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The principle of imputation or attribution reflects the general public policy underpinning the operation of the law which is that ignorantia juris non excusat, the Latin for ignorance of the law is no excuse. All laws are published and available for study in all the developed states; the content of the law is imputed to all persons who are within the jurisdiction, no matter how transiently. This fiction avoids the unfairness of anyone being able to avoid liability for any acts or omissions through the simple expedient of denying knowledge of the law. The principle also arises in specific areas of law such as Criminal Law and Commercial Law to describe the need for the law to hold one person liable when he or she may not have had actual knowledge of the particular circumstances giving rise to the loss or damage sustained by another. To incur liability for a crime, a person must have both committed a prohibited act (the actus reus which must be willed see automatism) and have had an appropriate mental element (the mens rea) at the relevant time (see the technical requirement for concurrence). A key component of the mens rea is any knowledge that the alleged criminal might have had. For these purposes, knowledge can be both actual and constructive, i.e. the court can impute knowledge where appropriate. There will be no problem when the alleged criminal actually intended to cause the particular harm. It becomes more difficult where the defendant denies actual knowledge. When evaluating behaviour, it is assumed that the defendant was aware of his or her immediate physical surroundings, and has a basic understanding of practical cause and effect. A mens rea will be imputed when a person with reasonable foresight in the same circumstances would have foreseen that the actus reus would occur. This prevents a person from raising a defence based on willful blindness (note that in the United States, wilful blindness has a slightly different meaning). A problem arises when the defendant is a corporation. By its nature, a fictitious person can only act through the human agency of the natural persons that it employs. Equally, it has no mind to constitute the mens rea. Hence, the notion of vicarious liability for companies and other business entities exclusively depends on the ability to impute knowledge. The test is one of identification. If the natural person who acts can be "identified with the mind of the company" when performing the actions forming the actus reus, all the relevant mental elements will be imputed to the company. This test, sometimes termed the alter ego test, is objective and cannot be distracted by the job title or description formally held by the human agent. This prevents evasion of liability by the simple expedient of naming the real director of affairs as the janitor. However, not all actions trigger this transference. When acting, the human agent identified as the mind must be promoting the company's interests in some practical way. If he or she is engaged in an entirely personal activity, e.g. attacking a fellow employee out of anger or stealing from the company, the courts will not impute the relevant mens rea to the company. In the United States, the courts use a three-prong test to determine whether a corporation will be held vicariously liable for the acts of its employees
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