Clearly a case of Chesterton's Fence. Who knows what eldritch horrors might result from the removal of that oath!

Looks like it was removed in 1827. I don't actually remember having to say anything at any of my graduation ceremonies there (BA, MA, DPhil), just walking on to the stage. I do wonder if at matriculation we all had to make some oath together but I think I would have remembered if that had been the case. I have a strong feeling though I might have had to make an oath when I became a scholar - there was definitely a ceremony we had to go to - but that would have been college-dependent.

According to the Bank of England's inflation calculator, £80 in 1242 is worth £119,600 today.

Chesterton's fence

Delays due to trucks striking bridges are a worldwide problem, at least in countries with railroads. Despite yellow black striped reflective panels and height warning signs and sometimes height detectors that trigger flashing red lights.

Perhaps we should try a bale of straw next.

The London Blackwall tunnel has a more modern take on checking height: https://maps.app.goo.gl/b5P5Td1hsuSjLU3w8 traffic signals, barriers like at a railroad crossing, giant panels across the road at height, and a police car on standby to pull out and fine anyone that doesn't read the signs - I presume this happens often enough that they can justify the cost.

But then the bale of straw applied to ships not vehicles and bridges not tunnels.

Thanks, I was annoyed that the article didn't cite the actual law in question, but the BBC comes in with "Port of London Thames Byelaws, clause 36.2"

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmlrx89jdv2o

I think you'd need a couple of "solicitors" -- or maybe even "barristers" -- to decide on that. I'm neither :)

A formal UK Constitution doesn't exist and is a striking example of this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_K...

The constitution of the United Kingdom comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify such arrangements into a single document, thus it is known as an uncodified constitution. This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched.

There are still important legal principles in the US and other places around the world based entirely on the decisions of earlier English courts. The first local decisions will reference English cases, and English legal experts often would have been consulted.

Same thing with most of the world's parliaments and congresses having to reference English Parliamentary precedent in order to figure out how to operate themselves. The UK Parliament and courts may be terrible, but they invented the thing and we're forks.

Usually the judges do not "ignore or modify" the law, but rather "interpret" it in a creative manner. You might use, as an example, the question of "does the US Constitution guarantee the women a right to abortion." Some judges decided that it does, later some other judges decided that it does not. Considering the opposing outcomes to the same question, it's clear some of these were wrong.

The US.

There are vague rights in the constitution.

It could be a disaster for the courts to interpret them too literally (Is literally any weapon OK in the 2nd? Does free speech include a mob boss ordering a hit?) and constitutions are really hard to amend, so heavy interpretation is a nessessary evil.

The Supreme Court in the United States has been playing a looooot of "Calvinball" recently. They've never been completely immune from it, but it has gotten a lot more nakedly political.

> In what places do courts ignore or modify law to deliver the result they prefer?

The United States. E.g. ‘the switch in time that saved nine,’ Wickard v. Filburn, Obergefell v. Hodges, Gonzales v. Raich and so forth.

That's common in both European courts (look at e.g. the history of homosexual marriages in the EU) and in the US ("Citizens United").

The core issue is that no Constitution, in fact no law or decree at all can account for all possibilities that real life offers, and so all the bodies of law are up for interpretation all the time.

It's representative democracy.

Religion is what it replaced. Where one person, with a clique of courtiers who personally relied on him for power, enacted whatever took their fancy. Their word was power, whether it was starting wars or forging alliances with unsavoury countries - and woebetide you if you challenged it.

Religion is notably harder to change than country laws.

Religions is just one incarnation of a more fundamental trait of human psychology that allows us to build complex society.

Belief in other shared made up things like law and even money works that way, and most of the world -isms too

There’s a word for that sort of thing, it just happens to be:

antidisestablishmentarianism

That is for the removal of the Church of England as the religion of England, but it’s along those lines.

> to appease the tree-dwelling spirits displaced in its construction.

It seems not:

> A Scandinavian tradition of hoisting a pine tree to the top of framed out buildings had a more functional purpose: when the pine needles fell off, the builders knew the wood frame below had cured/dried out so they could enclose the building.[2]

More likely that a bale of hay was simply a conspicuous but lightweight thing that was easy to get your hands on back in the day.

I was wondering about that but it would only work for the sailor standing in the right place on a boat sailing dead center of the river where there is typically two way traffic.

This doesn't seem like a utilitarian solution, more of a signal with a symbolic intention?

Bales of straw are a cheap, large, soft object you could always find nearby in the pre-motor car days. I can't think of a better object to require.

Why does everyone think it’s something to run into?

At night it’s a light. It’s obviously a notification system. You visibly see the bale of straw before you get to the bridge and you know to slow down and stop and investigate what the clearance issue is.

Yeah it's amazing (in a bad sense) how those bridge too low warnings are ignored most of the time

Well of course when you get stuck then it's too late.

And an additional note: The Van Halen show wasn't a few dudes with guitars and a set of drums going around in a van.

It was a massive display of pyrotechnics and staging - the requirements in the rider weren't there for fun, it was for actual safety.

There's a further aspect (supposedly): the brown M&Ms was listed in the pre-check conditions, and the contract stated that if any of them were found to not be in compliance then the Van Halen team had the right to force checks on any/all of them for compliance. So if they found the brown M&Ms it gave them the contractual right to demand that other, more impactful, requirements be (re)checked for compliance.

You know I’ve seen this explanation a million times for decades and it’s always just a tiny bit wrong.

It’s a small distinction, but actually if the band showed up and found all the brown M&Ms still there the plan would have already been a failure.

The reason it was in the contract was to make sure the promoter had read the contract before signing it and understood what they were getting into.

Band riders are almost invariably redlined. Bands ask for all sorts of crazy shit and you cross out stuff you can’t provide or give a substitute brand name (like if the venue has an exclusive vendor relationship with Coke instead of Pepsi stuff like that) and then you work out any kinks and finalize it.

The reason to put the M&M clause in there is to get the promoter to strike the clause during the contracting process because any competent promoter will read every line carefully and strike something like that.

So when they do you know they read it and know what they are doing are comfortable signing a deal with them.

You would never want to be arriving at the venue with the clause still in force, that’s a sign you have a larger problem.

Source: I was a concert promoter in the 90’s

We absolutely should sunset those laws.

If they are needed they can be voted upon again by parliament, and will no doubt pass.

In fact I would say not only should all laws have built in expiration dates, such expiration dates should be shorter the lower the percentage of votes in parliament it too to pass them!

If you can only get a 51% majority in parliament to pass a law, that law should not exist beyond that election.

You do not remove them. But you should change them when environment changes. Straw bale was decent indicator back in the day. But I think there should be some more modern and even global standard that law could be changed to. And this should be done with reasonable planning, schedule and communication.

If the law is actually valuable and there is political capital for its continuation then surely the legislative body can vote to extend it with minimal fuss.