Judge: The defendant admits noncompliance with national building codes but asks that penalties not be imposed because...

Skylar on June 4, 2020

@filozinni, happy to help!

The defendant is charged with noncompliance with national building codes. He presents the excuse that he did not know which building codes applied. We are told that this excuse may work if he had failed to follow local building codes, but instead he had failed to follow national building codes, so the excuse is unacceptable.

Let's think about this. Why would the excuse work with local codes but not national codes? The local codes must be more stringent than the national codes. In this case, the defendant's excuse may work if he was charged with failing to follow local codes but he still managed to follow the national codes. However, if the national codes are weaker than the local codes and the defendant did not follow the national codes, he would have thereby also failed to follow the local codes. Essentially, the defendant's excuse would then be irrelevant because he failed to meet either set of codes. Answer choice (C) is correct because it clarifies this point. (C) states that "any behavior required by the national codes is also required by local codes."

Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions and best of luck with your continued studies!

filozinni on June 5, 2020

Thank you so much for the explanation @Skylar !