The earliest law still preserved is that developed by Hammurabi, the ruler of Sumeria, about 2,000 years before the advent of Christ. Hammuarabi's code set forth a complete written system of law. But it wasn't universal, of course. Napoleon, ruler of France, also set up a later code of law - called Code Napoleon, also still working - which was a far greater triumph than the results of his battles.
But in many places, like in the Isle of Man, laws dating back to the 7th century were merely handed down by word of mouth. In other places laws were merely what the current ruler, off the cuff, said they were. Calanus, a Greek leader suffering from colic, for instance, passed a law banishing all stomach aches from the Empire for a year.
In the ancient kingdom of Pegu, even the slightest offense noted by the king was cause for any official to be laid on his face in the broiling sun, in front of the palace, with a heavy beam across his back. The length of the sentence was indeterminate.
Korean King Kija, tired of settling family squabbles and tradesmen fighting, compelled his subjects to wear hats with large clay brims. This was his idea for preventing bodily contact during quarrels.
Zaleucus, a strict legislator of Locri, Greece in 660 B.C., ordered his own son blinded for a criminal offense. When the populace appealed for mercy, Zaleucus spared his son one eye, but fulfilled the letter of the law by destroying one of his own eyes.
Blue Law Solutions
The laws in most places today are passed by elected bodies of one sort or another to fit and fix some sort of problem seen by that body. Perhaps the worst fit-and-fix was the South African 1960s ban on a book titled "Rape of the Earth", which was later discovered to deal with soil erosion.So many laws have been passed for so long everywhere that some get old and forgotten. Those, often remaining on the books years beyond their useful lives, are called "blue laws". For example, in California rarely, if ever, does a driver get hauled in for shooting a whale from his car. But that was on the books from 1972 for some 25 years.
Citizens in one early-day Greek city had the solution to curtail such dead files, though their solution might be considered a bit heavy-handed today. Its politicians who proposed new laws did so with a noose around their necks. If their laws failed to pass, they were hanged. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus also reported another solution, where an advisor to the state in India was permitted three errors. Following the third he was banished from public life.
But blue laws are wonderful to browse and wonder at - wondering what in the world led to them since they make no sense in the present time and place. For example, a local law in Nova Scotia's Londonderry once made it illegal for a farmer to be seen in public "riding an ugly horse". Figure that one out.
Law, if nothing else, should be logical, one would think. But even logic can be bent out of shape on occasion. Take the case of Michel Depre, 34, who caught his wife in bed with another man. Due to Gallic honor code in such matters, Michel took up a knife, but only wounded her paramour as he exited the premises.post haste. So what happened? Depre was arrested, fined $60 and given a one-month suspended sentence. It was then his lawyer told him about Article 234 of the French Criminal Code, which extends official sympathy for the crime passionnel. The simple wounding, it seems, showed he was not seeking, at whatever cost, to defend his honor and his home. Had that been the case, and he had killed the man, he would have saved himself $60.
A young French lady named Marie-Ange also became embroiled in an unusual law. She refused to change her name, even though the law at the time stipulated transsexuals, which she admitted being, were only allowed to use three names: Claude, Camille or Dominique.
The Fascists in Italy passed a 1931 law for the compulsory arrest of anyone wearing a mask or disguise in public. Originally aimed at political conspirators, it was still on the books and 0used in the early 1970s for a crackdown on transvestites in Rome.
Islamic law, as portrayed in Sana, Yemen, has always been hard on humanity's offshoots too. There it required that a man convicted of homosexuality be thrown from the highest point in the city. But when 60-year old Ahmed a-Osamy, a municipal employee, was arrested, the court thought of throwing him from an airplane, since no building in town has high enough to kill him. That was found to be too expensive, so they decided he should be beheaded instead. When the executioner didn't show up on time, however, the judge asked Ahmed if he would consent to being shot instead. He nodded and a police officer executed him in the main square before 6,000 viewers.
More recently (1982) the city council of Tropea, Italy, passed a law governing nude sun bathing at city beaches, limiting full exposure to "young women capable of exalting the beauty of the female body". It had been passed to discourage tourists from cultivating total tans, but it lasted only ten days before stouter local females stormed an acrimonious special hearing and forced cancellation. It turned out to be against national anti-discrimination laws anyhow.
Paparazzi, working for Paris Pin-Up Magazine, were taken to court for snapping nude beach goers without permission. A Paris court ruling was a bit of a surprise, stating: "The photographic artist has the same right to make studies of the harmonic forms of the human body as the painter, sculptor or engraver, as long as they are done without an intent of immorality or obscenity".
Peeping-tom paparazzi have been a pain to control for a very long time. It's reported the Persian tyrant Nadir Shaw (1688-1747) had perhaps the best cure-all for their problem. He punished a peeping tom by giving him the Shah's entire harem to care for - 33 wives!
Sometimes superstition may have had something to do with the passing of one old English law. That's about the only thing that makes sense of the law that required a suicide "to be buried near a crossroads at midnight without religious rites".
And sometimes the law just seems frivolous, like in the 1890 Stockholm, Sweden court case. A man, in desperate need for money, sold the ownership of his body after death to the Royal Swedish Institute of Anatomy for dissection study. Twenty years later he inherited a fortune and tried to buy back that contract. The institute wouldn't sell and the court backed it up. And because two of the man's teeth had been extracted without its permission, the institute requested and was awarded damages.
