I have a student who is trying to put together a speech on “dumb laws” in the United States. While we have been able to find several sites that list dumb laws, we are having some difficulty finding the stories behind these laws. Any Dopers out there know of some good sites for the stories behind the laws?
Thanks!
majicats
Try your University Library.
It may have WestLaw access, or the equivalent.
Before you begin, you should read Why a duck?
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There are strange laws atill out there, though. Many of them are just archaic.
Here, cited strange laws from Buffalo’s Municipal Code. They’re all still on the books. I converted the language from legalese to plain English for the sake of brevity.
98-8 - It’s illegal to give a shoeshine on Sunday after 1:00 PM.
352-1 - Steam locomotives cannot cross street level crossings faster than 6 MPH/10 KMPH.
378-5 - All businesses, factories, theaters, railroad depots and other public gathering places must provide public spitoons. Spitoons must be cleaned and disinfected every day.
378-6 - It’s illegal for restaurants to give their patrons a straw without a wrapper.
501-3 - A ton of coal weighs 2,000 pounds (no shit, Sherlock.)
Don’t believe me? Look it up.
[quote]
§ 378-5. Prohibited acts; posting of notices.**[/color][/size][/font]
Still on the books. There’s also a ton of laws regarding quaint turn-of-the-last-century diseases. Here’s a good one; §158-13, with lots of 1800s vernacular and legalese.
Get scarlet fever and forget to put up a sign in Polish warning others of the fact? Off to jail!
Here’s a few more great Buffalo laws.
It’s illegal to sell books about fortune telling.
Anyone can have at least one cow on their property.
It’s illegal to hire or be a scab.
My dad told me when I was young that in [Nebraska?] when two trains approach each other on opposing tracks, both trains must stop and neither may roll again until the other one passes.
I never got round to looking for an actual law that might be interpreted that way, since there was no Internet when I was a kid and the ‘law’ is to ridiculous to exist anyway.
When they were passed, they were not thought to be silly. The Soviet constitutions (all of them) specified Moscow as the capital. Why? Because they thought it was important.
Swiss law requires all animals be stunned before slaughter. Why? They thought it needed to be mentioned. (How the heck do you slaughter a cow in the Islamic manner if it is stunned? But I digress.)
Not the United States, I know, but it is true, AFAIK.
Dumb European law : There is an EC directive declaring carrots to be a type of fruit.
This is often circulated by Euro-sceptics as an example of why they oppose Euriopean integration. It’s true enough, but when you look into it, it doesn’t seem so dumb after all. It was part of legislation saying that any product labelled as jam must have a certain minimum percentage real fruit content. It was noted that carrot jam is popular in Portugal. So, declaring carrots as fruit allowed them to continue production, and contiinue calling it jam.
It should be noted that there’s an even simpler explanation for most of the dumb laws you see posted on those dumb laws websites: They don’t exist. In general, unless the website lists where in the statutes of that city/state/nation/whatever the law may be found, and you can independently find that law in an official reference for that city/state/nation/whatever, you should assume that the purported “law” was just made up out of whole cloth.
My God! I’m guilty of criminal facilitation!
About 27 years ago, I worked for a book remainder house that used to ship consignments of books we bought up when they went out of print to various discount bookstores around the country. One of our clients was on Delaware Ave., and among other things did a passable business in occult/New Age/related gobbledygook. (At $1 or less for a hardcover book…)
I’ll go quietly now, officer! :o
The ton of coal one does make sense, though. Remember that there was for many years, especially in the coal industry, the “long ton” of 2240 pounds, there is the metric tonne of roughly 2205 pounds, and there were measurements in various old European systems that were often “translated” by the use of the equivalent English term (e.g., the “Spanish milled dollar” for the eight-reales silver coin). It may have been important, when Buffalo was a thriving multi-ethnic city, to prevent the expectation that you’d get a long ton, or 1,000 Volhynian grubniks, or whatever, by specifying that a ton of coal was the “short ton” of 2,000 pounds, no more and no less.
I had a friend some years ago who was the only law-abiding citizen of Chateaugay, NY, where an ancient and ignored town ordinance specified that every adult male citizen would annually contribute a bale of hay to the volunteer fire department to help feed the horses. (The fire department had had normal truck-style fire engines for decades, but the law remained on the books, unenforced and forgotten.) He, being a smartass, bought a bale of hay and made a copy of the ordinance, then took them to the firehouse and turned the haybale over to the stupefied chief, explaining that he was complying with the law. 
This may help you out. It is a thread I started about weird laws that are actually enforced. Sadly, my main example of not being allowed to stand with an alcoholic drink has since been repealed.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=278601&highlight=enforced
I did, and unwittingly resurrected it. :smack:
This one too. Call a moderator, I’m giving myself up.
It could probably be argued these days that, with the tremendous wane of chewing tobacco use and the subsequent absense of public spitting, zero is a “sufficient number”.
As others have said, do not trust those lame dumb law sites.
One that I remember stated that in order to sell beer in some city, a pot of soup must be cooking somewhere on the premises. The real story: In this town, only restaurants were legally allowed to serve alcoholic beverages. A few bars got around this restriction by plugging in a little hot pot and pouring a can of soup in it. Now they were a restaurant that sold cups of soup for a dollar even though no one ever really wanted soup. The real story is much more interesting than the “dumb law.”
Well, I have a certain sympathy 
The city of Chico, California, may still have a law on the books making it a local misdemeanor to use a nuclear weapon within city limits. (I went to college there, which is why I remember hearing about this.) As with other laws mentioned, there’s more to the story; I’ve understood that the ordinance was a symbolic protest by the City Council about nuclear weaponry in general, and possibly a reaction to the discovery of some local long-since-abandoned nuke missle silos - if I recall correctly. Somewhat silly, yes, but that’s politics for you.