Legal Drama Llama

Hello again,

(At this stage these pictures are just random times in our lives. Just pretend this is us as lawyers)

Here is the last blog I will write as a sprightly 33 year old man.

Next week I'll be a mega sprightly 34 year old super man!

So there's a birthday to look forward to. A weekend of drinking, fooding and some D&D with friends by the looks of things.

This time next week I will be hopefully finishing off genre number 18 on the list of 55 genres. Number 18 takes us far away from the last few genres which have all been comedies. Now, I move into the world of the legal drama!

(Thunder clatters in the sky)

The Devil's Advocate, A Few Good Men, Philadelphia.

This isn't a genre I am particularly focused on in my everyday writing life, nor have I ever wanted to cross it off my bucket list of writing projects which makes me look even more forward to figuring out an idea for it. I am inclined to brainstorm ideas set far into the past or far into the future. As an avid Roman history male man, I learned that the citizens of the republic / empire were quite fond of watching legal proceedings play out. It seems the legal eagles would often come along to court with fans much like a sports team arriving to a stadium with their supporters cheering them on. That setting could be interesting. Plus there are some crazy (by our modern standards of course) laws which could be shown in a short script I could write.

Here are some laws from those kooky Romans:

1. Crying During Funerals Was Illegal for Women

I should explain this? OK. When somebody passed away, the family of the deceased would often want to impress upon the wealthy and powerful of Rome, that the deceased and their family was important. During a funeral, the body would be carried down the street with mourners following. Of course, the more popular and important the deceased was, naturally the more tears would be shed. So, to help show the dearly departed's popularity and importance, the family would pay actors and anyone who was willing to mourn publicly and enthusiastically. This meant as a funeral passed you could see a paid mourner ripping their hair out, scratching their own faces as they sobbed uncontrollably for the dead person.

This led to hysterical scenes that were little more than publicity stunts rather than funerals, so to combat this women were forbidden from crying during funerals.

Many very talented dramatic actresses probably lost a good side hustle after this law was passed.

2. Wearing purple was illegal

Unless you were royalty of course. This law was simply to avoid any of you poor people getting ideas and walking around Rome in a purple toga. Imagine how embarrassing it would be for an aspiring politician or soldier to walk along, see you in purple, and wrongly hail you as Caesar? That would be mortifying for everyone involved and so the law strictly forbade anyone from wearing purple who wasn't wealthy and royal enough to be above that law. Now to make the famous tyrian purple for your robes you would have to harvest thousands of marine snails and the cost of one pound of purple dye was roughly twenty thousand dollars in today's currency. So it was probably pretty hard for the poor citizens of Rome to get some purple clothes in the first place.

3. People killed by lightning were not allowed to be buried

Remember, for a lot of the Roman republics and Empire's existence the people believed in many different religions we can group under the term Paganism. So this law might make sense once we look at the people's belief systems. The Romans believed that lightning strikes were the act of the Roman god Jupiter. Naturally, if someone was to be struck by lightning, this meant that Jupiter had become enraged by the person, probably for some heinous sin, and so this unfortunate person was a sacrifice to the vexed God.

If someone was struck, it was against the law to even lift their body above the knees. Giving them a proper burial was out of the question as this was considered stealing the sacrifice from Jupiter.

However, there was an added stipulation. If you were to bury the thunderstruck person, there would be another sacrifice to Jupiter, and the one being sacrificed would be you who buried the earlier death.

Enough history lessons. I could make a legal drama involving these? I want to keep it away from comedy too. Perhaps I could go the opposite way through time and set it far into the future. This allows me to make up my own legal issues. In dystopian or utopian worlds? I think I can safely say that I don't often write grounded material. Everything has some sort of fantastical or high concept twist to it.

I learned of an old term in Roman law called "Usucapio". This law dealt with the acquisition of ownership of something through possession. "Something", because we are talking about human history, also includes women which meant Roman women were required to leave their homes for three days in the year. Go shopping, go for a walk, anything as long as they left the house. Otherwise they could be considered property for the man of the house. Now I bring up this law as maybe I could twist it in a future world. Replace "women" from the explanation. A house robot not wanting to be a possession?

Or I could stick to Irish law. Specifically the famous Trinity College which still has written in its own legislation, it is illegal for a student to walk through the grounds of Trinity College without carrying their sword.

I don't believe it is currently enforced but keep it in mind should you study at the prestigious Irish college.

So that's my blog for this week. Next week you might read a very haphazard blog as I lose all creative instinct once my brain reaches 34 years of age.

Thanks for reading

Slightly aging Kevin