Ignorance, Justice, and Human Capacity: The Commicratic Maxim Against Legal Absolutism
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
Modern societies are governed by an inherited legal assumption so deeply normalised that it is rarely questioned: ignorance of the law is no excuse.
This maxim, born out of bureaucratic necessity rather than ethical reasoning, functions efficiently only in societies designed for administrative control, not for human equity. Commicracy rejects this absolutism—not as an act of permissiveness, but as a correction grounded in realism, justice, and social intelligence.
At its core, commicracy is a system of governance that treats human capacity as the foundation of law, not as an inconvenience to be disciplined. It recognises that law is not merely a written command, but a social instrument whose legitimacy depends on intelligibility, accessibility, and proportional application. From this understanding emerges a defining maxim of commicracy:
Culpability cannot exceed capacity; where knowledge or comprehension is absent, justice must be rehabilitative, not punitive.
1. Corposense: The Human Threshold of Responsibility
Central to this maxim is the commicratic concept of Corposense—the knowledgeable capacity required for self-preservation, social participation, and economic contribution. Corposense goes beyond formal awareness of a rule’s existence. It includes the individual’s practical ability to understand its meaning, foresee its consequences, and reasonably apply it within their social and economic context.
Where Corposense is uninformed—whether by lack of education, cultural displacement, informational opacity, or structural exclusion—automatic culpability becomes ethically incoherent. Bureaucratic societies, however, disregard this reality. They presume universal legal literacy, treating every individual as if they possess equal access to information and equal cognitive bandwidth to interpret increasingly complex regulatory systems. This presumption is not justice; it is administrative convenience masquerading as morality.
Commicracy therefore draws a decisive distinction between moral universals and procedural or technical laws. Acts such as theft, violence, or deliberate harm are socially intuitive and universally comprehensible across cultures and histories. In such cases, ignorance cannot reasonably be pleaded. But where laws are technical, obscure, newly introduced, or structurally inaccessible, commicracy recognises ignorance as a legitimate mitigating condition—particularly for first-time offences.
2. The Redeem-System: Justice as Restoration, Not Retaliation
This ethical stance finds institutional expression in the Redeem-System, a foundational pillar of commicratic justice. The Redeem-System replaces the punitive reflex of bureaucratic law with a restorative process oriented toward correction, education, and reintegration.
Under the Redeem-System, first offences are assessed holistically. The central questions are not “What rule was broken?” but:
- Was the rule reasonably knowable?
- Did the individual possess the capacity to understand its implications?
- Did the breach arise from malice, necessity, confusion, or systemic failure?
Where the offence reveals a gap in knowledge or access, the response is corrective rather than punitive. Sanctions, where applied, are designed to restore social balance rather than extract retribution. Punishment is reserved for repeated, wilful, or malicious violations—where Corposense is demonstrably present and consciously disregarded.
In this way, the Redeem-System treats justice as a social healing mechanism, not a spectacle of coercion. It acknowledges that a society which punishes ignorance without first addressing its causes merely reproduces inequality under the guise of order.
3. Palaver-Courts: Collective Reason Over Legal Automation
Complementing the Redeem-System are Palaver-Courts, which serve as the interpretive heart of commicratic jurisprudence. Unlike bureaucratic courts that apply law mechanically, Palaver-Courts operate through collective reasoning, contextual evaluation, and community intelligence.
Palaver-Courts are not concerned with rigid precedent for its own sake. Their purpose is to determine proportionality—whether a response restores harmony or deepens fragmentation. By drawing on communal knowledge, lived experience, and moral intuition, these courts ensure that law remains anchored in social reality rather than abstract codification.
This framework directly counters the bureaucratic obsession with predictability. While predictability offers administrative comfort, it often does so at the expense of fairness and productivity. Palaver-Courts accept a degree of interpretive flexibility in exchange for outcomes that are socially coherent and ethically sustainable.
4. Equity Over Equality: The Social and Economic Implications
The commicratic maxim against legal absolutism extends beyond justice systems into the broader social and economic order. Bureaucratic societies often confuse equality with equity, enforcing uniform standards that ignore disparities in capacity in informed knowledge as a form of entrenching structural advantage.
Economically, bureaucracy hierarchises contribution through rigid categories, rewarding procedural conformity over real value creation. Innovation is stifled as rule-compliance becomes more important than problem-solving. Productivity declines as human creativity is subordinated to administrative process.
Commicracy reverses this logic. Contribution is evaluated according to collective need and social usefulness, not bureaucratic rank. Where equality has been imposed to the point of injustice, commicracy introduces equity. Where inequality has been normalised in the name of efficiency, commicracy restores equality of worth.
This balance is not achieved through endless legislation, but through adaptive norms shaped by collective participation. Law remains intelligible because it emerges from the people themselves, not from distant administrative centres detached from lived conditions.
Conclusion: A Civilisational Reorientation
Ultimately, commicracy represents a civilisational shift—from governance as control to governance as coordination; from law as punishment to law as guidance; from justice as fear to justice as restoration.
By rejecting the absolutist doctrine that ‘ignorance is not an excuse’, commicracy does not weaken responsibility—it grounds responsibility in reality. Through the Redeem-System and Palaver-Courts, it ensures that justice aligns with human capacity, social coherence, and economic vitality.
In doing so, commicracy does not abolish order. It rescues order from the cold mechanics of bureaucracy and returns it to its original purpose: the preservation of human dignity within collective life.
Back to: 👇