The authority has a hierarchical structure constituted at the national, state, and district levels. One of the major functions of these legal services authorities is organizing legal literacy and legal awareness programs in collaboration with NGOs. In , National Legal Literacy Mission was launched with the motto 'from ignorance to legal empowerment,' to educate minority communities, especially women and children.
The target group under the mission included all eligible individuals mentioned in Section 12 of the Legal Services Authority Act, which includes the most indigent, distraught, vulnerable, and victimised persons such as women and children belonging to SC, ST, OBC, minority communities or belonging to tribal areas, etc.
The mission also aims at simplifying the language of the law. But the mission has not been very successful as it was not allocated separate funds. NALSA has numerous programs that aim to achieve legal literacy and promote legal awareness, such as setting up Legal Literacy Clubs at schools and colleges.
The clubs work on promoting awareness about legal rights, duties, and obligations among the student community. Campaigns organized by the clubs cover general issues such as ragging, female foeticide, child marriage, right to education, domestic violence, laws against human trafficking, sexual harassment, rape, etc.
State Legal Services Authority across India have come up with various initiatives for the cause. The Himanchal Pradesh LSA has successfully included chapters in school books on rights and duties, the Chandigarh LSA regularly organises street plays and workshops, the Delhi LSA has taken various initiatives such as radio programs, movie documentary and publishing advertisements in books and magazines, etc. There is no straight jacket model. The authority adopts various methods depending upon the people in a particular region.
Initiatives like NLLM by the government and workshops by NGOs have tried to orient citizens towards increased legal literacy but the data on their effectiveness is not optimistic. A policy initiative based on the principle of cooperative federalism should be taken to ensure that legal literacy campaigns are customised according the needs of each community.
However, in some limited circumstances, ignorance of the law can be an excuse. For example, if there was not public notice about a law, then you could truly be said to be ignorant of the law in question. This may be particularly true if the law is unusual and criminalizes behavior that is lawful elsewhere. Ignorance of the law may also be an excuse for specific intent crimes. Some crimes require you to act willfully, or intentionally. There are thousands of rules framed by the executive arm i.
There are customary laws and personal laws like Mohammaden law etc. There are hundreds and thousands of notifications and circulars which are binding on various parties.
Above all we have number of judge made law derived from various court decisions which as everybody knows keeps on changing. Even the Government itself is not aware of the number of laws that are in operation and force in this country. Some of the laws like Companies Act, contains sections and in addition to those vast army of sections there are number of rules regulations, notifications, circulars etc are also there. It is humanly impossible to remember much less understand this army of laws stacked in front of the citizens.
Better not to say anything about illiterates or those who cannot understand English or Hindi the laws are framed in India in English and Hindi with translations in vernacular languages. Viewed thus, there is a good justification for dilution of this rule.
In fact courts in India , England and elsewhere refused to apply the maxim bluntly so as to render justice and to provide relief wherever it was found to be due applying the principles of justice, equity and good conscience. Every person is presumed to be aware of the law? But on a closer analysis it can be seen that both statements are not one and the same.
There is absolutely no justification for the presumption that everybody is aware of all the laws in operation. It is a ridiculous presumption if not an arbitrary one.
If everybody knows the law, then what is the necessity for the courts? If everybody knows the law then there is no need for consulting an advocate or a solicitor. Is it not because the High Court was ignorant of the law? If High court was aware of the law then why Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the High court? Thus it is crystal clear that High court was ignorant of the law. It is also equally possible that the Supreme Court itself may over rule or reverse its own decision and then it is quite clear that the Supreme Court was ignorant of the law while deciding the case at the first instance.
Over a hundred and thirty years ago, Maula J. Falkner [] 2 CB "There is no presumption in this country that every person knows the law: it would be contrary to common sense and reason if it were so. Scrutton L. It was also the accepted position that the rule ignorance of law does not excuse cannot be pleaded to escape the consequences of criminal law, yet the law can take notice of the existence of doubtful point of law about which a person may be ignorant. According to Lord Westbury in Cooper v.
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