Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law

Additional opinions on updates to Qualified immunity

There's a discussion in Talk:Qualified immunity#Update_to_cover_Reinert_article? about whether and how to include content pertaining to an analysis of the foundations of qualified immunity, along with a recently filed, pertinent SCOTUS petition in the case of Hulbert v. Pope.

The discussion has also ranged into other content within the article that could potentially be revised in accordance with WP:OR, specifically WP:PRIMARY. The current editors are deadlocked, and it would be helpful to have others weigh in on how best to go about updating the article, since Qualified immunity is within the scope of WP:LAW. Thanks! Wigginx (talk) 05:09, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Replied there. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:26, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Law related TV and film

Hello, just wondering if law related shows/film are within the scope of this project? Pages such as:

• Legal drama
• Law & Order
• Anatomy of a Murder

etc...

Thanks in advance :) Idiosincrático (talk) 05:14, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think they are within the scope, but the wikiproject page says "Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organize information in articles related to Law.", so for some they could be included and for others they are not. --Onwa (talk) 21:50, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:CanLawCase

Template:CanLawCase has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. -- 65.92.244.127 (talk) 21:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Rename "Court Case Task Force"

An editor has requested that Wikipedia:WikiProject Current events/Court Case Task Force be moved to another page, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. -- 65.92.244.127 (talk) 22:31, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Style question

Is there a consensus over whether the "v" in court cases shoukd have a full stop ("v.") or not? There are many examples of both in article titles. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:06, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

In England it's usually displayed as just 'v', in USA it's 'v.' GiantSnowman 19:46, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

I would take a look at the Bluebook international tables, which describes the local style for particular jurisdictions. As Snowman noted, the U.S. always uses a full stop and England does not. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:14, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Position of trust

The article on position of trust could do with quite a bit of work, and seems to have been in this state for quite a while. Bringing it here for anyone who is interested in improving the article. GnocchiFan (talk) 20:33, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Progressivity in United States income tax

I started this discussion: Talk:Progressivity in United States income tax#Various polls by media organizations. George Ho (talk) 05:06, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Featured article nomination of Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.

I have nominated the above named article for FA (nomination page). If somebody with expertise in IP, particularly moral rights and copyright, has time to review the article and leave comments on the nomination page, I would appreciate it. Best, voorts (talk/contributions) 20:49, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Deportation of undocumented Afghans from Pakistan#Requested move 5 November 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Deportation of undocumented Afghans from Pakistan#Requested move 5 November 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. —Alalch E. 23:59, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Student editing non-notable attorney bios

See Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/North Carolina Central University/Artificial Intelligence and Law (Fall 2023).

This class came to my attention via a backlink to a non-reliable source, attorneyatlawmagazine.com (see the discussion at this RSN thread and I suspect that this site, which is also used by the students, is more of the same).

The work they have done so far is problematic (see Melanie Harrison Okoro), and there's more in the pipeline that look like run-of-the-mill, non-notable attorneys, being puffed up by non-reliable or sources which they paid for coverage (see sample at User:Oabrown23/April Dawson). I understand non-notable attorney articles squeak through on scant scrutiny quite often, as they get passing mention (not significant coverage) in press for cases, but this is an entire class creating problematic bios, which might warrant special attention from this project, as it looks like several are headed for deletion.

The instructor, user:9Starbucks, has never edited mainspace, and there is also Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/North Carolina Central University/Artificial Intelligence and Law (Fall 2023). Ping User:Brianda (Wiki Ed) and User:Ian (Wiki Ed) and User:Helaine (Wiki Ed). This class does not seem to have a grasp on reliable sources or notability. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:05, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Note that in the case of April Dawson, there's also a COI (NCCU); I haven't checked others. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:18, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I hope that the Wiki Ed folks can address this. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:00, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

In the medical realm, I've had good luck with Ian having a word with the professor, but I don't know about this editing area. Hopefully, they will suggest the students in this class not move their work out of sandbox, but the articles already established need cleanup, and maybe AFD (haven't checked closely). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:02, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi @SandyGeorgia, Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I've asked the instructor to keep student work in the sandbox, until we have a chance to review and provide feedback to the students. Will keep you updated. If anything else comes up, please ping me. Just fyi, I'm at WikiCon North America, and will be a bit slow to respond. Brianda (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:56, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Brianda (Wiki Ed) thanks so much for that. Now perhaps the good members of WP:LAW can focus only on cleaning up the already problematic at :

• Melanie Harrison Okoro
• Valencia Koomson
• Rediet Abebe
• Ralph Gilles
• Khalia Braswell

