The Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance (or, my career in the oldest profession)

Emergency sasquatch ordinanceThe Emergency Sasquatch Ordinance is a collection of legal oddities collated by Kevin Underhill, the (very funny and usually spot-on) guy who runs Lowering The Bar. It is a very fun book, and, full disclosure, my partner Andrew Gray is namechecked in the acknowledgements for having provided his own favourite bit of legal trivia, the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspection) Act. (Which makes it illegal to detonate a nuclear weapon in the United Kingdom. Just in case you managed to do it without coming any other crime).

I got a bit snippy at page 293, however, which deals with the Statute of Marlborough. It suggests, in fact, that ipso facto, refusing to repeal a 747-year old statute that forbids a tenant from laying waste to their landlord’s land is ridiculous.

Well, in my non-SFF-writing existence I am a lawyer with a specialty in rural land litigation and I have cited the Statute of Marlborough as part of my working life. The statute is 747 years old because it is entirely fit for purpose. We still have tenants; we still have the doctrine of waste; it’s still decent public policy to protect co-terminous estate owners against each other. And it’s not like the law I deal with is usually much less august. This week I wrote about the Prior’s Case, the bit of fourteenth-century common law setting out how restrictive covenants run with the land. Friday’s reading featured a little about the Law of Property Act 1925 and quite a lot more about how it relates to the whole body of pre-existing artefacts of title back to the Norman Conquest, because the doctrines of tenure are that old and they do still matter.

I got upset, is what I’m saying.

Then came the horrible realization. I am a rational human being and usually a good lawyer, and I am willing to go right down to the wire for this statute. The Statute of Marlborough is important! Let me tell you about my STRONG FEELINGS ON THE SUBJECT! Etc.

Now imagine. Somewhere in the world, there is perhaps someone like me for every page of that book. Someone out there feels just as strongly about the emergency sasquatch ordinance passed by Skamania County, Washington, in the 1960s; a sequence of enactments concerning how to pronounce “Arkansas”; and various state butterflies, crustacea, microbes, etc. At the time of Hammurabi there were scribes sitting there waving their hands about going, no, guys, this is super-important, we need this.

Oddly, I don’t think I feel that bad about it.

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