Dumb law?

[Miss Chicken]

Today my son was telling me about some "dumb laws' he had read on a website. I explained to him that most of these dumb laws are either hoaxes and exaggerations. I mention one to him which said in Victoria

Only licensed electricians may change a light bulb.

Now I researched this a while back and if I remember correctly the law relates to whether a person who is not an electrician was covered by workplace insurance if he/she is injured while replacing a light bulb. The law certainly doesn't stop anyone from being able to change a light bulb in a domestic situation.

But that is not really what this thread is about though i am quite happy if other people debunk 'dumb laws' in this thread.

My question is about one 'dumb law' I found listed on one source

" (In Iceland) Students are legally required to learn both Danish and English at school" - (yes, it is compulsory)

Is it just me or are there other people who think that this is actually a very sensible law?

 

[AdAstra]

Why not?
Icelandic is a very unique language not related to any other language (major language? Maybe variations are spoken on the Faeröer islands...) so it makes sense to "force" other languages on your population.

We are required to study French and English in school, and I'm glad for it.

 

[JoeZhang]

Not a dumb law but I'm always amazed how many people in the UK think there is such a thing as a "common law wife/husband" and that they have legal rights because of this mythical status.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Not a dumb law but I'm always amazed how many people in the UK think there is such a thing as a "common law wife/husband" and that they have legal rights because of this mythical status.

I am surprised at this. Here in Australia the term 'common law wife/husband' isn't used but people living in de facto relationships legally have almost the same rights as married couples.

 

[smiki]

" (In Iceland) Students are legally required to learn both Danish and English at school" - (yes, it is compulsory)

Is it just me or are there other people who think that this is actually a very sensible law?

I see nothing strange about that. Where I live we also have to learn English in school as a second language in elementary school.
For better or for worse, it has become the world's lingua franca.
And it's always good to know as many languages as possible. In my country we have a saying: "The more languages you know, the more you're worth".

I also believe it would be good for people to whom English is their mother tongue to learn one other language, just for the sake of it.

 

[ancientone51]

Common law status is legal in the US, or at least some states. I know a gal who was in such a situation and had to get a divorce when she wanted out of it.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Common law status is legal in the US, or at least some states. I know a gal who was in such a situation and had to get a divorce when she wanted out of it.

11 states and DC have common law marriages, I know Massachusetts recognizes the marriages as valid, and presumably the other states as well, but does not have common law marriage as part of Massachusetts law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage_in_the_United_States

 

[Holdfast]

Today my son was telling me about some "dumb laws' he had read on a website. I explained to him that most of these dumb laws are either hoaxes and exaggerations.

I was chatting to a "Learned Friend" (the archaic parlance seems appropriate for this thread) about this sort of thing some years ago. I'll try to summarise what he said below, but any errors of memory are solely mine:

England has loads of these. Comes of having such a long and continuous legal history, stretching back quite literally to time immemorial. With both common law and statutory acts stretching back that long, it's fairly inevitable that weird things remain around in some form.

Funnily enough, English Law has been around long enough to even redefine the meaning of "time immemorial" itself. It used to be 1189 AD, but some time in the 19th century it was redefine to simply is within moderately recent legal memory (can't remember the exact interval, but I think it was around the same sort of time as the Corn Law upheavals and not entirely independent of the social arguments around those issues).

That redefinition alone causes some of the older laws to become the equivalent of vaporware by allowing new legislation to supersede the older ones. Along with new Acts that formally repeal older ones and which replace elements of common law (or which force reinterpretation of precedent) the older laws fall into disuse.

Still, once in a while, these issues still occasionally find their way into modern courts, often in matters of property/rights-of-way. If ancient rights of way haven't been formally revoked, they still hold sway and can be used to prevent/delay development, for example.

 

[Deckerd]

Not a dumb law but I'm always amazed how many people in the UK think there is such a thing as a "common law wife/husband" and that they have legal rights because of this mythical status.

