Sumptuary Laws
Portia Scott • February 27, 2025

The Odd Use of Sumptuary Laws in Old England’s Fashion

Sumptuary Laws are laws or codes enacted to restrict what a government might consider excessive expenditures or improper posturing. Of course, in these United States, we have nothing which would prevent us from buying a dozen jet planes if we wanted to do so and many wealthy folks have collections of interesting cars and boats and all sorts of conspicuous consumption. Although, it is illegal for folks to wear certain uniforms to which they are not entitled: military and law enforcement, for instance. But, in the middle ages England, there were laws which limited, among other things, what kind of fabric one could wear, based on the person’s social status and identity.


You may have known that at that time, unless royal, people could not wear the color purple - it was strictly forbidden and wearing it could result in an accusation of treason, and we all know what happened to folks accused of treason against the crown. (Just one of the outrages surrounding Anne Boleyn’s romance with Henry VIII: she showed up at Court wearing purple before she was married to him, proclaiming herself as royal - which she was not yet - and the King had bought her the fabric: scandalous!)


However, when it came to fashion in merry old England, there were many other similar taboos. 


Even if you could afford it, you could not wear cloth of gold (a fabric with actual gold woven into it) or certain furs, unless you were Royal. Similarly, if you were the wife of a knight, you could wear damask, silk, or taffeta, but you could not if you were of a lower rank.


Everyone could wear linen, but knights were prohibited from using weasel fur in their clothing. Only Royalty and Peers could wear ermine, and one still had to be Noble to wear fox hides.


Only knights and higher social status folks were allowed to wear satin or velvet.


But these laws were not just limitations; there were also compulsory items. Woolen caps had to be worn by males over age 6 on Sundays for anyone lower than a noble; it was mandatory.


Speaking of wool, even the type of wool was restricted to different classes or ranks.


Beyond that, even if you were of the correct rank, you also had to have a certain level of income to be allowed to wear what you wanted.


There were other aspects of Sumptuary Law beyond fabrics and accessories. These could include restrictions on the cut of woman’s gown, gemstones and precious metals, the style of carriages or furniture, the permitted length of a man’s sword, even what food one could eat. 


The reasons given for these rules were stated as minimizing English money going abroad for fabrics and to keep folks from overspending for the good of their souls, but it also allowed people to know each other’s rank and status at a glance.


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MY MOTHER, THE GRAMMAR TEACHER, WOULD BE SO PROUD: We Have Our Own "Comma" Case

By Portia B. Scott, J.D., L.L.M. • July 22, 2026
One of the most absurd things for law students to grasp in that all-important first year, is the idea of what can be considered "ambiguous." (Ambiguity is "an uncertainty of meaning or intention, as in a contractual term or statutory provision.") If language is deemed "ambiguous," what happens next depends on where this ambiguity is found. The ambiguity can be subject to interpretation of a Court - if it is in a statute. If the Court has to use interpretation, there are several tools they can use to derive meaning and intent from the writers of the statute. This search for "Legislative intent" is sometimes easy if there is a part of the statute stating specifically what the Legislature was trying to do. Without that, however, judges will look at what the plain and simple language would mean. If that does not help, then they can look at the surrounding language, the other terms, what might be excluded, what would make the language harmonious with the other laws on the topic... All kinds of factors are examined to determine what the law is trying to say. However, if the ambiguity is found in a contract, the options are different and depend on whether the ambiguity is an obvious mistake ("Art is the Buyer" and then, later "The Buyer, Bert" is written in the same contract) or whether it is a more sneaky ambiguity. Here is where the comma comes into play. The Tariff of 1872 misplaced a comma, resulting in fruits not being subject to the tax. The tariff was trying to say that fruits and fruit plants would be subject to the tariff, but, by placing a comma where it did not belong, fruits become tax free and only fruit-bearing plants were subject to the Tariff. Another is a case where there would be no overtime payments for work done for "...drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution" of foods. Because there was no comma between "shipment" and "distribution," the Court found it questionable if "shipment and distribution" were one joint act or two separate ones. The result? Workers got their overtime payments. Now, we have a case, decided July 22, 2026 by our appellate court, that a comma found between "construed according to the laws of the State of Florida" and "with venue in Collier County," created an ambiguity allowing venue to be set in another County (Martin). The comma controlled and there is an ambiguity, allowing the action to be filed in Martin County, rather than Collier. The benefits of filing in one county verses another, well, that would be an entirely different article.  Just remember: Watch those punctuation marks folks! Ambiguities may be found everywhere!

