Some laws are obviously contradicted by higher laws, such as bills of attainder being prohibited explicitly by the US constitution.
Say some level of government (state, federal, or local) ignores this and passes a bill of attainder anyway: "Jimantha Higgins is guilty of arson by this bill of attainder and shall be sent to jail for a year."
Say that by the time the courts sort this out and manually and specifically issue the required rulings to free poor Jimantha, they have already been arrested, lost their job due to not showing up, lost their apartment due to not being able to deliver the rent check, had all their stuff destroyed because it was in their apartment, and spent $20,000 paying a lawyer to file the motions necessary to get the court to act on this law specifically for them. Also when the cops arrested them they broke their toe and they have $2000 in medical bills. And the landlord of the apartment had to buy a new door because the cops bashed it in.
Generally the government isn't liable for damages caused by executing the law. But does that calculus change if the law being executed was transparently prohibited by a higher legal authority, and everyone involved knew or should have known that it was not actually allowed to be executed?
