Ignorance, Justice, and Moral Geography: Why Appeals Succeed in the House-of-StateLords’ Tribunal
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
Modern legal systems are built upon a rigid maxim inherited from Roman jurisprudence: ignorantia legis neminem excusat—ignorance of the law excuses no one.
While this principle may preserve administrative efficiency in centralised States, it collapses under ethical scrutiny when applied to culturally plural, regionally diverse, and morally heterogeneous societies. Ethnopublican justice confronts this contradiction directly. In doing so, it establishes a more humane and rational maxim: ignorance of the law may constitute a legitimate excuse where moral knowability cannot be reasonably presumed.
Within the ethnopublic system, the success of overturning a guilty verdict on appeal at the House-of-StateLords’ Tribunal rests precisely on this recalibration of justice. Appeals are not adjudicated through mechanical rule-matching alone, but through a deeper inquiry into moral geography, cognitive access, and intentionality.
1. From Rule Violation to Moral Assessment
When a conviction originating from a regional palaver-court reaches the appellate stage, the central question is no longer limited to “What rule was broken?”. Instead, the House-of-StateLords’ Tribunal reframes the inquiry around a set of morally substantive questions:
- Was the rule reasonably knowable to the accused?
- Did the individual possess the cognitive and contextual capacity to understand its implications at the relevant time?
- Did the breach arise from malice, necessity, confusion, or systemic failure?
- Was the accused indigenous to the region in which the offence occurred?
- If not indigenous, does the accused’s region of origin possess similar or identical moral laws that would make the act foreseeably unlawful?
These questions shift justice away from blind formalism and toward ethical proportionality. The Tribunal recognises that laws do not exist in a vacuum; they exist within lived moral ecosystems. To punish an individual for violating a rule that was culturally opaque, geographically alien, or socially inaccessible is not justice—it is moral negligence disguised as order.
2. Ignorance as a Signal, Not a Crime
In ethnopublic jurisprudence, ignorance is not treated as guilt by default, but as diagnostic information. Where an offence reveals a gap in knowledge, access, or moral transmission, the appropriate response is corrective rather than punitive.
Exoneration, education, restitution, or mediated reconciliation may follow. Even where sanctions are applied, they are calibrated to restore social balance, not to extract retribution or perform authority. Punishment is reserved for a narrower category of cases—those involving repeated, wilful, or malicious violations where knowing is demonstrably present and consciously disregarded.
In this framework, justice distinguishes between error and defiance. It asks not only what was done, but why it was done and what it reveals about the system itself.
3. Justice as Social Healing, Not Spectacle
Ethnopublicanism rejects the theatrical model of justice common to modern States—where punishment functions as spectacle, deterrence, or symbolic dominance. Instead, justice is understood as a social healing mechanism, oriented toward restoring relational equilibrium within and between communities.
A society that punishes ignorance without first interrogating its causes merely reproduces inequality under the guise of neutrality. It criminalises unfamiliarity, marginalises visitors and minorities, and entrenches the moral authority of regions over others. Ethnopublic justice refuses this logic. It acknowledges that fairness requires sensitivity to context, origin, and moral inheritance.
4. Pluralism Without Fragmentation
Crucially, the African ethnopublic system of justice is not rigid or monolithic at the regional level. It operates as a pluralistic yet harmonised framework, varying across regions and communities while maintaining a shared philosophical format.
Each regional-community retains sovereign moral authority to determine how disputes are settled within its palaver-courts and within the legal boundary of citizenry-prescribed national laws. Some may prioritise mediation and dialogue; others may emphasise ritual reconciliation, restitution, or public apology. These variations are not legal inconsistencies—they are expressions of cultural legitimacy.
Ethnopublic justice may also coexist alongside customary law or other recognised legal traditions. Communities are free to resolve internally generated social problems through processes that remain culturally grounded and socially intelligible. This decentralised flexibility is not a weakness of the system; it is one of its defining strengths.
5. The Role of Appeal: Harmonising Local and National Justice
Where communal resolution fails—where a public-jury proceeding concludes in discordance or remains contested—the system provides a clear and structured path of escalation. Appeals transfer the matter from the palaver-court to the appropriate government body, where adjudication proceeds according to citizenry-prescribed State laws.
At the highest level, the House-of-StateLords’ Tribunal functions as the harmonic regulator of the system. Its role is not to erase regional moral authority, but to ensure national coherence and constitutional integrity. It mediates between local moral consciousness and shared civic principles, ensuring that pluralism does not collapse into arbitrariness.
Uniformity of values, in this system, does not require uniformity of procedure.
6. Populocratic Foundations of the Palaver-Court
The palaver-court itself is populocratic at its foundation. Authority flows upward—from the people. At the regional level, disputes are first heard through public-jury trials, where community members adjudicate facts in reference to citizenry-prescribed law and local moral understanding.
This process reflects the moral consciousness of the region in which the accused is being adjudicated. It affirms that those most familiar with the social fabric are best positioned to interpret conduct within it. The appellate structure does not negate this authority; it completes it.
Together, local moral judgment, State-level legal coherence, and national constitutional unity remain in continuous dialogue rather than conflict.
Conclusion: A Justice System That Understands Humans
The ethnopublic justice system recognises a fundamental truth often ignored by modern legalism: humans are moral beings before they are legal subjects. Laws must therefore be intelligible, accessible, and contextually grounded if they are to command legitimacy.
By accepting that ignorance of the law can, in certain circumstances, excuse wrongdoing, the House-of-StateLords’ Tribunal does not weaken justice—it refines it. It replaces coercion with comprehension, punishment with proportionality, and abstraction with humanity.
In doing so, ethnopublicanism restores justice to its original purpose: not to dominate society, but to heal it.
Back to: 👇