Some of the sourcing is atrocious, WP:SIGCOV may not be met in all cases, not sure if any AFDs are in order, cleanup needs, etc. Thanks again, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:21, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I went through those, and unlike User:Oabrown23/April Dawson, they aren't lawyers, so nothing else for this project to address, if the rest won't be moved to mainspace. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:35, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, thank you for making me aware of the discussion here, and thanks for catching the copyvio situation at Valencia Koomson. Likely I should've noticed the latter myself. I take the student editor at Koomson's article as having acted in good faith, and not at fault for the copyvio situation; I do agree that it looks like they could be getting better mentoring in the course than they have been. FWIW and possibly slightly off-topic: in my opinion notability looks a bit unlikely at the articles Melanie Harrison Okoro (already at AfD) and Rediet Abebe, somewhat more plausible for Valencia Koomson and Khalia Braswell via GNG but not WP:NPROF; I didn't look as carefully at Ralph Gilles. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 02:51, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Russ Woodroofe the copyvio pre-dated the students, and in almost every student editing problem, it's not the student-- it's the lax professors, who have never edited Wikipedia, getting free writing tutors at the expense of volunteer Wikipedians (the problems in medical content are real, as opposed to just puffery). I only found this one because I regularly check backlinks to attorneyatlawmagazine, because it's so infuriating that run-of-the mill, non-notable attorneys pay a magazine to be featured, so they can then get a Wikipedia article by using the magazine to claim notability (that gig is up :) I am more than a little bit dismal at AFD, so I take care in what I submit. Which is also why one of the first things I check is copyvio from the first version; that's a quicker route than AFD, and saves you the time of checking every other source and discovering the copyvio after you've invested a lot of work into the article! I can't convince myself any of the others should go to AFD, but I'm a terrible judge (used to working at the FA level, little experience with AFD), so will leave that to others. This course will be back for a spring term, and hopefully by then, Wiki Ed staff will have gotten the message across. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:32, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Another one to be on the look out for: Lawnext.com (similar to attorneyatlawmagazine.com). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:42, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2023 Special Session of the Parliament of India

 You are invited to join the deletion discussion for the article 2023 Special Session of the Parliament of India at AFD. Kind regards, W. Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_c) 15:45, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Business method patent vs. business model

Calling for patent and copyright experts to overhaul the article in regards to the fundamental difference between a business method and a business model, as outlined in my relevant post on the talkpage. --2003:DA:CF0A:F294:686B:7CDE:7FD1:8E41 (talk) 09:05, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Discussion regarding LAWRS proposal at VPP

There's a proposal for a LAWRS at VPP that others might be interested in: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Wanted: a WP:LAWRS. Best, voorts (talk/contributions) 00:54, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

What would help a lot with such discussion (if it ever can be helped) is to contribute examples of bad use of law-related sourcing one has seen on WP, or arguments one has had over bad sourcing. SamuelRiv (talk) 14:25, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

General jurisdiction

General jurisdiction was nominated for deletion, and I would appreciate some help in improving the article to avoid a repeat of this. Cheers! BD2412 T 19:36, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that International trade law, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Wikipedia language versions are not suitable categories for law

For many subjects related to law, the main Wikipedia categorising in language versions doesn't work. Main reason is because law is being categorised by jurisdiction, not language. For example the Dutch language Wikipedia knows at least two jurisdictions: Belgium and The Netherlands, the German language Wikipedia knows at least three jurisdictions: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the English language version knows many more, to start with the biggest: United Kingdom and the United States. So a law concept valid for one jurisdiction cannot be projected into another jurisdiction by simply translating a language version of a law concept. Therefore it's difficult to properly describe law concepts and give the articles logical names. It is impossible to connect articles within one language version, describing the situation in different jurisdictions, through Wikidata. Does anyone know: has this been discussed before and if yes, what was the outcome? When not, are there existing solutions for this problem or do they have to be developed? Thanks -VanArtevelde (talk) 10:58, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand. When a term has multiple meanings in different contexts, the article about the term explains those meanings in as many contexts as editors are able to add. For example, the term dualism in philosophy is grotesquely overloaded, as is complexity in physics and mathematics (or field, or any variable name for that matter). So a structure of law like a decree or a corporation will have different meanings in different jurisdictions and contexts, and sure enough, the articles list many (but not all) such contexts. SamuelRiv (talk) 13:57, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Jo Hee-de#Requested move 12 December 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Jo Hee-de#Requested move 12 December 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 12:50, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:55, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Updating Template:Cite court

Hello, I've done some work on {{Cite court}}. I've made live two updates that I believe are uncontroversial. The template now supports |archive-url= and |url-status=, and an obscure formatting bug is resolved. I have questions about a few changes. I'm testing these in the sandbox but have no plans to implement them unless there is a demand.

[A] Access-date

Should the template display the access date as the CS1/CS2 templates do? The |access-date= parameter does nothing and has never done anything, but 4,600 out of 10,600 uses of the template contain an access-date.[1] After recently discussing this on Template talk:Cite court with a very knowledgeable editor, it seems like legal citations generally do not place an emphasis on the URL.

