To my mind the greatest farce on earth today is that a law which everybody is supposed to know requires a lawyer to interpret it, a judge to over-rule him, another judge to over-rule him, and so on to the end of the fence. It is that law that "ignorance of the law excuses no one;" yet nobody knows the law, not even the lawyers and the judges, and even the judges of the Supreme Court cannot agree as to what the law of the land is, so they decide five to four. Then what are we poor fools to do? That is why I favor burning the whole thing up and getting new laws, founded on justice and equity, that men of common sense can understand.
—Eugene Debs.
quoted in The San Jose Letter, of February 15, 1896.
He had a point!
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