Every day throughout the world, people complain about unjust and inconvenient laws. But there are some laws on the books that just make people scratch their heads.

Wisconsin has had its share of laws on the book for years that have simply lost their teeth and are largely ignored. Laws currently on the books in Wisconsin include outlawing cutting a woman’s hair, kissing on a train, and stipulating that if two trains meet at an intersection of the tracks, neither train should proceed until the other has.

In Missouri, one seemingly outdated law has come back to cause trouble for civil authorities, potentially costing the state millions of dollars. The University of Missouri is currently appealing a judge’s December ruling regarding a state law written in 1889 stating that the state should provide free education for its citizens.

St. Louis attorney Bob Herman was digging through old law books, researching a case in which he was representing the Ku Klux Klan against the university, when he found the 114-year-old law.

The judge’s ruling agreed with Herman’s interpretation of the law that the university was in violation when it began charging tuition in 1996.

University of Missouri spokesman Joe Moore said he could not go into detail about the case because it was still being litigated but did say the judge did not offer a remedy in his ruling.

Locally, laws buried from the public eye for decades have failed to bring lucrative lawsuits upon the state but continue to remain on the books.

State statute 346.21 says motorists must yield right of way to livestock. Wisconsin being the country’s dairy land, many more of its own seemingly trivial laws concern its beloved flagship industry.

According to state statue 97.18, the serving of margarine to students, patients or inmates of any state institutions as a substitute for table butter is prohibited, except when the substitute has been ordered for the health of a patient or inmate as directed by a physician. Also, margarine cannot be substituted for butter at a restaurant unless the customer requests it and cannot be sold unless it is wrapped in a separate container that has the word “margarine” in no less than 20-point type.

“These laws concerning margarine are, pure and simple, a subsidy to the dairy industry,” said Arthur McEvoy, professor of law, history and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin.

“There were also health concerns because it was considered an adulterated food product.”

McEvoy said the dairy industry even has federal laws protecting it from losing profits to simulated diary products.

“People in my parents’ generation remember buying margarine with a little package of yellow food coloring, and they’d mix them together to make it look like butter,” McEvoy said.

Quality control is behind another law requiring a license for anyone making cheese and a master cheese-maker’s license for anyone making Limburger cheese.

“A lot of these laws came about in the ’50s and ’60s when the conservative movement was sweeping through the U.S.,” said Jeff Koon, author of the website www.dumblaws.com and the book “You May Not Tie an Alligator to a Fire Hydrant: 101 Real Dumb Laws.”
Koon said many of the laws he writes about seem to stem out of Christian religious values and the influence of Puritanism in colonial America.

“There were a lot of laws about not playing ball on Sunday,” Koon said.