Quirky question for legal (historian?) types

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

This is a propos of nothing really, only an odd conversation I was having with someone earlier today. We couldn't come up with an answer, so naturally I thought of throwing it open to the collected wisdom on OTF.

Most laws were originally framed in order to stop people doing things they might otherwise choose to do, in a "free" society. Kill each other, steal, smoke indoors, that kind of thing.

Some laws have been brought in to regulate what people were previously free to do, and allow them to carry on doing so under some form of control - drive a car, watch the BBC, get married, etc.

But have there ever been laws enacted specifically to allow people to do things that they couldn't have done, without that law? About the only thing we could come up with was "act as an MP". You know, in the sense that without the law saying there was such a thing as an MP, anyone declaring themselves to be one would either be ignored, or if they persisted, locked up in a secure institution. But are there any more interesting examples? What laws have expanded the "freedom" of people to "do" things, rather than prevented or controlled them from doing things?

[WOM]

Quirky question for legal (historian?) types

Would gay marriage laws qualify?

[WOM]

Quirky question for legal (historian?) types

I guess anything that entrenches rights might qualify: laws stating that women have the right to vote, or that blacks can go to the same schools and hospitals as whites, etc.

[Wyatt Earp]

Quirky question for legal (historian?) types

The ability to sue and the ability to enter binding contracts are both pretty important.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Quirky question for legal (historian?) types

WOM's are interesting examples, because don't they kind of simply re-establish original freedoms that must once have existed, before someone came along and made a law stopping them in the first place? Certainly the one about black people being "free" to sit wherever they wanted on buses, for example - somebody somewhere must have first made the law saying they couldn't . Not sure if the same applies to gay marriage, but in principle I suppose it might, if you go far back enough in time.