Linux Law

Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
or street lamp.

Attorney General Edwin Meese III explained why the Supreme Court's Miranda
decision (holding that subjects have a right to remain silent and have a
lawyer present during questioning) is unnecessary: "You don't have many
suspects who are innocent of a crime.  That's contradictory.  If a person
is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect."
                -- U.S. News and World Report, 10/14/85

Be frank and explicit with your lawyer ... it is his business to confuse
the issue afterwards.

Behold the warranty -- the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.

Being a miner, as soon as you're too old and tired and sick and stupid to
do your job properly, you have to go, where the very opposite applies with
the judges.
                -- Beyond the Fringe

Between grand theft and a legal fee, there only stands a law degree.

... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be
proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge
to mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and
in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.  If
there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute
of value.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
trousers that don't match.

Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and the
most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion.  A judge of the Court of
Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his candidate which
reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground nuts) Order, the expression
nuts shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground nuts, as would
but for this amending Order not qualify as nuts (unground) (other than ground
nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground)."
                -- Guiness Book of World Records, 1973

Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.