Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law/Archive 12

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1886 in organized crime

FYI, 1886 in organized crime has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 06:02, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Law-related deletion discussion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of secular law schools in the United States. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:08, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Texas Disposal Systems Landfill v. Waste Management Holding

I invite participants in this WikiProject to give their attention to the article Texas Disposal Systems Landfill v. Waste Management Holding, which is being considered for deletion.—Wavelength (talk) 01:58, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Help: Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act 2010

can someone ehelp create this paeg along the lines of how bills in progress are made, the Senate version in the US has not passed.Lihaas (talk) 12:57, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Featured Portal nomination

The Law of England and Wales portal has been nominated for featured status at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Law of England and Wales, and I am notifying related WikiProjects as requested in the nomination instructions. All comments for and against its promotion are welcome, ideally with reference to the featured portal criteria. Credit to Ironholds for writing the bulk of the good and featured articles highlighted by the portal. Bencherlite^Talk 11:37, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

SVP laws

Sexually violent predator legislation and Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act: those articles are in pretty bad shape, could use some expert attention. Tijfo098 (talk) 20:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Law-related question at help desk

Please take a look, thanks.

[[1]]

128.59.180.164 (talk) 23:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Oneida County v. Oneida Indian Nation of N.Y. State

I've tagged the Oneida County v. Oneida Indian Nation of N.Y. State article with {{refimprove}} and explained my reasoning at the talk page. This follows the nomination of the article at DYK and the raising of the referencing issue there and at WT:DYK. Mjroots (talk) 17:18, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

United Kingdom Discrimination Law

I consider that several articles need rewriting after the Equality Act came into force. I think that new titles are appropriate. The articles on the Sex Discrimination Act, Disability Discrimination Act, etc, are written as if these acts are currently in force. I think that there should be separate articles for sex discrimination and disability discrimination, etc, but these should refer to the Equality Act. Possibly, there should be one article on the Equality Act alone. The article United Kingdom employment equality law duplicates much of the material in the Equality Act article. I would like to assist in this, but need help and would prefer if there was consensus before making such large amendments. Can you help? Can you comment?Abigailgem (talk) 20:28, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Notability of proposed legislation

I believe, after editing for some time and seeing other discussions, that it would be worthwhile to develop guidelines for the notability of proposed legislation. I include two types of proposed legislation in this discussion: legislation that had been proposed but ultimately failed, and legislation that is currently pending in a legislative body.

Given the number of bills worldwide which are proposed in legislative bodies, any specific bill that hasn't passed should be presumptively not notable. However, proposed legislation not fitting Wikipedia's notability guidelines does find its way on the site; spurred, perhaps by ancillary, political considerations that go against the principles of the site.

While other subject areas have had specific notability guidelines developed for them, proposed legislation still lacks such guidelines; an issue that has been raised several times here.

I think it would be a good idea to develop specific notability guidelines for proposed legislation. I have written up a rough draft: I invite everyone here to boldly edit the draft on my userspace.

It can be found here: User:Hartboy/Notability_(proposed_legislation)

It is indeed rough; the best practices can use considerable attention, and I have included archived discussions of the notability of specific bills as a reference for the types of issues raised.

Hartboy (talk) 07:14, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Why do we need another set of guidelines? Why not just use the general notability guideline about the amount of coverage a proposal received, together with appropriate discussions about merging content e.g. where a later piece of legislation picks up on earlier efforts? Why do we explicitly need to presume non-notability anyway when the burden is on someone wanting to write or keep an article to show that the proposal is notable and doesn't fall foul of e.g. WP:NOTNEWS? (And I took the liberty of fixing the link to your userspace draft – full urls aren't needed for internal links, of course.) Bencherlite^Talk 12:39, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I came up with the idea for guidelines as a result of a mixed bag of consensus over what qualifies as notable proposed legislation in several discussions, including the following:

* WP:Articles for deletion/Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009

* WP:Articles for deletion/Gas tax holiday

* WP:Articles for deletion/No Child Left Inside Act of 2009

* WP:Articles for deletion/American Sovereignty Restoration Act

* WP:Articles for deletion/Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988

* Talk:Performance Rights Act#Old act and notability

Hartboy (talk) 15:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Discussing this topic is is better than the series of WP:PRODs added by Hartboy (talk · contribs) to various articles on legislation. See my contrib list or Hartboy's for the list of PRODded articles to which I refer. Thanks. 67.101.6.133 (talk) 05:45, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there a notability guide for legislation that passed? Considering that hundreds or even thousands of jurisdictions around the world have legislation that says essentially the same thing, any one instance of that legislation is not notable enough to justify an article. For example, how many municipalities do you imagine have laws requiring dog owners to use a leash?

If there is to be a guideline, I think it should be generalized to cover both passed and proposed/failed legislation. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

A-class legal articles

I notice that we have 11 entries in Category:A-Class legal articles. According to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment, A-class srticles should be "well-organized and essentially complete, having been reviewed by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject, like military history, or elsewhere." (You may know that the WP Military History A-Class review is a very, very well-oiled machine and has lots of input from other editors to ensure that A-class articles in that project are just a short step from FA). As far as I'm aware, there's no such review process here at WP:Law, so I thought I'd raise the issue for discussion. Should we just reassess them to B or lower as they actually deserve; should we set up a review process; or should we allow anyone to assess an article, even one they have largely written, as A-class? United States v. Reynolds, for example, has a one-sentence lead and an odd criticism section, which appears to set out chunks of evidence to a Senate committee without quotations marks to make it clear that quotations are being used. It's not even close to GA class in my view, let alone A-class or a short step from FA. This is also an article which was assessed as A-class by one of the main authors, which isn't within the spirit of A-class reviews anyway. Thoughts? Bencherlite^Talk 12:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I've never seen A-class used around this project. I'd advocate:

1. going through current A-class articles and reassessing, and
2. then deciding if we even need A-class, since projects can decide not to use it. If we decide we do want to use it, we then
3. have to set up a proper method of assessment, similar to the WP:MILHIST one, for example. I'm going for "we shouldn't use it", simply because we don't necessarily have the manpower to coordinate such a project, and the alternative (letting article-writers assess their own) is obviously problematic. Ironholds (talk) 14:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I concur. Our time is better spent assessing articles at GA/FA/FL (and, dare I say, WP:FPOC!) than in inventing another review structure which is bound to be problematic. Bencherlite^Talk 14:16, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

DLA Piper

There is a discussion taking place in Talk:DLA Piper/Archives/2012#Flags and office locations, as regards whether it is appropriate to use flag images to represent all the locations of this company - in DLA Piper#Offices.

Please could others voice their opinions within the discussion, to help form consensus. Many thanks,  Chzz  ►  16:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Law school's law journal -- acceptable source?

