The legal highway may lead by pointing towards the direction of justice, but the road is definitely littered with outdated laws and statutes that serve no use other than to confound and confuse. For example, there’s a jurisdiction in Wisconsin where it’s illegal to eat ice cream on Sundays. In North Dakota, meanwhile, there’s a regulation against serving pretzels with beer. And in a certain city in Ohio, women are prohibited from patent leather shoes. Of course, the actual enforcement of these ridiculous codes happens rarely–if ever–but it still begs the question: Why? Why keep them on the books?
Sure, maybe when these laws were codified there was a legitimate community concern being addressed. But times have changed–indoor plumbing has since been perfected, and electricity can be found in every home. Shouldn’t something be done about this legal detritus? In this Bold Interview, James Copland of the Manhattan Institute suggests that we need to get busy repealing these old outdated laws.
