[thoughtful synthetic music plays for 15 seconds and fades to background volume]
Salma Farhat: Hello, everyone, I am your host, Salma, and today, we are going to be exploring a legal principle that affects all of us, even if you've never stepped foot inside a courtroom. It is the principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse. In other words, if you break a law, even one that you didn't know existed, you can still be held responsible. That makes sense in theory-- after all, the law is supposed to apply equally to everyone, but in practice, not everyone has equal access to legal information. Some laws are buried under layers of complex legal jargon. Others change quietly, without much notice, and for many people, especially those from marginalized communities, there's often no real opportunity to learn what the law even is.
And here's where things get tricky. Courts have, in rare cases, allowed ignorance of the law to serve as a valid defense. Take Lambert v. California. This was a Supreme Court case where a woman was arrested for failing to register as a convicted felon after moving to Los Angeles. This was a requirement under a city law. She had no idea that this law existed, and the Court ruled in her favor, deciding that under this specific circumstance, prosecuting her would be unjust. So why was she an exception? Well, courts have carved out a narrow path-- ignorance of the law can be a valid defense only when the person cannot reasonably have been expected to know about the law. That is the standard, and it helps frame how courts decide when someone should be held responsible and when it is unreasonable to expect them to have known a law even existed. Today, we are going to trace how this principle has evolved, look at landmark cases and test its limits and ask, “How do courts balance fairness with the need to uphold justice?” Later in the episode, I'll be joined by Sophia Stoute, a Columbia student and the creator of Legal Aid, an AI-powered tool that helps everyday people understand their legal rights. We will dive into how technology can bridge the gap between legal systems and public understanding, because here's the truth, laws can only be followed if they are understood.
So how do we get from legal compliance to real understanding? Let's first unpack the deeper legal reasoning behind the phrase ignorance of the law is no excuse. This principle has been embedded in legal frameworks for centuries, and its main purpose is to maintain order and predictability in the legal system. If people could escape liability just by claiming that they did not know that a law existed, the system would fall apart. The law would become ambiguous, subjective, and unenforceable. So the default position is that the law applies to everyone, whether they know about it or not. But there are limited exceptions. Courts have held that in very specific circumstances, it is reasonable to expect someone to know a law, particularly when the law is ambiguous, obscure, or when the conduct in question is passive rather than active.
Let's return back to the Lambert v. California case I was talking about earlier. The facts are straightforward but important. Lambert, a convicted felon, moved to Los Angeles without realizing she was legally required to register with the police within five days of arriving. She wasn't hiding anything. She simply did not know that this rule existed. The law wasn't publicized, and it was not something that the average person would be expected to know. The Supreme Court ruled in her favor, emphasizing that when conduct is purely passive, meaning it is based on inaction, rather than doing something actively wrong, and the law is not clearly posted or intuitive, punishing someone for non compliance could violate their right to due process. This was one of the rare times that ignorance of the law was successfully used as defense. But it is critical to understand that Lambert was the exception to the rule. The decision did not throw out the principle, but it clarified his boundaries.
Contrast this with United States v. Freed in 1971. This was a case involving the possession of unregistered hand grenades. The defendant claimed that he did not know they had to be registered. The court was not so sympathetic about this, because grenades are obviously dangerous. The court ruled that the defendant should have expected they were heavily regulated, even if they did not know that there was an exact law. This case illustrates a key difference, if the conduct is clearly dangerous or unusual, like possessing explosives or illegal drugs. Courts assume you should know the law applies, or some sort of law applies. But when the behavior is passive and the legal duty is not so clear or obvious, there may be grounds for exception. The key legal question then becomes, would a reasonable person, in this situation, have known or expected that the law applied.
There's also another important distinction-- ignorance of the law is not the same as a mistake of fact. The law does not sometimes allow for a mistake of fact. For instance, if someone believes that they are taking back their own property but it turns out to belong to someone else, they might argue that they made a factual mistake. But not knowing the law, like being unaware that rainwater collection is illegal in some places, usually will not hold up in court. All of this raises a major question, if people are expected to follow the law, but many laws are confusing, ever changing and buried in weird places, how are they supposed to know what to follow? Legal codes span local, state and federal jurisdictions. Some rules like speed limits or theft laws are common knowledge, but others involving business licenses, environmental restrictions, or city specific ordinances are often hidden from public view, which brings us to the real world side of this conversation.