There is a discussion that may interest some people here as to whether a specific law journal at a law school is an acceptable source, for a certain article.--Epeefleche (talk) 03:58, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

European Court of Human Rights / ECJ citations

I've recently encountered a couple of articles with defective links to case reports, and the only database I can find for Euro decisions requires a subscription, which doesn't help. I'm astonished, frankly, and it's possibly because it's late here, but is there a free source comparable with BAILII for these cases? Thanks. Rodhullandemu 23:25, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Access to full-text ECHR and ECJ decisions is free. See HUDOC (ECHR) and EUR-LEX (ECJ). Lamberhurst (talk) 13:23, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Gerald Walpin v. Corporation for National and Community Service, et al.

Can someone review User:Skiing in Switzerland/sandbox & see if it fits into the criteria to be moved into the mainspace. 「ɠu¹ɖяy」¤ • ¢  23:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Article is well sourced. All claims in article match sources. Subject is notable enough to have received continuous coverage in major sources for a year and a half. Skiing in Switzerland (talk) 13:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I was asking for a established editor that is part of WikiProject Law to look into it. You wrote the article, so of course you will think it is notable, especially since you are new to editing Wikipedia. I came to WikiProject Law, because they are more expertized in Wikipedia's policies on notable law cases. 「ɠu¹ɖяy」¤ • ¢  19:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Note: Skiing in Switzerland is banned user User:Grundle2600, pursuing one of his hobbyhorses. Rd232 ^talk 22:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Featured portal nomination (2)

Repeat message as the portal has received no reviews after two weeks!

The Law of England and Wales portal has been nominated for featured status at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Law of England and Wales, and I am notifying related WikiProjects as requested in the nomination instructions. All comments for and against its promotion are welcome, ideally with reference to the featured portal criteria. Credit to Ironholds for writing the bulk of the good and featured articles highlighted by the portal. Bencherlite^Talk 15:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Legal articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Legal articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Sunday, November 14th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of November, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

If you have already provided feedback, we deeply appreciate it. For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 16:34, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

SS Utopia

Article needs an expert on historical maritime law - see the "Aftermath" section and talk page. East of Borschov 20:06, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Nomination of Werner Erhard vs. Columbia Broadcasting System for deletion

A discussion has begun about whether the article Werner Erhard vs. Columbia Broadcasting System, which is relevant to the subject of this WikiProject, should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Werner Erhard vs. Columbia Broadcasting System until a consensus is reached, and you are welcome to contribute to the discussion.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 18:01, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

"The Believer" magazine as RS source for legal issues?

Please see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#The_Believer. -- Cirt (talk) 14:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

reliable sources for legal issues

Hi, (reposted from RS/N), we have a dispute at the Climategate article which currently reads (with emphasis added):

The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (dubbed "Climategate" in the media) began in November 2009 with the illegal release[2] of thousands of emails and other documents...

The source [2] is this document here ref.

Now many reliable sources have described the email release as simply 'unauthorised', e.g. Revkin/NYT, Yale University study, BAMS study. The only RS of a legal nature that I know of also uses this wording -- Legal News Online.

Further, some climate change skeptics, e.g. the MIT professor of atmospheric science, Richard Lindzen, have expressed the view that, since the climategate emails revealed possible attempts by CRU scientists to avoid complying with UK Freedom of Information Act laws, the release of the emails may not have been illegal, and may in fact have been protected by UK whistleblower laws.

The question is this: is this government report, noting that it bears the Royal Seal, a sufficiently reliable source to justify Wikipedia itself asserting that the email release was 'illegal'?

See also: RS/N discussion. Alex Harvey (talk) 05:35, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Attainders of Earl of Westmorland and others Act 1571

Hello, my friends: A group of us are working on clearing the backlog at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_October_2006. The article in the above header has been without sources for the past four years and may be removed if none are added. I wonder if you can help do so. Sincerely, and all the best to you, GeorgeLouis (talk) 17:35, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

This is a one sentence summary of an Act of Parliament that correctly cites the primary sources (the Act itself and its repealing Act). Whether the article is needed given [Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland] is another question. It's difficult to see what other citation could be added given the content (I checked both citations in the HMSO Chronological table to the Statutes, but that's just a reliable secondary source.) Lyndwood (talk) 12:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Italicising case names

I have no idea how this has happened, but some excellent individual has made it so that all case names are now appearing as italics. Well done whoever this was! Wikidea 16:23, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I assume you mean Mhiji (talk · contribs) with this edit to {{Infobox Court Case}}. Bencherlite^Talk 16:59, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe that's it, thanks! - but it's not just the infobox itself, it's also the case name as it appears in the title of the page - for instance, and this is a question I have - this case has it: Demir and Baykara v Turkey but this one doesn't: International Transport Workers Federation v Viking Line ABP. Any ideas? Wikidea 18:30, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

In that latter case, the name given in the infobox (The Rosella) doesn't match the title of the page so the hidden usage of {{italic title}} doesn't work. Bencherlite^Talk 08:14, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Shyamala Rajender

I've created a severely stubby new article titled Shyamala Rajender. I was surprised that there was apparently no article about the Rajender case within Wikipedia.

Could members of this project help civilize the article? Work is needed not only within the article, but also in other articles that should link to it. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:00, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Amazing how sleepy this WikiProject is. I edited this page more than 36 hours ago, and that's the most recent edit! That would never happen at the talk page of the WikiProject I'm most familiar with.

Are there no Wikipedia articles about sex-discrimination lawsuits? Michael Hardy (talk) 16:52, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

This has historically been a relatively quiet wikiproject, for whatever reason. We are looking to change that, but it depends like anything else on how many editors are interested in participating at any given time.

As for sex discrimination cases, we have articles on the key Supreme Court cases that have defined the constitutional law of sex discrimination (such as Craig v. Boren, Frontiero v. Richardson, etc.). We have much lesser coverage of discrimination cases in the lower courts, which of course is understandable, as there are hundreds of them every year and each individual one, which significant, has less of an impact on the law as a whole than the Supreme Court rulings. Perhaps someone who has worked on the discrimination-related articles will know more about what other coverage we have in this area and what a good goal for it might be. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

How about a general article on sex discrimination lawsuits? That article could link to the one I created and to the ones you mentioned. But there doesn't seem to be one. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:08, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

New Trial versus Trial de Novo

Please help, law experts. Should New trial and Trial de novo be merged to a single article? Or should they remain separate. Please comment at the talk page for new trial. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 05:03, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Canada marriage law vs Saskatchewan province polygamy

I need a legal expert to explain at User talk:Roberto12 why it is that a recent Saskatchewan marriage law determination does not have strong enough sourcing to belong in articles related to polygamy, such as Polygamy in North America. The Saskatchewan province ruling is one that seems to contradict Canadian federal law, and Roberto12 has been struggling with a way to put that fact in Wikipedia. Perhaps there is a way... you be the judge. Binksternet (talk) 05:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Seeking help on Universal Pictures lawsuit

Hi, my name is Hunter. I had a question I hoped members of WP:LAW could perhaps help me with, or direct me to someone (or some resource) that could. I have been working to improve the article about a B movie called Laserblast, and while searching for sources I found an old press release from PR Newswire dated October 11, 1983, about three favorable judgments that MCA-Universal had won. Regarding one of them, it said:

The "E.T." suite (sic) was a federal action filed by J.A.R. Sales and claimed that "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" infringed rights they own in the feature film "Laserblast." On Monday, Oct. 3, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California dismissed the complaint with prejudice.

