User talk:James Kemp/NuclearLegality

This is not a summary

The International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons makes no mention of the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, the Martens Clause, or the Geneva Conventions, despite this being the main article referred to. If you are going to create a section template, it should be a summary of existing information, not new and unsourced information. At some point soon, I shall probably start removing the template from articles. This is all new information, it is not a summary.

Note: It may make sense to continue this discussion at User_talk:James_Kemp#Trident_etc., where I have left comments similar to this. - Crosbiesmith 17:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi: If I make edits to the article on the ICJAO so that explicit mention is made of where these articles of international arise in the AO, would that then make this template valid? I want to be open about this so I'm not thought to be reverse-engineering the situation. Apologies for any problems the current summary has caused you; I was working from the actual ICJAO rather than the WP article, and summarised the former. --Jim (Talk) 18:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know that it would make the template valid. However, assuming this information is verifiable and accurate then absolutely, yes, this information should be added to the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons article. Regardless of disagreements on other pages, I think this is the one place where on-one will disagree the information on the judgement should go. I can't see for a moment there is anything wrong in doing this. If people are going to be directed to this page, the page should contain as full and clear a description of the advisory opinion as is possible. Note, I haven't examined any of this content in detail - I just observe that there is content here that isn't in the article.

It is possibly not the place to say this, but if you want to inform people as to the ICJ opinion, getting the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons article up to a very high standard might be an excellent place to start. - Crosbiesmith 11:27, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that this template is a bad idea. It introduces a POV "The Advisory Opinion states that the threat or use of any existing nuclear weapon is unlawful" which is not necessarily true, because it is trying to sum up a complicated legal opinion which runs to pages in a sentence. I do not think that this is possible to give a WP:NPOV of such a complicated legal position in a template. Further the following phrase "as it would be in violation of the following articles of international law" is just wrong. For example taking just the first in the list "St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868" prohibited the use of projectiles under 400 grammes, to date I don't think that nukes fit into that size! I agree with Crosbiesmith on this "if you want to inform people as to the ICJ opinion, getting the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons article up to a very high standard might be an excellent place to start". --Philip Baird Shearer 13:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The original purpose of this template was to provide an easy way to add a section on the legality of nuclear weapons to every article relating to a particular nuclear weapon. It was designed to eventually provide an opening paragraph to a section on "legality" for a particular nuclear weapon, which could then be made specific to that nuclear weapon with further ad hoc additions. This little project has developed in various directions, so this template is currently not used: however, I think it could be in the future, but it would need major refinements and reductions. --Jim (Talk) 11:51, 8 April 2007 (UTC)