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I would assume that somebody who participated in the implementation of a law and then broke it, would be the last person to be able to invoke a good-faith belief that their actions are legal.

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That's very naive. It would be that someone's staffer who broke the law, that staffer having the good faith belief, and the representative would have good faith belief in his staffer. By the transitive property of good faith belief among people in politics, that would make them all clean.

However, when your 8 year old daughter who shared an Miley Bieber mp3 had good faith belief she was ok because everyone is doing -- that is untrustworthy, and the fact that you have good faith belief in her intentions does not clear you of anything. You'll go to jail or pay a hefty sum.

That's how laws really work. Not the way they common knowledge assumes.

Technically, the way the law works is based on what a jury is willing to accept. As I would not accept the first interpretation and I would accept the second it's something of a grey area.

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