Now, this didn't make very much sense to me (which makes me suspect the press release is no good) and I was having trouble finding anything else about this. However, while searching Google, I did find this page, which seems to indicate there was a suit between Universal and J.A.R. Sales over alleged copyright infringement regarding the film E.T. This source, however, mentions nothing about Laserblast. (The dates also don't match up, as the website is from 1984 and the press release is from 1983, so it's possible there is a different lawsuit between Universal and J.A.R. Sales over E.T.)

What I'm wondering is whether I can get ahold of the original complaint or docket related to this case. However, I don't have a PACER account, and don't know of any other way to get it. Does anyone know where I might be able to find this, or find more information about this case? Please let me know. Thanks! — Hunter Kahn 02:14, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• Nobody, huh? :) — Hunter Kahn 00:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Treaty of The Hague (1895)

Treaty of The Hague (1895) has been prodded for deletion. 65.93.12.43 (talk) 05:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Rule by decree / enabling act

I'm proposing that Enabling act be merged into Rule by decree. Now I'm actually not quite sure if a merge should be done, but I am sure that there's a lot of overlap here and the relationship between these two closely related topics needs sorting out. A merge might help that, or else a merge discussion might encourage someone to sort it out so a merge isn't necessary. If a merge happens, an unmerge in WP:SUMMARY style might make sense at some point in the future when the topic is more fully developed. Input please at Talk:Rule_by_decree#Merge. Rd232 ^talk 13:09, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

New article: Internet and Technology Law Desk Reference

New article, created, at Internet and Technology Law Desk Reference. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 12:42, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Propaganda quote

Could someone replace the propaganda quote at the top of the page? I mean this one:

"The maxims of law are these: to live honestly, to hurt no one, to give every one his due."

Given that none of these things are remotely true about law, it might be better to use a different quote. Something about the maxims being money or revenge would be more fitting. At least that's what it would say if non-lawyers controlled the law portal. 216.232.242.7 (talk) 03:17, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Wong Kim Ark; Afroyim; Terrazas

I've been working on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, Afroyim v. Rusk, and Vance v. Terrazas — three important citizenship law cases. Comments welcome. Richwales (talk · contribs) 05:14, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Victor Schwartz

This is a redlink, and it shouldn't be. It's kind of embarrassing that there's a Wikipedia article for Ted Frank and none for the far more notable Victor Schwartz. I know Victor, so WP:COI prevents me from rectifying this gap, but not you. Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL THF (talk) 03:27, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Category:English people convicted of actual bodily harm

Can anyone with legal expertise shed some light on a discussion of Category:English people convicted of actual bodily harm at today's Categories for Discussion?

Thanks! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Appeal from a magistrate's court to the Court of appeal (England and Wales]

Court of Appeal of England and Wales says that the criminal division of the Court of appeal hears appeal from magistrate's courts, but there is no mention of this in Challenges to decisions of England and Wales magistrates' courts and Magistrates'_Court_(England_and_Wales)#Challenges_to_decisions_of_magistrates.27_courts. Apokrif (talk) 16:26, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The first article is imprecise. The CA only hears criminal appeals from Crown Courts, but also determines appeals against sentence when the conviction is in the Magistrates' Court and defendant has been sent to the Crown Court for sentence. I've amended the article. Rodhullandemu 17:37, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Was it customary for English married couples to adopt surname of the partner with more land?

I have opened a request for comment at Talk:Name change#Was it customary for English married couples to adopt surname of the partner with more land?. Your input would be appreciated. Jc3s5h (talk) 04:27, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

On making technical articles accessible

The folks at WT:MATH receive regular complaints about math-related articles being incomprehensible to people who don't have advanced degrees in mathematics. A typical complaint is that articles on advanced subjects contain zero sentences that could be understood by someone who studied calculus (so we're not talking about 12 year olds complaining that they still don't understand their pre-algebra homework).

They have recently asserted in a FAQ that the impenetrable nature of the subjects "is no different from other specialized fields such as law".

My question for you: Is there any law-related subject that you think is impossible to explain (at least the basics of) at a level that a typical university student would understand? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

You are impressively dedicated to proving us wrong. Anyone in this WikiProject who wants to see the disputed text should visit the first question under Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/FAQ. The text originally said "law and medicine", but he asked this same question of WP:MED and used their response to justify removing "medicine" and someone else used their response to justify removing "medicine"; I'm sure that he expects the same sort of response out of you. Ozob (talk) 12:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I am attempting to centralize the discussion. Interested users are invited to WT:MATH#"Law and medicine". Ozob (talk) 12:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

As a point of fact, I haven't ever edited the FAQ page. If the text was removed, then it was someone else.

I am (very) happy to see that a couple of other editors at WT:MATH are proposing practical solutions, e.g., basic questions that ought to be answered in the lead and making history sections intelligible to teenagers.

I have asked here because, although your assertion seemed dubious to me, but I don't honestly know enough to know if I simply haven't heard about the impossibly complicated legal concepts. If I'm wrong, then I'd like to find that out. If I'm not wrong, then the FAQ should be changed to reflect reality. "Proving you wrong" is really not my goal. I'd be just as happy to prove you right. (Happier, even: I'm a geek, which means that I like to learn things.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

My apologies on the misattribution; I stand corrected. Ozob (talk) 22:00, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

New article: Beyond the First Amendment

New article, created, at Beyond the First Amendment. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 21:59, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

White v Driver

I have just added the case White v Driver. I would be grateful if a project member could look at it and suggest any changes needed. Thanks. Rjm at sleepers (talk) 12:50, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Name legislation

I have started a discussion at WikiProject Anthroponymy about a bill in the Vermont legislature that would impose limitations on what name parents can give to their newborns (or at least, what name can be recorded on the birth certificate). I invite you to comment over there. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:35, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

New article: Freedom of Expression(R)

New article, created, at Freedom of Expression(R). Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Uttering deletion proposal

There is currently a proposal to delete the uttering article. To participate in a discussion, go here. — AjaxSmack 00:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

New article: Net.wars

New article, created, at Net.wars. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 21:52, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

New article: The Best American Magazine Writing 2007

New article, created, at The Best American Magazine Writing 2007. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 00:20, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Information about plant quarantines

Per a topic at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine#Grape questions (related to a FAC), I was wondering if anyone knew of a good article that discusses quarantine standards in regards to propagation and distribution restrictions. There is a stub, Plant quarantine, that I just flagged as being part of WP:PLANT, but I was wondering if you guys knew of something better. This is for the Thomcord FAC. – VisionHolder « talk » 22:49, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Capital punishment — how to describe in article's opening sentence?

