From ignorance of the law to epistemic injustice in Law: Testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice as obstacles to access to justice

Ignorance - total or partial - of the law on the part of its addressees raises different problems: one of them is that it hinders access to justice. Different ways of dealing with this issue have been proposed, ranging from modulating the principle that ignorance of the law is not an excuse, to various measures to protect access to justice for those who belong to vulnerable groups. This article argues that this approach, being necessary, takes for granted what ignorance consists of without considering the political and epistemological dispute that sometimes occurs around who does not know and what is not known. To account for this aspect, the conceptual framework of epistemic injustice is proposed, in its two manifestations of testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice, exploring its relevance in the legal field.