Today, I am joined by Sophia Stoute, a student at Columbia University and the founder of Legal Aid, an innovative platform using AI to help people understand their legal rights. What makes legal aid so impactful is that it translates complex legal language into plain, everyday terms, empowering people to understand their rights before they ever step foot in a courtroom. It's a tool that meets people where they are, offering them guidance, clarity and a way to take the first step in navigating the legal system.
[music fades to full volume, plays for twenty seconds, and fades to background]
Farhat: Sophia, thank you so much for joining me today.
Sophia Stoute: Of course, thank you for having me.
Farhat: So let's start at the beginning. What inspired you to create Legal Aid?
Stoute: What inspired me to create Legal Aid is bearing witness to the disenfranchisement of Black and Hispanic people within the legal system, especially in America. Growing up with half of my family very economically well off and the other half living not-so economically well off, I saw the difference in each side of my family's access to legal resources, educational resources, and the ease with which they went through the legal system, whether it be a minor traffic infraction or a larger court case, especially my parents fought like not divorced, but they had, like, a Separation Agreement when I was, like, eight or nine years old, and just seeing my dad, who had a lot of lawyers and resources, and who has used the law to benefit his company and to benefit more from what the law can provide, and my mom on the other side, who has never even really been in a courtroom before. That example to show that they had differing levels of understanding given their economic opportunities.
Farhat: Well, thank you for sharing that origin story. So now I'd love for you to talk us through what Legal Aid actually does and how that platform helps people understand the law in simple terms.
Stoute: Of course. So Legal Aid is coming out in April, actually, which is super exciting. And the way this app is going to function is we're gonna have multiple different tabs within the app. So one of, to my knowledge, I think one of the most attractive features would be the AI chat bot, which reminisces to chatgpt, in the sense where you can ask any kind of legal question and receive a response in seconds with a very broken down answer and very simple terminology, because we believe in making legal knowledge accessible, rather than over complicating it, so people feel like they can't really understand what's going on and just consult with a lawyer outside of the AI chat bot. We have mental health resources because we also acknowledge that in communities that we're trying to provide legal awareness to also suffer disproportionately from a lack of representation when it comes to mental health awareness. We also are going to have different areas within the app, where users can contact low cost attorneys, can read more about the attorneys that courts have appointed in the past and the jobs that they've done and that they've been thorough, etc. And lastly, a way that users can be regularly updated on any new legal information or cases that would affect precedent in their area.
Farhat: That's really helpful to hear. I think a lot of people feel overwhelmed by the legal system and just don't know where to begin. How do you see Legal Aid helping people, or how do you see it being used?
Stoute: So I know for myself there, I'm a pre-law student, but there's always, you know, things to learn that I might not be aware of, especially not going to law school yet. And I think because the law impacts people every day in ways they may not even notice, it's important that there's a way that people can build an understanding without having to study law at a law school or pre-law at an illustrious school like this. So I think the way I would use it is, if I'm unaware in a situation and I'm with a police officer, or whatever it may be, I can simply type in a question and get a very detailed response. Or I see Legal Aid being used in active situations where people might have been, you know, stopped by police in a train station. Maybe they jumped a turnstile. Maybe they are, you know, in possession of something illegal, and they don't know what their rights are in that moment. Legal Aid does have a feature where you can just click “Record” and it'll create a transcription of your conversation and interject where you can, you know, ask like, assert your rights and give you advice on how to handle that situation with more ease, without being confused of what you can can't do.
I also think our Instagram is a great way for people to learn about these things as well. We are debunking, you know, common legal misconceptions, explaining keywords and things like that that a lot of people are just unaware of. So I think Legal Aid can help people in a variety of ways. For me, I know I'll use the chatbot most, but even for people that are in neighborhoods where they really don't know what's going on. And I'm saying I'm coming from a perspective where I have some idea of how the legal system works, and I'm actively trying to understand it, but there are many people who don't want to understand it, who have been impacted by the legal system over the course of generations and been disenfranchised, so they have no trust in it. So an app like this will allow them to understand it better and see how they can use a lot to their advantage as well.
Farhat: That is really powerful. It really shows how having the right information at the right time can make a huge difference. Of course, building something like this is not easy at all. What challenges have you faced while developing this app, especially when it comes to simplifying such complex and technical language?