In Scots law, all that is required to be considered married is for a couple to stand together in public and state that they're married. Modern laws allow that if you live together then depending on the amount of time you have done so, both parties are entitled to the joint possessions accrued during that time together, should they part. Common law is as good an epithet for this as anything. You should know that usage makes the meaning in language.

 

[JoeZhang]

In Scots law, all that is required to be considered married is for a couple to stand together in public and state that they're married.

I think this is an urban myth.

Modern laws allow that if you live together then depending on the amount of time you have done so, both parties are entitled to the joint possessions accrued during that time together, should they part. Common law is as good an epithet for this as anything. You should know that usage makes the meaning in language.

That was all scrapped in the Families act of 2006 - before then, you could have 'marriage by cohabitation with habit and repute' but it was hard to prove. After 2006, the situation is pretty much the same as in the rest of the UK. If you live together and your name aren't on the deeds, you can be booted out with very little legal recourse.

 

[Deckerd]

When we got married, the Registrar made a little speech encapsulating what I said, so unless the Registrars of Scotland aren't in on the urban myth thing, I stand by what I said.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I would say any laws that try to restrain what you say on the Internet would qualify as "dumb."

 

[Alidar Jarok]

That redefinition alone causes some of the older laws to become the equivalent of vaporware by allowing new legislation to supersede the older ones. Along with new Acts that formally repeal older ones and which replace elements of common law (or which force reinterpretation of precedent) the older laws fall into disuse.

Quite often, at least over here, legal scholars get the idea of reforming the laws. They'll often include in the code that anything not explicitly incorporated into the new laws are repealed. That way, they can get rid of all the archaic laws without even having to know what they once were.

As for dumb laws. Here's one I was told was repealed in one of those law reforms, but it appears to still be operating unless I'm badly misreading things.

Apparently, in the city I worked this summer, it is illegal for women to solicit men for the purpose of having them buy her drinks. It is also illegal for a bar tender to allow these women to stay in the bar if that's what they're doing.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Icelandic is a very unique language not related to any other language

That's not true at all.

Icelandic is a Germanic language. Part of the Northern Germanic (Norse) branch, and is related to Faroese, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish.

 

[Deckerd]

Basque. That's a pretty unique language.

 

[Chaos Descending]

^^ Yeah, that's true.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I would say any laws that try to restrain what you say on the Internet would qualify as "dumb."

I think any censorship laws are dumb. Also, any laws that restrict personal freedom, such as anti-marriage laws, anti-prostitution laws, some anti-drug laws and so on, are dumb.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Another Icelandic law that the same source consider dumb is the law that in Iceland you must drive with your headlights on at all times.

Such a law might not make sense in most countries but in a country where people have to cope with 22+ hours a day of darkness in winter, where many of the roads are of gravel, dusty and narrow, where sometimes they have to cope with volcanic ash it might be easier to simply have a law like this rather than a law that is less encompassing.

 

[Count Zero]

There are a number of other European countries that also have that law, Sweden e.g. and Poland. I think it has more to do with better visibility for cars actively participating in traffic.
It's just a bit confusing for those of us from neighbouring countries where that's not the law if it isn't advertised enough. Friends of mine got stopped shortly before the Polish border after a fuel stop where they had changed drivers because that driver didn't know about the law.
When the policeman asked him why he didn't have the lights on, he replied, "Why should I? It's daylight outside!" That didn't go over too well. They got off with a warning, though, in the end.

 

[Miss Chicken]

It is interesting to know that other countries have the same law.

Another Icelandic law I looked at was

Until recently it was legal to kill any Turkish man that you saw in Iceland.

I thought this was odd so I did a little research. The law stems from the fact that during the 17th and 18th century pirates from the Ottoman Empire were raiding Iceland and kidnapping men, women and children for slaves. The Icelandic government passed a law that allowed people to form militia to protect them from the pirates and allowing them to kill a raider with impunity. Once the raids stop the law was quickly forgotten and it wasn't until 1970 that someone rediscovered and the law was quickly erased.