There is a dispute going on at Capital punishment over which (if any) of the following statements are appropriate for the opening sentence of the article:

• Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the killing of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offence.
• Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the infliction of death upon a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offence.
• Capital punishment or the death penalty is the execution of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offence.

Is "killing" indicative of an anti-capital-punishment POV? Is "infliction of death" an inappropriate euphemism? Is defining capital punishment as "execution" a circular definition (note that Execution is a redirect to Capital punishment)?

Additional input would be welcome so that some sort of consensus can be reached. Thanks. Richwales (talk · contribs) 18:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

What category is appropriate?

A discussion at one of the RefDesks referred to Michael Dillon and Sir Ewan Forbes, 11th Baronet. The individuals aren't linked by any category, and it occurred to me that it would be useful to have one for people who are mainly notable for their involvement in a legal case. (I am not thinking specifically of sexuality -- just any legal case.) Is there some such category or list already? BrainyBabe (talk) 19:17, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Bad faith article had complete rewrite of law section; Needs Wikiproject review again

The bad faith article had complete rewrite of law section. When reviewed by WIkiProject Law, the article was completely NRS. It is now completely RS. None of the previous content was retained, so it needs Wikiproject Law re-review. PPdd (talk) 18:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

George Anastaplo and Freedom of Speech

Many freedom-of-speech articles have have received a lot of improvements recently. Such energetic editors might be interested in writing about George Anastaplo, and his Supreme Court case, which has the famous dissent of Justice Hugo Black, which he instructed should be read during his funeral service:

The effect of the Court's 'balancing' here is that any State may now reject an applicant for admission to the Bar if he believes in the Declaration of Independence as strongly as Anastaplo and if he is willing to sacrifice his career and his means of livelihood in defense of the freedoms of the First Amendment. But the men who founded this country and wrote our Bill of Rights were strangers neither to a belief in the 'right of revolution' nor to the urgency of the need to be free from the control of government with regard to political beliefs and associations. Thomas Jefferson was not disclaiming a belief in the 'right of revolution' when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. And Patrick Henry was certainly not disclaiming such a belief when he declared in impassioned words that have come on down through the years: 'Give me liberty or give me death.' This country's freedom was won by men who, whether they believed in it or not, certainly practiced revolution in the Revolutionary War.
59

Since the beginning of history there have been governments that have engaged in practices against the people so bad, so cruel, so unjust and so destructive of the individual dignity of men and women that the 'right of revolution' was all the people had left to free themselves. As simple illustrations, one government almost 2,000 years ago burned Christians upon fiery crosses and another government, during this very century, burned Jews in crematories. I venture the suggestion that there are countless multitudes in this country, and all over the world, who would join Anastaplo's belief in the right of the people to resist by force tyrranical governments like those.
60 In saying what I have, it is to be borne in mind that Anastaplo has not indicated, even remotely, a belief that this country is an oppressive one in which the 'right of revolution' should be exercised.10 Quite the contrary, the entire course of his life, as disclosed by the record, has been one of devotion and service to his country—first, in his willingness to defend its security at the risk of his own life in time of war and, later, in his willingness to defend its freedoms at the risk of his professional career in time of peace. The one and only time in which he has come into conflict with the Government is when he refused to answer the questions put to him by the Committee about his beliefs and associations. And I think the record clearly shows that conflict resulted, not from any fear on Anastaplo's part to divulge his own political activities, but from a sincere, and in my judgment correct, conviction that the preservation of this country's freedom depends upon adherence to our Bill of Rights. The very most that can fairly be said against Anastaplo's position in this entire matter is that he took too much of the responsibility of preserving that freedom upon himself.
61

This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that Anastaplo has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar.11 It shows, not only that Anastaplo has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost. It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law—men like Malsherbes, who, at the cost of his own life and the lives of his family, sprang unafraid to the defense of Louis XVI against the fanatical leaders of the Revolutionary government of France12—men like Charles Evans Hughes, Sr., later Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, who stood up for the constitutional rights of socialists to be socialists and public officials despite the threats and clamorous protests of self-proclaimed superpatriots13—men like Charles Evans Hughes, Jr., and John W. Davis, who, while against everything for which the Communists stood, strongly advised the Congress in 1948 that it would be unconstitutional to pass the law then proposed to outlaw the Communist Party14—men like Lord Erskine, James Otis, Clarence Darrow, and the multitude of others who have dared to speak in defense of causes and clients without regard to personal danger to themselves. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.
62 But that is the present trend, not only in the legal profession but in almost every walk of life. Too many men are being driven to become government-fearing and time-serving because the Government is being permitted to strike out at those who are fearless enough to think as they please and say what they think.15 This trend must be halted if we are to keep faith with the Founders of our Nation and pass on to future generations of Americans the great heritage of freedom which they sacrificed so much to leave to us. The choice is clear to me. If we are to pass on that great heritage of freedom, we must return to the original language of the Bill of Rights. We must not be afraid to be free.
63 Mr. Justice BRENNAN, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins, dissenting.

Many sources can be found at a site about Anastaplo.

Thanks,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (talk) 07:33, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Need some expertise on superior knowledge doctrine

Please see Talk:Superior knowledge doctrine for questions as to the origin of this principle. Mangoe (talk) 15:39, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Lolicon

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article following its nomination for reassessment. You are being notified as your project banner is on the talk page. I have found some concerns which you can see at Talk:Lolicon/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 03:02, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Collaboration for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Greetings, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution has been chosen as the U.S. Wikipedians Collaboration of the Month for February 2011. As a project who has identified this article to be in your scope we encourage you to edit this article and help to build it up to better explain the subject and to get it promoted. --Kumioko (talk) 20:49, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of European mandatory age limits and related laws

The article European mandatory age limits and related laws has been proposed for deletion. The proposed-deletion notice added to the article should explain why.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Hugahoody (talk) 23:02, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Adding ILEX page to Law Project

Hi,

I'd like to ensure a comprehensive and accurate amount of information in Wikipedia about the legal system in England and Wales.

How do I nominate this page to be included in the project? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilex_(disambiguation)

Please note - as this page already exists I did not think it appropriate to add to the articles for nominatiopn list.

Hutchfish (talk) 16:18, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I think you mean Institute of Legal Executives, which I have now tagged with the project's banner. Bencherlite^Talk 16:26, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, I do mean that page - apologies I added the incorrect link. : )

Thanks for adding the banner.