[B] Should the template make a link

Currently the template provides a link if an editor places one in the |url= parameter. If no url is provided, there's no link. If the template can auto-generate a URL to the case on CourtListener from its other parameters, should it?

[C] Aliases

Currently the template only uses one alias (alternative parameter name). Over the years editors have asked for several parameters to have an alias more in line with other templates. Which of the following aliases (if any) would be useful:

• |title= for |litigants=
• |volume= for |vol=
• |work= for |reporter=
• |at= for |pinpoint=
• |year= for |date=

Thanks, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:54, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

I have fairly strong opinions on [B] — Linking, as you can see from the Template talk:Cite court discussion. But one of the big issues here is that there are multiple templates with overlapping scope that behave in different ways, but those differences aren't principled or reasoned, they just seem to be personal preference, with the result that Wikipedia is annoyingly inconsistent as to legal citation. I also only care about legal citation in the American legal system, and none of these templates are defined to be specific to the US system, but in practice that's what they're generally used for.

We have:

Template:cite court (5,500 transclusions)

Template:law report (137 transclusions)

Template:caselaw source (4,000 transclusions)

I think it doesn't make a lot of sense to discuss the behavior of one of these without discussing the others, nor is it clear to me that all three of these should exist.

Template:Cite court's documentation suggests favoring Google Scholar. Template:Law report creates links to courtlistener.com. Template:caselaw source gives ten different sources they could possibly use, many of which might conceivably have the underlying opinion (but some are for other stuff, like Cornell's LII has laws: statues and regulations).

It's my considered opinion that of the available choices Google Scholar gives the best reading experience for readers, especially ones who care about legal citation and need to resolve pincites, because it gives reporter pagination in the left margin. Courtlistener gives paragraph numbers in the left column margin, which is nice in the abstract, but in practice is almost never used in the legal citation world in general (with some particular local exceptions), so is not helpful to readers. We could walk through the other 8 options (cornell, findlaw, justia, leagle, loc, openjurist, oyez, vlex), but I'm not sure that's productive right now.

It would be great if the template could make a link to Google Scholar based on the reporter/volume/page, but Google Scholar doesn't support that. Instead you have to do a search to get the case=11156910755936011541 parameter.

I do not think we should make it easy for editors avoid the work to put in a Google Scholar link by autogenerating a link to one of the other sites (including Courtlistener). That results in a less usable encyclopedia and that's not great.

As to [A] — access-date, the discussion really came up about support for archive-url, but it seems like it's hard to argue that it's wrong to have access-date there, and most Wikipedia citation-ish templates use it. But I'm not sure I can come up with an actual real live situation where it is important to have it, so it feels a little bit like clutter. But I don't oppose it.

No opinion as to [C] aliases, at least right now. jhawkinson (talk) 00:55, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for working on this. In general, I think we need an overhaul of these citation formats so that they can be used for multiple jurisdictions, not just US (BlueBook) citation style. I think that could be done using a parameter with a country code that changes the output based on the most popular citation style for a jurisdiction. One way to decide what to support would be to look at how many articles we have on cases from each country, but I would say at least US and UK citation formats should be included. UK would also probably capture other commonwealth countries. To answer your specific questions:

• A – No, do not include access dates.
• B – Maybe? I need to think on it.
• C – Caption, not title, and changing vol to volume and year to date is fine, but keep everything else as is because that's how cases are cited and it's less confusing when citing. Can't those parameters be passed in as aliases of title, volume, etc., so people can still use those if they want?

Best, voorts (talk/contributions) 14:42, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

@Voorts: To clarify regarding, "Can't those parameters be passed in as aliases of title, volume, etc., so people can still use those if they want?" Yes, that's exactly how an alias works. You can test this or inspect the source[2] to see how it works with |date= and |year=, the only alias currently supported. The template emits the same output for either parameter name. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 07:04, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@Voorts writes, "I think we need an overhaul of these citation formats so that they can be used for multiple jurisdictions, not just US (BlueBook) citation style." Why? US citation is the vast bulk of the use of these templates, and has particular stylistic and technical aspects that are not shared by other legal systems (at least, as far as I am aware). It would seem better to have domain-specific templates rather than to try to make one template do everything. Less complexity, easier maintenance, better-looking output. (On the other hand, I'm not sure what problems there are with the current template for non-US usage right now. Has anyone reported or discussed them?). Note, to be perhaps hypertechnical, that Bluebook is not a great term to use for this, because that's a whole complicated citation system that is much more than just case names, reporters, pages, and volumes. But this style is certainly consistent with bluebook. jhawkinson (talk) 16:06, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

What I was getting at is that for an article, say, on a US case or US law, the average reader would probably recognize and expect case citations that are at least Bluebook-ish, whereas an average reader looking at an article on UK law would expect something similar to UK citation style. Currently, our template is loosely based on the Bluebook style, which I think is an issue.