Gloves are Off!

By Portial B. Scott, J.D.,L.L.M. • May 31, 2026
Appellate Gloves Are Off: Warnings Appear to Be Over with Our Courts Over Unverified Artificial Intelligence Arguments and Filings This is the third straight article I have written on this topic - but things keep moving and changing. In my first two articles on this topic (the use of Al in Court filings), I explained that our appellate Court (the "4th") has been issuing warnings about the use of Artificial Intelligence in drafting and filing papers with the Court if the Al is not double-checked against reality. In those articles, I explained that the 4th was giving warning after warning against filing unauthenticated Al-generated motions, petitions, appeals, complaints, briefs, memoranda of law. Now, in three separate rulings on May 27, 2026, the 4th has stopped issuing warnings and has started imposing sanctions and, for attorneys, referrals to the Florida Bar for disciplinary action. In the first case,a self-represented litigant was found to have abused the courts. by filing some 90 Al-generated motions against his former wife. The 4th observed that the arguments made in his appeal to the 4th were not based on actual cases, rules of procedure or, if they were actual cases, such arguments were not found in those cases. As a self-represented litigant, the 4th cannot refer him to the bar for discipline. So, what can the 4th do? They can prohibit him from being able to file any more papers in our courts without having a Florida Bar -licensed attorney sign off on the papers. This is a drastic sanction since access to the Courts is of such high value in America. We want people to have access to the Courts - so they don't settle their disputes at high noon in the middle of the street with firearms or have it out with brawls. The idea behind requiring such sanctions is that an attorney will think twice before endangering their right to practice law. The attorney requirement is expensive, too. Still, when a litigant abuses the courts system, there must be some way to safeguard the integrity of the Court. The idea of an attorney cherishing their rights to practice, however, may not always be 100% accurate. (See below) The second case involved an attorney who filed an "emergency" motion, citing cases which do not stand for the concept of what the attorney claimed. By way of example of what I mean, if the attorney claimed that Roe v. Wade stands for the proposition that income tax is unconstitutional, that would be claiming something that just is not so. Importantly, it is verifiably not so. One need only look at the Roe v. Wade decision to see it is not correct. The 4th said that, whether the case is misrepresented as meaning something it does not or even does not exist at all, it does not matter. Both are equally wrong. The attorney was reported to the Florida Bar for disciplinary inquest. in the third case, an attorney filed a brief which included references to what has happened at trial and quoted from the transcript of the trial. However, since appeals ususally have to have a copy of the transcript included when the appeal is filed (so the 4th can read what actually happened and not just take the filer's word for it), it soon became obvious that what the attorney said had been said in Court was not true. This might have been a result of poor prompting by the attorney to the Al or intentionally misdirecting the Al. It also could be that the transcript of the trial was fed to Al and Al misunderstood what had happened - due to not understanding fully the meaning of certain legal terms. On top of that, Al also "hallucinated" legal authority and the attorney filed it with the 4th, even apparently invoking some of it in oral argument before the 4th, doubling his sins. In the end, how it happened did not matter. The 4th found that the lawyer cited imaginary legal authorities as if they were law and the 4th reported him to the Florida Bar for discipline action, putting his law license in jeopardy.  I want to make it clear: the 4th does not prohibit the use of Al in filings, but everyone must ensure that the citations to legal authority, the statement of the facts and all manner of statements are accurate, real and not the figments of Al's desire to provide a winning argument at the cost of truth.