Hutchfish (talk) 16:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Software license merge

There is a rekindled discussion about organization of articles related to software licenses. Feel free to contribute to this. I've taken the liberty of adding some of the articles in question to this project. --Kvng (talk) 19:37, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

aXXo GA reassessment

One of the articles under this project, aXXo, is having its good article status reassessed, and may be delisted. Feel free to comment on the review at Talk:AXXo/GA2. Swarm ^X 20:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

GAR reassessment of International Criminal Court

Hi, this is just to let you know that the ICC article is being reassessed at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/International Criminal Court/1. Jezhotwells (talk) 18:11, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Court settlements

Is there a way to track case outcomes through the US Courts (or somehow)? I want to know what eventually happened here. Adabow (talk · contribs) 08:01, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Three strikes law

Hello. I want to say that your project importance rating for this article is too low, and also to ask for some of you to put it on your watchlist and respond to its talkpage, and review the edits that are made there to which I have expressed some concern on the relevant discussion[2]. ~ R.T.G 18:27, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Capital punishment in Vietnam

Hallo, there's some volunteer work to do to bring this page to acceptable standards of quality... Peter Moulton (talk) 13:54, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:Law and WP:SCOTUS on Wikisource

Hey everyone, I'd like to invite you all to participate in WikiProject Law and WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases on Wikisource. My colleague Slaporte runs a bot that is currently in the process of importing every Supreme Court decision from bulk.resource.org's collection of the United States Reports. We need help guiding and cleaning up after the bot by fixing lists of case names, disambiguating common case names, proofreading cases, etc. If you want to get involved, you can check out our to do list, add your name to our list of participants, or contact me on my talk page on either site.

I'm also going to add a more prominent link to the Wikisource project on this project page. Feel free to revert this if you feel that it is spammy or inappropriate. - LegalSkeptic (talk) 18:01, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Legal opinion

Hi, I'm looking for an expert opinion on copyright law as it pertains to Wiki policy. Would you be interested in offering an opinion please on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Image use policy? Thank you. USchick (talk) 02:04, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation question

Please see Talk:Neurolaw#Disambiguation_issue. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 02:03, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Request: note & differentiate between LAW and WIKILAWYERING

Could a hatnote be added, that says like: "This is about ... For lets-not-play-Wikilawyer, see ..."? -DePiep (talk) 17:35, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Scope

Are the following laws within the scope of this Project?

• Road Traffic Act 1930
• Road Traffic Act 1934
• Highway Act
• Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984
• Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions
• Highway Code

Thanks. --trevj (talk) 16:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Looking for a source

See this discussion. I'm guessing that this is something that should be easy to cite from a legal textbook. SDY (talk) 23:18, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

UK Supreme Court

Okay, as I'm sure many of you are aware the United Kingdom Supreme Court has been working as the Court of Last Resort for all English, Welsh and N.Irish appeals and some Scottish ones for just over 18 months now. During that time it has passed 87 judgments in ~85 appeals. Wikipedia has articles on approximately 9 of these and only 1 is rated any higher than start class.

In 2010, the Court of Appeal (between both divisions) seem to have considered 4000+ cases (Source being R v Williams [2010] EWCA Crim 2552 and LA v SB [2010] EWCA Civ 1744) although this figure does include appeals that are instantly dismissed. Meanwhile the UKSC heard 58 cases during the same time period, all of which were, in the opinion of a panel of the countries most senior judges, related to 'points of law of general public importance'.

I think there is a strong argument for inherent notability of the cases heard by the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile the coverage of these cases on Wikipedia is pretty poor. We have 8 Stub/Starts, 1 C class article and annual lists (which were pretty incomplete but I'm working on fixing them. All of these pages are pretty much orphaned and unreferenced, and to be honest most of them are just copied and pasted from the judgments.

What I'm proposing is a serious drive/taskforce from the project to seriously improve and if possible, complete Wikipedia's coverage of current UKSC cases, including properly organising, categorising and un-orphaning cases. Obviously UK lawyers will be most helpful for this but I don't see why others can't join in (either copyediting or developing content under the 'supervision' of specialists).

If we can get that done then I'm sure a standing panel of around 4-5 editors could be a possibility to add new cases (since the workload is on average 1 article a week).

I've made a template which can be used for SC cases, it can be found here. The list of judgments and horrible redlinks are here, here and here

What does everybody think? Is there somewhere I should go to formally make this a motion or whatever or is it just a case of gathering interest?

Postscript: I realise that its not a hard and fast rule that Supreme Court cases are more important in practice than CA or QBD cases, I remember Lord Denning said something once about preferring his time as a CA judge to his work in the HL because he actually had more influence over the law there. However I think its important that we take this oppurtunity to achieve this goal (full and accurate coverage of SC cases) whilst it is achievable. The formation of the SC gives Wikipedia a unique oppurtunity to fully cover a 'new' topic, whilst i don't think it would be as workable a goal to fully cover all important English cases (although it is obviously important that we continue to attempt this.

Regards, Bob House 884 (talk) 14:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea and will do my best to assist. Bencherlite^Talk 00:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Note: there is now a (temporary) project page here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law/UKSC -Bob House 884 (talk) 00:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposed Topic - Texas Board of Legal Specialization

Hello,

I have written an article on behalf of a client, the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, but would like to make sure this meets your requirements. I have checked to make sure my sources are reliable and this is a notable subject. This is an organization affiliated with several other legal entities that have pages on including the State Bar of Texas and the Supreme Court of Texas. I have had the article reviewed through Requests for Feedback and told it looks fine but told to check with you for more professional feedback. The article is still in my user area and has not yet been posted live. Is there any specific next step I need to take have you it considered as a WikiProject Law topic. Thank you in advance for your feedback. Sarahrz1 (talk) 14:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Requested Article: Women's Property Rights

I would like to propose a new article concerning Women's property inheritance rights, as currently, resources pertaining to this issue are quite limited. A quick search for "Inheritance rights" or "Women's property rights" redirect to the overall "Property" and "Inheritance" wikipedia pages, which mention gendered roles very rarely, if at all. The issues of women's property rights and inheritance rights are attuned with Gendered Issues as well as Human Rights efforts. However, there is a significant tie to the area of Property Law, as well.

Thus, I would like to propose an entry that will be an encompassing assessment of the shifting focus of economic and social matters, focusing on the issues of women empowerment through land ownership. Issues of property and inheritance rights, and the unjust nature that has shifted natural recipients to male heads, either through corrupt titling companies, social norms, or societal standards, will also be examined. I am completely open to suggestions for this topic. Slin2264 (talk) 02:46, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

United States Bill of Rights is a candidate for the U.S. Collaboration of the Month

The United States Bill of Rights article has been submitted as a possible candidate for the U.S. Collaboration of the Month. --Kumioko (talk) 16:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Reward board post

A post I made to the reward board may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 02:43, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

9:0?

