It is a symptom of a sick society when there are too many laws. Could a person even feasibly read the corpus of federal, state, and local laws in their lifetime at this point? What percentage would understand it if they could?
Fortunately many judges consider intent and circumstances in their rulings, but not always and that's certainly not where we should place our bets.
Most laws and regulations don't apply to everyone, they only apply to particular people and agencies. You really only need to know the ones that pertain to you. And while this is still a long list, behaving in a considerate manner works to avoid breaking many of them. For those with peculiar circumstances (such as owning a business or renting or selling property) there are specialists who can let you know in real time what your obligations are.
That is really not much consolation, because you have to know what the law is before you can discern whether it applies to you. You may think there is nothing relevant to you in admiralty law, but then you go and take a cruise, or order some merchandise transported on a container ship, and how do you even know if anything applies when you don't know what it says?
Even if we assume that people not in the oil business don't need to know laws about oil wells and people not in the gaming industry don't need to know laws about casinos, there are still more laws that apply to everyday activity than the average person could feasibly understand. Good luck to anyone in avoiding the tax code.
That would be fine if you were actually entitled to the warning.
Well, sometimes it would be. Spending thousands of dollars in preparation to do something you had no idea was illegal isn't going to get your money back even if it doesn't get you arrested.
But a warning isn't mandatory. Which turns "3 felonies a day" into the erasure of the rule of law, because then if you do something they don't like that isn't illegal, they can still throw you in jail just by sniffing around until they find something you're doing that is.
I generally agree that it’s generally a terrible expectation for everyone to know the law and how it is interpreted. The book “3 Felonies a Day” covers this. But it is the law we live under and the law created by the people we elect. Don’t like it? Vote with intention.
Police officers are taught the Cliff Notes of the law during police academy, in order to earn an LEO license, and by attorneys that work with the police department. As much as I would like individual officers to known more about the law, let’s not pretend like they know as little as the average citizen about the law.
Fortunately many judges consider intent and circumstances in their rulings, but not always and that's certainly not where we should place our bets.