Ignorantia Facti Excusat: Legal Liability and the Intercultural Significance of Greimas’ ‘‘Contrat de Ve´ridition’’
RICCA, Mario - Personal Name
This essay addresses the relationships between prescription and
description in legal rules. The analysis will focus on the culture-laden connotations
of factual categories implied in all legal sentences and/or provisions. This investigation
is spurred by the need to assess the impact of cultural difference in people’s
understanding of legal imperatives and, symmetrically, how that impact is to be
considered in the application of law. Differences in ways of categorizing the world
could position the cultural pre-understanding required by law, and the pluralism
recognized and protected by constitutional principles and human/fundamental rights
discourse, at a crossroads. Hence, even when we find an illegitimacy or an ignorance
about what legal rules do not explicitly state but instead implicitly presuppose,
this does not exclude that behind that ignorance there may be something worthy of
legal protection. A question emerges: is it legitimate and reasonable to consider the
ignorantia facti resulting from differing ways of categorizing the factual world as
automatically and uncritically subject to the principle ignoratia legis non excusat?
The essay continues with an assessment of the possible consequences of ignorantia
facti in the administration of justice in multicultural societies and migration contexts.
For this purpose, the opportunity for an intercultural use of law—including
within national law—will be considered as a means of avoiding the discriminatory
application of ignorantia facti. This topic will be addressed by leveraging both
semiotic and cultural-anthropological analytical tools, including the well-known
greimasien ‘‘contrat de ve´ridiction’’.
description in legal rules. The analysis will focus on the culture-laden connotations
of factual categories implied in all legal sentences and/or provisions. This investigation
is spurred by the need to assess the impact of cultural difference in people’s
understanding of legal imperatives and, symmetrically, how that impact is to be
considered in the application of law. Differences in ways of categorizing the world
could position the cultural pre-understanding required by law, and the pluralism
recognized and protected by constitutional principles and human/fundamental rights
discourse, at a crossroads. Hence, even when we find an illegitimacy or an ignorance
about what legal rules do not explicitly state but instead implicitly presuppose,
this does not exclude that behind that ignorance there may be something worthy of
legal protection. A question emerges: is it legitimate and reasonable to consider the
ignorantia facti resulting from differing ways of categorizing the factual world as
automatically and uncritically subject to the principle ignoratia legis non excusat?
The essay continues with an assessment of the possible consequences of ignorantia
facti in the administration of justice in multicultural societies and migration contexts.
For this purpose, the opportunity for an intercultural use of law—including
within national law—will be considered as a means of avoiding the discriminatory
application of ignorantia facti. This topic will be addressed by leveraging both
semiotic and cultural-anthropological analytical tools, including the well-known
greimasien ‘‘contrat de ve´ridiction’’.
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Statement of Responsibility
Mario Ricca
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