Timeline for Can someone be prosecuted for something that was legal when they did it?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
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| Mar 21, 2023 at 14:42 | comment | added | supercat | @jwenting: It's true that the government deliberately seeks to undermine many of the purposes for which juries exist, but I suspect that many jurors who would routinely perform the same act of which the defendant stands accused would be unwilling to be so hypocritical as to convict the defendant for that same action. | |
| Mar 21, 2023 at 7:44 | comment | added | jwenting | @supercat most legal systems have no jury system. And even if there is (like in the US) it's quite common for juries to stick to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law, or for people to be punished for technicalities through e.g. the FDA or FCC where no jury trial is ever conducted. | |
| Mar 20, 2023 at 15:57 | comment | added | supercat | @jwenting: A just legal system will distinguish between ignorance of a law which would be known to any reasonable person, versus ignorance of a law which nobody knows. One of the legitimate functions of jury notification is protection of a defendant against prosecution for doing something which the jurors all thought was legal (and may well have done themselves). | |
| Mar 20, 2023 at 8:42 | comment | added | jwenting | @DewiMorgan according to the law, we are. "ignorance of the law is no excuse" | |
| Mar 19, 2023 at 22:54 | comment | added | Dewi Morgan | "An individual must ideally be able to determine whether an action is legal or not, at the time they want to commit it." I love this idea, and I wish we lived in that ideal world where such things were possible. | |
| Mar 19, 2023 at 12:49 | comment | added | Trish | @JFabianMeier That stance was abandoned several years before the reunification. | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 20:28 | comment | added | Acccumulation | @supercat Laws generally include mens rea, and in that case the mens rea would have been formed prior to the ratification. Also, it's very rare for a law to apply immediately after its ratification. Often apply starting Jan 1 of the year after its ratification. | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 19:39 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @supercat I'm not sure that the law considers race conditions ;-) | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 19:38 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @JFabianMeier The quoted court decision discusses that but I didn't read it in its entirety. | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 19:30 | comment | added | J Fabian Meier | Wasn't the official opinion in Western Germany that the territory and population of the GDR are actually part of Germany, but not under (Western) German control? The GDR was never really acknowledged as a foreign country. So one could argue that the Grundgesetz was already law in the whole of Germany, it was just impossible to enforce it in Eastern Germany. | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 19:20 | vote | accept | user1867437 | ||
| Mar 18, 2023 at 18:29 | comment | added | supercat | Do the principles imply lenity in cases where a person performs some action which will make some later action unavoidable, and the later action is without notice prohibited after the action making it inevitable, but before it is actually performed? For example: a new law which, effectively immediately, forbids skydivers from landing in a certain field, is ratified just after a skydiver has jumped from an airplane over that field. Would the fact that the landing would have been legal at the time the person jumped be a sound legal defense? | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 11:08 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @Stef But rarely does the new government try to adhere as scrupulously to legal standards as in the Nuremberg trials and the GDR trials. | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 10:31 | comment | added | Stef | The GDR example is one of many: whenever there is a revolution or a big change in government, people tend to be judged for the acts they committed prior to the change. | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 10:01 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 18, 2023 at 9:58 | comment | added | Trish | in some way, Radbruch did formulate the essence of Art. 1 GG: Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. before the people met to draft it. | |
| Mar 18, 2023 at 9:53 | history | answered | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |