Lambert v. California

Lambert had previously been convicted of forgery, a felony in California. She was unaware that a Los Angeles city ordinance required that she, being a felon, register if she remained in the city for more than five days. The ordinance stipulated that she, as a convicted criminal, could be fined $500 and sentenced to up to six months in jail for every day that she remained in the city after the five-day limit. When she was arrested on suspicion of committing another offense, she was convicted for failure to register. As Lambert was not allowed to use her lack of knowledge as a defense, she was convicted, fined $250, and sentenced to three years probation. Lambert appealed her case, arguing that she had no knowledge that she had to register her name and that convicting her would deprive her of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. ==Decision==

The Supreme Court reversed Lambert's conviction by holding that knowledge or probability of knowledge of a statute is required to convict someone of a notice offense. Justice William Douglas, who delivered the majority opinion for the Court, wrote: However, the Court did not overturn the right of states and municipalities to force occupants to register for a given purpose. The Court held that because the ordinance that forced convicted felons to register was not accompanied by any action, and there were no circumstances that would lead felons to be aware of their duty to register, the ordinance was unconstitutional. The Justice continued: ==Significance==

This case is an exception to the legal principle ignorantia legis non excusat ("the ignorance of the law is not a suitable excuse for breaking it") because this case deals with the absence of "actual knowledge" (Lambert v. California, Page 355 U. S. 229) of a law that came about from a "wholly passive" (Lambert v. California, Page 355 U. S. 228) conduct, whereby there was "no proof of the probability of such knowledge" because the absence of "actual knowledge" of the law came about from a "wholly passive" conduct. ==See also==