What legal maxims are, and why Ask The Beagle cites them.
Maxims are short Latin sayings, many centuries old, that compress a piece of legal reasoning into a phrase courts still quote. One appears in an answer when that piece of reasoning is doing real work. For example:
Ignorantia juris non excusat (Ignorance of the law is no excuse)
A person cannot escape criminal or civil liability merely by showing they did not know their conduct was unlawful — in contrast to a mistake of fact, which may sometimes excuse. This harsh-sounding rule is only workable because the law is, in principle, publicly accessible: legislation is formally published (historically in the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes, now consolidated on legislation.gov.uk), so that a person is taken to have had the means to know it even if they did not in fact consult it. The maxim is regularly invoked by the state to reject a defence based on unfamiliarity with a statute or regulation. Its harshness has, however, driven arguments — not always successful — that particular laws must be sufficiently accessible and foreseeable in their effect to be enforced consistently with the rule of law and with Article 7 ECHR, especially where a criminal offence is defined in technical subordinate legislation few could reasonably be expected to have found.
— Halsbury's Laws of England (5th edn), vol 47, 'Statutes'