Have you ever heard the phrase, "I read them the riot act?"  Do you know what it means?  My DH and I recently had just this question on our minds.  I being a literalist, assumed that there in fact was at one point a "Riot Act" and the phrase arose from reference to it.  Yay for me, I was right. 

There was in fact a "Riot Act" passed on July 20th of 1715 in England.  When an assembly was made to disburse, this act would actually be read to the crowd and those not obeying would be arrested. 

You can read the Riot Act yourself at Project Gutenberg.

Now here's my DH's suggestion.  In typical homeschool dad fashion, he proposes that when our chlidren misbehave and are old enough to write, one of their punishments may be to copy the Riot Act a given number of times.