It's been pointed out to me this reproduction of the Hadley v Baxendale judgment appears to be abridged. Anybody know if there's a complete version, & how to address the issue of its use as a cite? (Issue also raised at talk of the judgement page.) TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 23:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I've checked it against the two cites for the case via WL, it appears that the BAILII judgment is short the law reporter's summary & list of authorities from the top of the page, but thats not really a big loss in my view. Other than that its identical to (1854) 156 ER 145, which is itself a reprint of (1854) ExCh 341. As far as I can tell, the case was not reported anywhere else so the content on the BAILII page is pretty much the most authoritative it gets. Hope that helps. Bob House 884 (talk) 00:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm.. actually strike that, I've seen the IP's comments on your talk page and I think I may have misunderstood the issue and not been careful enough comparing the reports.. I'll get back to you asap. Bob House 884 (talk) 01:04, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've had a better look now, the BAILII version is about 1k words shorter than the other two reports which are (seemingly) identical, its been cut down and reworded by someone, but its hard to tell whether thats from the time of the judgment or a modern thing. Westlaw and the textbooks cite (1854) 156 ER 145 & 9 ExCh 341.

Lexis cites (1854) 23 LJ Ex 179, 9 Exch 341, 18 Jur 358, 2 WR 302, 156 ER 145, [1843-60] All ER Rep 461, 2 CLR 517, 23 LTOS 69, but can only provide the text of the reprinted ALL ER.

Nobody cites the BAILII version ([1854] EWHC Exch J70), probably because it's one of their retrospectively imposed neutral cites.

It's possible that BAILII has copied one of the missing reports, which you might be able to access at a library. It might be that they've conciously trimmed it down.

In either case I think its not appropriate to link to the BAILII version in the lead, but you can put it in the external links as an alternative report. BAILII judgments are usually a last resort for when 'better' reports aren't available.

Two unrelated points: the citations in the case infobox are completely out and the passage quoted is from pages 354-356 rather than 354-355.

Hope that helps, sorry for cocking up first time Bob House 884 (talk) 01:48, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Bob, it helps a lot! I've made changes to the cites, per your info here. One question: is pp 354-356 equivalent to pp 145-147 if we dump the bailii.org cite in the lead and use 156 ER 145 instead? 71.246.238.214 (talk) 03:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Good job so far, if you use the ER cite then the quotes are all from page 152, if you use the ExCh one then the quotes are from 354-6. It's not really too important which you use since theyre both the same text, but you should identify the law report you've taken the quote with a pinpoint something like this

If your interested, [1843-60] All ER Rep 461 (that is the reprints of the law reports) identifies the judges as Barons Parke, Alderson, Platt and Martin. Regards Bob House 884 (talk) 08:08, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, again, Bob. I'll fix the ref and page number right now. 71.246.238.214 (talk) 18:03, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Jeffrey Lena

I've created a new article titled Jeffrey Lena, about the lawyer who represents the Vatican in the USA. To do:

• Expand the article.
• Link to it from appropriate other articles. For now, it's an "orphan".

Michael Hardy (talk) 20:24, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Defining rape in the lead of the Rape article

Opinions are needed on the following discussion: Rewrite of the lead making the term difficult to define. I reverted James500's edits because the lead was already extensively worked out on the talk page, and James500's rewrite made the definition confusing and sloppy; not to mention...it defines rape first and foremost as the name of a statutory crime in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and other countries...and he added text that clearly needed sources. Further, his tagging of various statements (with the tags "dubious"/"where?"/"who?"/etc.) are uncalled for. All it takes is tagging a section with one large tag. And when a statement says "In America," it is pretty clear where..."where" is. Flyer22 (talk) 01:14, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Good law

I've just created an article on Good law, which is a pretty important concept. I could use some help expanding it. Raul654 (talk) 04:40, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Whether or not an insurance policy is the same thing as an insurance contract?

We are discussing about the said question and would like to request for your opinions, please join us here. Thank you.

--Aristitleism (talk) 16:46, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Laws regarding rape#Continuation of the dispute on this page

How to initially define rape has now been moved to the Laws regarding rape article. I have an issue with the lead not defining rape as "sexual intercourse/sexual activity without consent" first and then going into the state/jurisdiction stuff, as well as with how the lead is formatted in general (my view that it is messy and needs cleanup). Needless to say, opinions are needed.

The full discussion about it is higher than the above linked discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 23:50, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Rape#Definition of rape / sexual assault

I know, I know...yet another discussion about rape at this alk page. But opinions are needed. A proper move/merge discussion would be best, though, to bring in the wider Wikipedia community on this. The discussion is about whether or not the articles should be merged/whether or not the Rape article should exist. Flyer22 (talk) 02:08, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Murder vs homicide

I originally posted this comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography but nobody has weighed in yet so I thought I'd try here.

I've noticed that the word "murder" is used in categories (and in some articles) in a loose manner. Anyone who is killed by another person is categorized as a murder victim in some way. But the term "murder" has a specific legal meaning (at least in Canada, the U.S., the UK): it's the intentional killing of another person with malice aforethought (of different degrees). This definition presupposes that a perpetrator has been apprehended, charged, tried, and found guilty of murder (rather than, say, manslaughter).

In some instances the killer is never found (e.g. see Chuckie Mauk), or the killer cannot be brought to trial (e.g. see Phil Hartman). So these killings cannot properly be called "murder"; they should be called "homicide". I know Wikipedia is not a legal encyclopedia per se, but I do feel that this is a distinction that should be maintained. Characterizing a homicide as a "murder" seems also to carry a subjective weight that is discouraged by WP:NPOV.

I also realize that the "murder" categorization is used all over the place in thousands of articles. Perhaps one of the tasks within the Crime Project one of the projects could be to scan through the articles categorized under "murder" and determine which ones don't belong. There could be new categories created for "homicide", and the "murder" categories would be subcategories. I've created Category:American homicide victims as a start. I'd be willing to work on it.

Any thoughts? ... discospinster _talk 03:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Single Entity in Sports

I'm interested in creating an article regarding the concept of "single entity" in sports. Some of my early drafts delve into points like how single-entity leagues function differently than those that are not, how it relates to the Sherman Act and Clayton Act, and court cases that have helped shape what single entity is (Fraser v. MLS, American Needle v. NFL), etc. Some feedback on maybe what more to include is always appreciated. Is anyone else interested in going into this further? --Blackbox77 (talk) 06:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Sexual intercourse#Article is overwhelmingly dominated by human sex

Opinions are needed on whether or not the Sexual intercourse article should lean mostly toward human sexual intercourse. One view is that since "sexual intercourse" mostly refers to humans and we have other articles to cover sexual activity of non-human animals (such as Animal sexual behavior), then it is fine that the article mostly leans towards humans, similar to the Anal sex and Oral sex articles. The other view is that humans should not be given so much weight, since the term "sexual intercourse" also refers to non-human animals. Flyer22 (talk) 19:38, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Erm this is WikiProject Law... Bob House 884 (talk) 19:46, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested move for an article on this WikiProject

A Requested Move discussion is in progress for moving Defense of marriage amendment to State amendments banning same-sex unions. Please consider commenting. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Page move discussion

Please comment at Talk:Rod_Blagojevich_corruption_charges#Requested_move on moving Rod Blagojevich corruption charges → United States v. Blagojevich.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:05, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Traffic court

I stumbled on this article, which was tagged to WikiProject Law Enforcement but not Law. For starters I'm not entirely sure that traffic court is an actual thing - obviously all jurisdictions which have traffic have traffic law and some court has to deal with that, but I'm not familiar with any which has a dedicated court for it. In my limited experience 'Traffic court' is more just a colloquial term for whatever court happens to be dealing with traffic violations (in the UK, Magistrates Courts tend to group traffic cases together and hear them seperately from other cases but they do not sit as a different court as they would for Youth Court etc.)