Stoute: Absolutely. So there are really two core teams that are working alongside each other and developing this app: the legal side of things and the tech side of things. Me, personally, I'm not very well versed in technology-related things, but I do have a wonderful friend of mine, Zoe, who also goes to Columbia, and she works with Tech for Social Good, and they are doing the coding for this app, as well as some elements of design. But when it comes to the part that I'm more familiar with, the legal side of things, and having students here who are working diligently to do research, we have freshmen ranging to seniors that are all dedicating their time to Legal Aid. And the most important thing that we've been doing when researching is basically teaching the AI how to describe these issues like a real human conversation.
So when I was guiding students through how to research these legal topics, because, I also, I work at a law firm, so a lot of the stuff I have to do is more on the technical side, you know, talking about different statutes and breaking down the language in the same type of language that, like certain laws are written in. And I was trying to and I think we did a great job in having this research come across in like a very low stakes conversation where you can explain it to someone who has no prior knowledge and by developing I mean, we have over 100 pages of typed out research by students at Columbia, and all of it is in a language where anyone could understand it without any prior knowledge. So if, if you even ask questions Legal Aid where you're using a term that might not be common knowledge, it'll also give you a definition before we even get into the explanation, because we truly believe that there should be no impediments to someone's understanding other than accessibility, and this is bridging the gap between that and giving people the access that they've needed for a very long time.
And I think AI is a really powerful tool in helping and empowering communities. However, it can also be a detriment to some communities, and looking at, you know, the environmental factors that AI plays a role in and things of that nature. So when considering that, I thought it was important to make sure that we're not only using AI to fuel companies like Meta and other very large industrial companies, but instead using it to empower everyday citizens and for free, at that.
Farhat: That makes a lot of sense. Legal language is so specific, and translating it without losing meaning must be incredibly hard, but what you have built clearly fills a real gap. Looking ahead, I want to end up with a big picture question. How do you see technology like Legal Aid changing the future of legal education?
Stoute: Sure, I think this goes back and connects to your previous question about accessibility. I think especially in the United States, having a real understanding of the topic has been pre-determined on someone's acceptance into a college or a law school or a doctorate program or anything of that nature. However, when the law and similar mechanisms work against and for people every day, it's important that people can understand what's precedent? What are the things that are--that the law is using to base certain situations and results off of? People don't really understand that.
The majority of people don't. It's the people who go out of their way to say, “Okay, I want to study pre-law. I want to study law at this school.” But then when we take a step back and we look at who are the majority of people who are being accepted into these types of institutions, who are-- who have their parents to look up to and say, you know, my dad was a lawyer, so now I want to be a lawyer-- that is not black and Hispanic people for the majority of the time. It's not, and we have been, you know, not allowed to enter those spaces for a very long time, and it's in the 20th century that Black people could become lawyers, could become judges, could go to law school. And that's a very large 300 year gap of a lack of legal knowledge, and it's been mostly in the hands of white people and who have been the lawyers, who have been the judge, who have been the jury, who have been everything.
So Black and Hispanic people do have a massive distrust in the legal system because they've never really had the opportunity to understand it and to change it. Because for a long time, it legalized slavery, it legalized disenfranchisement, segregation, Jim Crow, all of these things that we're targeting Black and Hispanic people. So now we're in the 21st Century, and we're claiming that America is a meritocracy, that America promotes freedom and equality, then it's important that someone's taking steps to make sure that these promises don't go broke.
Farhat: Sophia, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your work with us. It is clear that platforms like Legal Aid won't replace lawyers, but they can serve as a powerful bridge by helping people better understand their rights and empowering them to take the next step. So thank you so much for being here and sharing all this amazing information. And I for sure, will be using Legal Aid in the future, and I know a lot of people will be also.
Stoute: Thank you so much for having me.
[music fades to full volume, plays for ten seconds, and fades to background]
Farhat: Thank you for tuning in. Today, we have explored a principle that sits at the heart of our legal system, that ignorance of the law is no excuse. While this rule helps ensure consistency and accountability, we have also seen that the law recognizes very narrow exceptions, especially when a person has no reasonable way of knowing their legal obligations. Our discussion today, including the insights from Sophia Stoute, highlight the importance of making legal information more accessible and easier to understand. Tools that translate legal language into plain and simple terms play a really important role in helping people know their rights and responsibilities under the law. Understanding the law is not just for lawyers, but something everyone deserves to know, because before laws can be followed, they have to be known. Thank you again for listening with me today. We'll see you next time as we continue to explore the legal principles that shape our everyday lives.
[music plays for twenty seconds at full volume and fades out]
Edited by Sofia Lebitasy