I think it would be easy for this to be one template: just create a paramater that lets an editor input a two-letter country code (e.g., US, UK, etc.), and the template changes the output in the background. I don't think it would overcomplicate things for editors and probably wouldn't be too hard for a skilled template crafter to make. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:57, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Maybe? You'd have to build the template from scratch, I think. For the 3 mentioned so far, it's relatively easy (even for an unskilled template crafter) to move those closer to the US/Bluebook citation style. I really don't see how we could make them swap formats like that without essentially packing many templates into one, and making the load time multiply by the number of styles added.

For example, a |case= parameter like Jhawkinson mentioned above, could be added to create pinpoint links to Google Scholar that could override the URL parameters, but would only work for US cases. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:53, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't even thought of load times etc. I'm not an expert on templates. Fair enough, these should probably be separate templates, but I don't know if anyone is really asking for them right now. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Voorts: One of the good reasons to not make a huge complicated template is that this template is used in a lot of places and is editprotected, because mistakes could be high stakes. But a template for some UK style would be new, and would want to be able to evolve easily and freely, and ideally would allow unrestricted editing (or maybe semiprotection if it got enough use), so that it could be quickly changed. (Now, of course, this template could call out to a different template for UK cases, but…). Anyhow, I am still missing why "I think we need an overhaul of these citation formats"? Where's the demand? Where are all the requests? Who is making this case? This template has enough problems that are real and we should be worrying about, but I would like to avoid scope creep on these questions if it is not necessary. Thanks.

And @Rjjiii: I was not suggesting the template should have a |case= parameter! My point was that the Google Scholar URL has that parameter in it, and there's no way to generate it -- you have to do a search in Google Scholar and see what it returns. I don't think it would be particularly helpful to have a parameter that generates the Google Scholar URL versus just allowing/encouraging editors to drop in the full Google Scholar URL. jhawkinson (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I've struck my comment above, Jhawkinson. I (mis?)took your case 11156910755936011541 parameter. comment as a reference to a potential template parameter on Wikipedia. Also, to be clear, I don't think there is enough interest in these templates to build consensus for major changes right now. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 01:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Topfreedom

While undoubtedly an important topic, I feel like this article and Female toplessness in the United States ought to be properly analysed by members of this WikiProject and that of WikiProject Sex and Sexology to make sure the detail given is not unduly intricate, whether the number of images are gratuitous (yes yes, I know Wikipedia is uncensored), and whether the sources given are reliable for the claims made as there seems to be some issues on the talk page for this. Thank you in advance! GnocchiFan (talk) 21:23, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't really have the time or expertise to weigh in here, unfortunately, but is the necklace in this image a Swastika in a Star of David???? If so, that's certainly an ideology or something. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:18, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Raëlism Levivich (talk) 23:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Legal status of LGBT in Indonesia

Hi.. There's a discussion to clarify definition of "legal" on Talk:LGBT rights in Indonesia#Legal's meaning , More opinions are welcome. Thank you. Ckfasdf (talk) 04:30, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Responded at the appropriate venue. voorts (talk/contributions) 04:49, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Hog Farm _Talk 15:18, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Bump

Anyone willing to take a look at my DYK please? Template:Did you know nominations/Fair Work Ombudsman v Quest South Perth — MaxnaCarta  ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel#Requested move 8 January 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel#Requested move 8 January 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 21:09, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion you may be interested in

Talk:British_Post_Office_scandal#Structural_issues_and_general_format_unsuitability - the article on the British Post Office scandal has extensive legalese coverage that may be better split into separate articles. The input of users who are familiar with writing about civil and criminal court cases in the UK would be appreciated. Kingsif (talk) 23:43, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Legal norm

I was looking at the original 14.5kb revision of Legal norm (rev. 897919123), and I'm not sure if I believe that that could be original writing done all in one go, without copying it from somewhere wholesale. Earwig came up with 97% likelihood of copying, but that appears to be a backwards copy (or at least, archive.org has never crawled it). By rev. 900737115 a couple of weeks later, the OP had added eleven references, but the citations generally lack page numbers and feel like an afterthought to me, as if someone knew enough about policy to feel obligated to add some, and just sprinkled around some good, general references here and there without being too specific to make it hard to verify. But the polished language was there since the beginning. Just wondering what folks here think about this? Am I being paranoid, and this is just an editor who's lazy with citations and the article is probably fine? Or is this wholesale copying, and I should slap a {{copyvio}} on it on the way to blanking the article and getting the history WP:REVDELed? Mathglot (talk) 08:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It looks like the writer was a university student learning to write for Wikipedia, and the article was written in advance. In the absence of evidence, I see no reason to think it was a copyright violation. John M Baker (talk) 12:41, 12 January 2024 (UTC)