I did a quick google search and found one Traffic Court in Philidelphia [3] an informal user's guide to surviving traffic related cases in Valley County, ID [4] and a vague, non-capitalised mention of a traffic court in Dubai [5]. I'm not sure any of these cuts it for me.

My other problems with this article are that virtually none of it is sourced (there are two sources for a single sentence and both come from California, so don't even really support that sentence, and an external link to a directory which calls itself a directory of traffic courts, but in practice just directs you to the court which deals with traffic cases in your area. Finally the whole article needs a bit of a world view overhaul.

A second (perhaps US based) opinion on whether this is worth an article would be great, as would someone sourcing and fixing up the article. Regards, Bob House 884 (talk) 23:58, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Citation style

I have noticed that a large number of law related articles use unnumbered references and numbered notes for citations. Can someone clarify that the style for law articles is to follow that for all other Wiki pages, ie numbered references? CSDarrow (talk) 20:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Some articles split the references into case citations and 'normal' references simply for ease of use, but I'm not sure it's supported by our normal style guidelines. Could you give some examples? Generally if your in doubt refer to the Manual of Style. Bob House 884 (talk) 21:21, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

This is what I see a lot of, which frankly is not Wiki style, (I know where it is coming from though), English_law, Tort_law, Public_order. Whilst this what I think pages should look like Murder. I don't want to go ahead and change pages unless there is a consensus.CSDarrow (talk) 21:35, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah thats not what I was thinking of; this seems to just be arbitrarily splitting the reference list into two sections - I'd say be bold and make some changes. I'd note as well that listing 3 out of date text books on the Tort page is pretty unneccessary, perhaps update or remove. Regards, Bob House 884 (talk) 22:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll be bold but careful. I agree case citations should be treated differently, separating them out can be convenient for reference. CSDarrow (talk) 21:27, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

copyright law

We have two competing naming conventions for articles in Category:Copyright law by country. Some are "<nationality> copyright law" and the others are "Copyright [law] (in|of) <nation>". And then we have the oddball, "<nation> copyright law" for "United States copyright law". I dislike "American copyright law", so I am preferring moving them all to "Copyright law of <nation>" or "Copyright in <nation". John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't object, perhaps run a couple of test cases on the more heavily watched pages or bring it up at WP:RM. Bob House 884 (talk) 21:26, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Natural born citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution

There is a content dispute currently going on at Natural born citizen clause of the U.S. Constitution over whether material in Emerich de Vattel's work The Law of Nations may, or may not, be cited as an influence (or a potential influence) on what the framers of the Constitution meant by the phrase "natural born citizen". The question has given rise to various different opinions, as well as some edit-warring, and I'm unsure of whether a credible consensus for any position can be reached at present with only those editors currently involved. Participation from others (no matter what side they might end up taking) would be helpful. Richwales (talk · contribs) 18:10, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Splitting up US Gun Laws by State

There is currently a discussion which is leading to compartmentalizing the US gun laws by state article into individual state articles. If any members are interested in voicing opinions on the matter please do so. It seems like a resounding support at the moment. If we do decide to do this, it will be a fairly large undertaking that would require the assistance of WP:GUNS to complete, that is for sure.--Jax 0677 (talk) 18:53, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Super injunction discussion

Please contribute to the "controversy" discussion on the Injunction Talk page. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:02, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Biddle v. Perovich

Came across Biddle v. Perovich while doing New Page Patrol. I have removed the copypaste of the entire judgement and just left the summary in place, but it needs work to get up to Wikipedia standards. Anyone here want to give it a try? Singularity42 (talk) 14:08, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

New article - Book about same-sex marriage by Dan Savage

• The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family

New article - Book about adoption by Dan Savage. Feedback, and suggestions for additional research and more secondary sources - would be appreciated, at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 08:30, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

United States Bill of Rights has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for June 2011

United States Bill of Rights, a page within the scope of this project, has been selected as the United States Wikipedians' Collaboration of the Month for June 2011. All editors interested in improving this article are encouraged to participate. You can also vote for next months article of the Month here. --Kumioko (talk) 15:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Collaboration on US Supreme Court case article improvement

• Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart

Wehwalt and myself will be collaborating together to improve the quality of this article. Others are welcome to help out with research, writing, and copyediting. :) -- Cirt (talk) 18:26, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

copyright law move request

Following on from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Law/Archive_12#copyright_law, I've requested a move at Talk:United_States_copyright_law#Requested_move. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:46, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Created new portal = Supreme Court of the United States

• Portal:Supreme Court of the United States

I've created a new portal for this topic. Collaboration and help would be appreciated, just drop a note at Portal talk:Supreme Court of the United States. -- Cirt (talk) 17:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Employment and Labor law categories

User:Dendrolo has made a large number of recategorizations (in good faith, I am sure), replacing Category:Employment law with Category:Labour law. In my experience, labor law in the United States refers to the law governing unions, unionization, collective bargaining, and the like, and is not generally the term used to describe the law governing employer/employee relations outside of the union context. Am I wrong about this? How should we be categorizing articles with elements relating to the law governing employment in and out of the union context? bd2412 T 20:11, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Opinions vary, and this might be a useful thing to clarify. I wonder if there are any good references for the differences in usage. This matter came up on Talk:United_Kingdom_labour_law when User:Wikidea disagreed. In an earlier comment I think he implied that (in the UK) there was a political bias to it, though I'm not aware of any evidence for that. If you search bailii for English court decisions for "labour law" and "employment law" you'll find the usage is overwhelmingly in favour of "employment law" (eg in the highest court its something like 6:1 in favour of "employment law"). Not all uses of either term are referring to English law though, and that in itself is instructive, because its clear that some jurisdictions do refer to their relevant laws as "labour law". My insurer does not know of a category of practice "labour law", its "employment". "Employment" is the category used by Chambers and Partners. I could go on. However there are contrary examples, most importantly academics write about "labour law", in particular Deakin and Morris (and that book accounts for some of the uses of "labour law" in our courts when quoting it) but there are plenty of examples of books which use the "employment" tag. What I suspect is that there may be something in what you say, that "labour" may be slightly more marked towards what we might call "collective employment law" (unions, group industrial relations). That is a more interesting topic for academics than practitioners (because far more cases come up in private employer v employee disputes) and as a result in English law practitioners have tended to gravitate towards calling the whole subject "employment law" whereas academics have been happy with "labour" law. In our statutes "labour" tends to be reserved for "labour relations", for example the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 whereas "employment" is used in acts mostly governing more private aspects of employment law (though reaching wider on occasions) for example the Employment Act 2008. Some googling suggests that other English speaking nations differ in their usages, but of course I haven't seen any good research. It would be interesting if anyone had references on the terminology so we could make an informed decision. One reason to avoid "labour law" is spelling (US v UK) which "employment law" avoids as an item of controversy. Francis Davey (talk) 09:00, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Did the 14th Amendment "overrule" the Dred Scott decision?

