User talk:Miguel/Law

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Miquel, I agree with you that there may be a difference between declaration of war and state of war and even war. I made the redirect from state of war to declaration of war as the declaration of war starts the state of war in a country, since war (except for civil war) always involves at least two countries I see no reason not to put the information about declaration and state in one article. If you think otherwise go ahead and start a state of war article. I also agree with you about the stuff under declaration of war being POV, I am not sure who wrote it, but perhaps we should move it to the talk page until someone can make it more NPOV. I found this article to be incredibly Americano-centric and I have tried to add some international content. You will note that the whole idea of war has pretty much been sidelined as an international law concept since the end of WWII. Regarding your statements about the terminology in state of emergency I started the article from a link about the blackout, most countries do have state of emergency laws, but the terminology everywhere is slightly different. Most people use the term state of emergency so I did not do a redirect when I started the page. If you think subpages can be started, please do so, even if they are short stubs, someone will eventually come and add some more content. Be sure to list them on the stub page and that way folks like me who are looking on articles to work on that already exist will not create duplicate articles. Alex756 17:09, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The widely varying terminology is a problem, that's why we need something who actually knows about the scholarship of this topic and is a native English speaker to write and name the articles. Notes about the varying terminology and legislation in languages and countries can be added to the articles as appropriate. -- Miguel

There is not really an "legal" distinction, I can say that because I am an American lawyer and trained in Canada (having studied both English and French law there). If you know about the topic in Spanish, I suggest you write articles in the Spanish Wikipedia, it would be appropriate there. States of Emergency occur often in North America when we have natural disasters, in Canada a state of emergency was declared by Pierre Elliot Trudeau that did suspend civil rights in the 1970s, that is why I made mention of it, but it is an exception in the North American context; correct me if I am wrong but I have no citations to your terminology so unless someone else used it in English I am assuming you just translated literally from Spanish. Alex756

I did translate literally. However, the expression state of siege does exist in English. What does it mean? I guess my question becomes a little more focused, then: what exactly is the legal status on state of emergency in Canada and the US according to the constitution, and what are the limitations that it can impose? What do other countries have in their legal system?

Regarding putting the content on the Spanish wikipedia, if the Spanish and other constitutions do distinguish a range of "states of emergency", that can be discussed on the English wikipedia as part of comparative constitutional law. I know Wikipedia users are majoritarily North-American, but that is bound to change sooner or later.

By the way, I just discovered that Autonomous Communities of Spain contains false statements about what teh constitution says. Myths get propagated and people (including me) don't bother to check the sources... -- Miguel

There is lots of false or mistated information on Wikipedia, I tend to try and find such material in area of laws that I am familiar with, I also spend a lot of time maintaining a list of legal topics page; regarding the constitution of Spain, perhaps you can start a stub. There is already a link on the Constitution page — at the bottom list — just click on that and start editing. The only other Spanish speaking country that seems to have a fleshed out constitution page is Chile. If you start something I'll link it back to the legal topics lists, put it on the stub list, and reference it on the general Spain page &madash; or do it yourself — maybe then someone who really knows a lot about Spanish constitutional law will come along, find the link by accident, and work on it (part of our job here is encouraging other people to contribute, no?). Alex756 01:28, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Precisely. And by making minor contributions to those articles I can learn about my own (and the Canadian and US constitutions) while you learn about mine, and we both learn from others. Isn't Wikipedia wonderful?

Gee, I should be working on my mathematical physics dissertation instead of discussing comparative constitutional law. I must be insane. -- Miguel