Over the weekend, I read a
March 2010 draft
of Rebecca Roiphe's law review article "The Ethics of Willful
Ignorance," which appeared in the
Georgetown
Journal of Legal Ethics, Volume 24, Issue 1 (Winter 2011).
Willful (or deliberate) ignorance (or blindness) describes what
happens when someone has reason to believe that something is wrong
(often that misconduct has occurred) and chooses not to look further
into the matter (often in order to be able to deny any knowledge of misconduct). Roiphe looks at willful ignorance by
a citizen in a criminal context and by a lawyer in criminal and
civil contexts. She notes that in certain criminal situations,where
there is a statutory obligation to know, a citizen who willfully
ignores facts that would trigger such an obligation can be held
responsible. For example, if someone has a reason to believe that
there are illegal substances in a car she is driving, she has an
obligation to look for them. If she does not, she can still be held
guilty of transporting those substances (the principal case is
United States v.
Jewell, 532 U.S. 697 (en banc),
cert. denied, 426 U.S. 951
(1976)).