There is a disagreement in progress at Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution over whether or not it is appropriate to say that the Fourteenth Amendment "overruled" the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. One person (see the "'Overruled' in lead" section of the talk page) believes this usage is perfectly OK, while another editor insists that "overrule" is what courts and judges do, not what legislative bodies do. It would probably be helpful if we could get an authoritative decision on how this portion of the lead paragraph of the article should be worded. Can we get any assistance from the wikiproject workers? Thanks. Richwales (talk · contribs) 21:30, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States at peer review

A new portal Portal:Supreme Court of the United States is now up for portal peer review, the review page is at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Supreme Court of the United States/archive1. I put a bit of effort into this and feedback would be appreciated prior to featured portal candidacy. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 17:50, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned article

The article titled partial integration (contract law) is currently an orphan, i.e. no other articles link to it (except the partial integration disambiguation page. Work on it! Michael Hardy (talk) 23:10, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLP and complainants in rape cases: Publicizing names

There is a discussion of WP:BLP and names of rape victims at my talk page, which was sparked by my deletion of the name of one of Julian Assange's complainants from the talk page of CounterPunch.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:17, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Publicizing the name of victims is now discussed at the WP:BLP noticeboard.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:12, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

John F. Banzhaf III

An American lawyer (or paralegal) is needed.

I have copy-edited the article, and added information about fair representation (Banzhaf power index).

I removed ad hominem attacks. I still have WP:BLP concerns about criticism attributed to a ("the"?) Canadian Tory tabloid and to "think tank" authors, libertarian and otherwise. (A Canadian Tory law professor writing criticism in a peer-reviewed journal, which then is reprinted in an anthology, would be much better!) Law reviews, texts, and monographs should have a lot of discussion, which would better serve the public.

Banzhaf's website states that there were errors in the old biography. Maybe somebody should email him and ask for corrections.

Thanks!  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:35, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

P.S. George Anastaplo needs his article, George Anastaplo.

Move discussion concerning English statute

Readers here may be interested in contributing to the discussion at Talk:Diet, Apparel, etc. Act 1363#Requested move. Cheers. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:57, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Created new article on US Supreme Court case = Time, Inc. v. Hill

• Time, Inc. v. Hill

I have created a new article on the U.S. Supreme Court case, Time, Inc. v. Hill. Feedback and especially help with additional research would be appreciated, at the new article's talk page. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 00:18, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Casey Anthony trial

Anyone interested in our reporting of this case is invited to bring their views. I've not been exposed to the media coverage, so clearly there's a lot I'm missing, and I have no competency in law and not much experience of WP:BLP, but it reads like a hatchet job to me. I think Wikipedia could do better. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:42, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Not a hatchet job going on; just one editor named Blackie Lstree being disruptive at the article by removing large chunks of relevant material that are crucial to understanding this topic, such as the entire Evidence section (which he removed and was then reverted on). Blackie Lstree is pushing an agenda to exclude most and quite possibly all things showing Anthony in a bad light...because he believes she is innocent.

Anthonyhcole cannot understand how the woman seems so guilty from just the material presented in the Criminal trial section. As I explained to Anthonyhcole, that is the actual material that was presented at the trial. Those are the actual arguments,from both sides. We are not skewing that section or any other section to make Casey Anthony look guilty. Anthonyhcole reading that material and not seeing how the jury could not have convicted Anthony is the same sentiment that most Americans have expressed. Based on the woman's lies and circumstantial evidence presented, how can she not be guilty? That is exactly why there is so much outage about the "Not Guilty" verdict, which is backed up by various reliable sources in the article. If Anthonyhcole bothered to look at any of the sources, he would see this too. The fact that he is as dismayed as most Americans shows that the section accurately reflects what happened. Flyer22 (talk) 14:21, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States at Featured Portal candidates

• Portal:Supreme Court of the United States

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States is a candidate for Featured Portal, with discussion at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Supreme Court of the United States. — Cirt (talk) 16:03, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

External links in law firm profile articles

Greetings. I have noted that Dickstein Shapiro has a section of "profile websites" under external links. I understand that WP:MOS best practice recommendation is to avoid listing an excessive number of external links. Lots of other law firms are similar, and one link in particular called LawPeriscope Profile links to consistently out of date profiles. Any recommendations on what should be done? Remando (talk) 20:36, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Defences in English Criminal Law

I'm doing some writing on criminal defences, especially mental condition defences Jack Hawkins legal academic & Times reader (talk) 18:44, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Here is one to start with Diminished responsibility in English law ~ R.T.G 20:01, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

OK - will do as time allows Jack Hawkins legal academic & Times reader (talk) 10:29, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

NOTE: I am not versed in that law and I have no idea what qualatitive state that article might be in but it is definitely the title of te subject you are talking about. ~ R.T.G 16:13, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Three Strikes Law

Hi. Could someone with relevant knowledge please review this diff [6]. It would seem that major material objectionable to the Three Strikes Laws has been removed. Not a lot of discussion and editing activity goes on at that page. ~ R.T.G 19:59, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Mandatory arbitration for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Mandatory arbitration is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mandatory arbitration until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. RJaguar3 | u | t 04:00, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949

Unfortunately, I've placed this article up for featured article review (here). Your project may be interested. The FAR is open to comment. I'll hopefully find the time to look into the article over the coming months myself. Thanks, Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:19, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Confusing categorization

Please help The current revision of FQPA is in Category:Legal articles without infoboxes, although it clearly has {{Infobox U.S. legislation}}. Why? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:28, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Y Done All you had to do was remove the category link. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:19, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh! I guess that I just assumed that it was generated by some template or something. Whoops! —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:59, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Featured picture FYI

This photo of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is now a Featured Picture on Wikipedia

Pine^talk 00:00, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Title help

There is currently a discussion going on over at the old Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case article, now titled New York v. Strauss-Kahn (dismissed charges) because of the case's dismissal, about how the title of the article should be currently. Users have requested input from Wikiproject Law members to determine what the proper naming conventions would be for such a situation. Silverseren^C 03:58, 24 August 2011 (UTC)