Life, Liberty and Property

There has been an explosion of commentary from the DC-libertarian-blogosphere over an incident that happened yesterday at the Jefferson Memorial. (More Coverage Here)

The jist of the incident goes like this: a group of around 20 people, mostly libertarians, who were in the DC area decided to meet at the Jefferson Memorial to celebrate the birthday of our most-libertarian founding father. The idea was to get there around 11:55pm and to dance, silently, while listening to their iPods for about 10 minutes, and then leave — flashmob style.

Well, at some point the park police came by and told everyone to leave. One of the dancers, whose identity, as far as I can tell has not been revealed, was arrested after asking why they were being shooed away. Now, I’ve heard conflicting stories regarding the applicable laws in this situation. Someone pointed out that at the Jefferson Memorial (and a few other monuments) it is illegal to hold a demonstration within a certain radius of the structure. The debate seems to be over whether the flashmob in question counted as a demonstration for this purpose. However, even if it did, it is certainly fair to ask why the government would be constitutionally allowed to ban a demonstration at all (I’m not going to do the research, but I believe there is legal precedent that allows this). 

The ultimate key to this situation is, however, that the police officers apparently seemed uninterested in making any arrests (or perhaps unable?) until the arrested party dared to ask what law was being broken. Why shouldn’t she be told what crime she had committed? If the officer was willing to let the dancers walk away, why can’t they know what they did wrong (which would presumably allow them to have knowledge of the law in the future)?

As a law student it has been beat into my head: Ignoratia Juris Non Excusat (Ignorance of the law is no excuse), but that latin phrase was coined a very long time ago, before the nanny state started printing volumes upon volumes of statutes. Are we really to be responsible for knowing the entire US Code, the Code of our state of residence/employment/vacation destination and any local ordinances? Is the complexity of these codes not the entire reason for the legal profession to exist?

Surely the officer, if he is acting upon legal authority would know the authority he was acting on, right? Why can’t he share?

A few years ago one of the towns near me passed a smoking ban that included a provision to ban smoking within a certain number of feet from the entrance to a public restaurant. A week or two after it took effect, I saw an officer citing a table full of people just outside of a cigar bar / restaurant, who thought they were able to smoke outside. When they asked the officer to explain why they were being cited, he pulled a book out of his pocket and read to them the relevant statute.

It was that easy. The people at that table weren’t happy, but at least they were informed.

(This is by the way, not an endorsement of the smoking ban, but rather an endorsement of a police officer who was willing to explain the relevant law and how he was instructed to apply it in a civil manner)

UPDATE (4/17/0 : Here is a discussion of what Thomas Jefferson might’ve thought of all this.