Confused, complicated complex and just plain crazy

In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to both duel and become governor, and it is also illegal to… In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to both duel and become governor, and it is also illegal to sleep inside a refrigerator. Students can find saws and ordinances like these by searching online.

Web sites dedicated to “weird laws”abound on the Internet, and many list Pennsylvania laws that are outdated, repealed, reworded or otherwise completely non-existent, according to the Pitt Law School Library.

“These Web sites take an extreme and somewhat absurd example of something that is accurate under law,”said George Pike who is a Law professor and Director of the Law School Library at Pitt.

“But I don’t deny that they are good for a chuckle,”he added.

A chuckle is about the limit though, since these stories may be good for a laugh, some laws exist and some do not, and its up to the person surfing the Internet to find out which is which.

According to www.justafreak.com, it is illegal, only in Pittsburgh, for a person to sleep on top of a refrigerator. It sounds absurd, but all this law really enforces is sanitary conditions in restaurants, forbidding people to sleep in a refrigerator.

“It is comparable to that sign you see in the bathroom of restaurants stating, ‘food service workers must wash their hands’,”Pike said.

Pittsburgh does, however, have a local ordinance about refrigerators kept outside that states they must be locked and drained of Freon, Pike said, adding that this is for safety reasons. But there is no separate law about sleeping on top of a refrigerator.

“I don’t see any logical reason why it would have existed,”Pike said.

Joel Fishman, Pitt Law professor and assistant director of Allegheny County Law Library, co-directs a Web site for Duquesne University called the PA Constitution Web site. These “weird law Web sites”fail to differentiate between state law and local ordinances, which can be misleading, he said.

“A local ordinance is not a state law,”he said, stressing that the difference is an important one.

Fishman also said that many laws on these Web sites are outdated and could have been repealed. Some laws date back to colonial times, said Fishman, making reference to an old law that required women to have permission to keep a sewing machine in their house.

Listed under a specific local law of Pittsburgh,www.justafreak.comalso says that it is illegal to bring a donkey or a mule onto a trolley car. Pike researched this law and said although there is nothing on the books like it now, it is not illogical in a historic sense.

Another possibility could be that the Web site simply rewords a law about animal cruelty through transportation found in an actual section of Pennsylvania law, Pike said.

Fishman said that the 1800s and the rules that applied then are different from today.

One “strange law” listed on www.justafreak.com, states that a person is not eligible to become governor or run for office if he has participated in or been challenged to a duel. This law, according to Pike was passed in 1806 in a series of Pennsylvania laws to criminalize the “horrid practice of dueling.”

The actual law states: Anyone who has fought in a duel, issued a challenge to duel or aided and abetted a duel would lose “all rights of citizenship for seven years,”which presumably would include being eligible for governor election, Pike said.

In 1972, the specific crime of dueling was repealed and replaced with more general prohibitions of murder and attempted murder.

“Instead of saying the ‘crime of dueling,’ [the law] gets changed to attempted manslaughter,”Pike said.

This was repealed in 1966 and later replaced with the current language of Article 2, section 7 of the Constitution, which states, “No person hereafter convicted of embezzlement of public moneys, bribery, perjury or other infamous crime may hold office.”This wording created a broader umbrella for crimes to be categorized under rather than specific acts, said Pike.

While these Web sites may have listed a law that had existed in the past, some give examples of enforced law that do not exist.

Four supposed laws on thewww.justafreak.comand www.eldar.org are not currently laws (or local ordinances) in PA – it is illegal to sing in the bathtub, no man may purchase alcohol without written consent from his wife, women need a permit to wear cosmetics and housewives are banned from hiding dirt and dust under a rug in a dwelling.

While reviewing these Web sites, Pike noticed an important element all of them lacked: Not one Web site gave authority, he said.

“Show me Code Section. Show me title and article. Show me authority,”he said.

Pike said that authority or citation is something you never see on these Web sites, and without it, it is just impossible to tell whether the list is true or false.