Very often, especially from lawyers, you can hear the following phrase: "Ignorance of the laws does not exempt one from responsibility." However, oddly enough, not a single normative act contains this truth, including the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which, as you know, is the only source of criminal law. Logically, the question arises: why ignorance of the laws can not exempt from responsibility?
From a legal point of view, it is rather difficult to answer this question. Indeed, not a single federal law speaks about this. And there is no documentary confirmation of such a saying, which confuses many and makes them look for various excuses in their direction. There is a law - there is responsibility for a committed violation or crime. There can be no other options - any lawyer will tell a person, and he will be absolutely right. Therefore, it is better to look at the question posed from a different angle and try to answer it from a moral point of view. To begin with, think about how it is possible to test exactly ignorance of the law? A device that would determine human knowledge has not yet been invented. Therefore, to the question "Do you know or not?" in a situation with the law, you can easily get the answer "No" and not be able to contradict it. Of course, any offender could respond in this way and absolve himself of all responsibility. It would be possible to bring charges against him only in case of a repeated violation, since here a negative answer to the question of knowledge of the law or article of the law would definitely be a lie. However, will society agree with such a policy? Of course not. That is why the moral was adopted that a person cannot be released from responsibility for violation even if he does not know the laws. However, there is another problem. State laws of the Russian Federation are constantly changing, and sometimes quite dramatically and quickly. In this connection, even decent citizens can break the law without knowing it. Here, the problem is reflected a little from the other side, and some citizens may really disagree with the above truth. Russian laws must be fully communicated to residents in order to ensure that the state initially fulfills its duty to notify the population of the new regulations. In this case, prosecutors may refer to a specific publication of the law to explain the reason why the accused cannot be exempted from liability of any order.
