In Washington DC, the law prohibits the playing of bandy and “shindy” in the streets, the arson of one’s own steamboat and potentially even being a “common scold” – a common law offense levied against those who quarreled with their neighbors.
Aware of the need to clean up this 120-year-old criminal code, lawyers in America’s capital city have spent more than a decade and a half going through the law books in a modernization campaign described by those involved as long overdue, only to see the effort stymied this week at the hands of Joe Biden and an unlikely alliance of Republicans and Democrats.
