government. I should point out that the court's order was a bit vague, that is, it was not &quot;release Smith from custody instantly&quot;, it required the government to act to the satisfaction of the court.
A teacher could not instruct students in how to build explosives for use in Federal crimes: It shall be unlawful for any person to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction [...] with the intent that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence (source) This Federal statute creates a law preventing the teaching (in any context, including schools) of bombmaking for the purpose of committing a federal crime. So &quot;bombmaking&quot; is one subject that cannot be taught, although I don't think that there have been any prosecutions of regular K12 teachers under this law.
He has this phrased like it's the ability to decide which laws you follow, and that it's an ability being withheld from the general public (although I seriously doubt that at least the former is the case). This is yet another false claim made by "freemen" or those who claim "common law defences". Notice of Understanding has no legal meaning unless the context demands that it evidences a meeting of the minds for the purposes of contract formation. It is a well-settled principle of common law that in order to be bound by a contract, there must be an agreement. Put simply, I cannot bind someone simply by sending them a Notice unless it is a right conferred on me by some earlier statute or legislation, or legally binding agreement. I tried searching for a solid definition, but all I could find was people/organization's Notice of Understanding and Intent and Claim of Rights. The reason you've found nothing official about the terms Notice of Understanding and Intent and Claim of Rights is that there is nothing official or legal about those terms. They are ordinary terms with ordinary meaning being bastardised by deluded people who believe they can fine the government and refuse to be bound by the law of the land. Of course, none of this holds up. What is the purpose of declaring your Notice of Understanding and Intent and Claim of Rights? It might make you feel better, even though it has no legal, practical or other effect.
The defense lawyer has the duty to do the best for his client. The client will be convicted if he or she is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If the lawyer can create a reasonable doubt and manages to free his client then he has done a good job. So yes, if the lawyer knows that some other person might have committed the crime, to the degree that it creates reasonable doubt, then the lawyer must raise this. Of course if it turns out that there is just some phantasist making wild accusations, that might not be helpful.
Maybe I'm reading Walsh wrong, but it seems to me to be saying that Stout might apply in some cases, but it doesn't in that specific case. I think you are indeed reading it wrong. In the Walsh case, the court says: We have not had occasion to decide the question up to this time, but now that it is presented, we not only reiterate the doubt which we expressed in the McAlpin case (supra), but we think that the question of the defendant's negligence was erroneously submitted to the jury in the Stout case, and that we ought not to follow it as a precedent. It's clearly repudiating Stout here, and not just as it applies to that case. It literally says they think it should not be followed as precedent.
That book provides advice on legal writing; it is not a source of rules for legal writing. Rather than repeatedly identifying themselves using their full name, parties customarily refer to themselves in the third person, e.g., &quot;The defendant refused to waive his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.&quot; In practice, though, pro se litigants regularly refer to themselves in the first person, and there is no formal consequence for this.