united-states
If ignorance of the law is no excuse, then why is it so hard to get legal advice?
<p>The principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse (US) seems reasonable - but it also seems to rely on the presumption that all laws are readily available and understandable, because otherwise the government would be requiring you to comply with something you can’t know or can’t understand.</p>
<p>I don’t believe this presumption is accurate. There are so many different sources of laws (federal, state, local, and others) that even just finding a relevant law is beyond the grasp of some people, and even if you can, many laws are written in “legalese” that can be difficult to interpret.</p>
<p>You can hire a lawyer to answer your questions, but there are two problems with this: One is that it limits legal knowledge to very wealthy people, and the other is that lawyers can be wrong, and if your lawyer gives you bad advice (e.g. you commit a crime because the lawyer said it was not a crime), this is not a defense.</p>
<p>The government doesn’t offer any official channels for legal advice, and in fact even general discussions (like StackExchange) often specifically bar legal advice because it is so difficult and risky to provide.</p>
<p>Why doesn’t the government have any obligation to provide something like a hotline where you can just call and ask if something is legal? It already provides public defenders, which seems to be an admission that the law is beyond the grasp of ordinary people - but you only get a public defender when you have already been accused of a crime.</p>
<p>If the government says, “You are responsible for knowing X, and you are responsible for complying with X,” why doesn’t the government have any obligation to tell you what X is in a way that the general public can actually use?</p>
<p>Please note that this question is not asking for legal advice. It is asking why there aren’t better sources for legal advice.</p>

<p>The concept of &quot;ignorance&quot; of laws isn't about the individual. It's about administratibility of the system.</p>
<p>The argument is that a system with a wide-ranging ignorance defense would struggle to produce results—just or otherwise. So the American system presumes knowledge of the law and then carves out narrower exceptions, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistake_of_law" rel="nofollow noreferrer">mistake of law</a>. For example, the law wasn't published, or it had been overruled.</p>
<p>Alas, the question about why there isn't a hotline belongs on another site.</p>

<p>Government-provided legal advice does sometimes exist, mainly for issues where the government is a party (tax and financial regulation). See <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/plr.asp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">private letter rulings</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-action_letter" rel="nofollow noreferrer">no-action letters</a>.</p>
