Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (legislation)

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[edit] Citing Legislation

Good legal practice when citing legislation is to include the year and the jurisdiction (or an abbreviation) for it in brackets after the name of the legislation. This is important since often multiple Acts are passed in different years with the same name, and often different jurisdictions will pass Acts with the same name. I propose we adopt this practice for the naming of legislation articles under Wikipedia; e.g. instead of Judiciary Act, use Judiciary Act 1789 (US), etc. It is highly likely that other jurisdictions than the US Federal jurisdiction have also passed Acts entitled the "Judiciary Act", and there is also a fair chance that at least some jurisdictions have passed multiple acts in different years with that name.

One problem with this is the issue of informal names for legislation, e.g. where an Act is commonly referred to by the name of its sponsor. This especially seems to be common in the US. Do these Acts have formal short titles (nowadays, all Australian and British legislation includes a section giving its short title)? If we are using a formal citation system as I describe above, we might as well use the formal name, especially since informal names are more likely to be ambiguous (e.g. Hatch Act) Of course, not all legislation has official short titles (in earlier times, legislation had long titles only).

Another problem is this thing called Macon's Bill Number 2. If it passed, it is no longer a bill, it is now an Act, and hence should not be called a bill...

I propose we use the following abbreviations for jurisdictions:

  • ACT - Australian Capital Territory, ACT
  • Aus. - Australia (Commonwealth)
  • Ala. - Alabama, US
  • Alta. - Alberta, Canada
  • Ariz. - Arizona, US
  • Ark. - Arkansas, US
  • B.C. - British Columbia, Canada
  • Calif. - California, US
  • Can. - Canada (Federal)
  • Colo. - Colorado, US
  • Conn. - Connecticut, US
  • Del. - Delaware, US
  • D.C. - District of Columbia, US
  • EU - European Union
  • Fla. - Florida, US
  • Ga. - Georgia, US
  • Ill. - Illinois, US
  • Ind. - Indiana, US
  • Kans. - Kansas, US
  • Ky. - Kentucky, US
  • La. - Louisiana, US
  • Man. - Manitoba, Canada
  • Mass. - Massachusetts, US
  • Md. - Maryland, US
  • Mich. - Michigan, US
  • Minn. - Minnesota, US
  • Miss. - Mississippi, US
  • Mo. - Missouri, US
  • Mont. - Montana, US
  • Nebr. - Nebraska, US
  • Nfld. - Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
  • Nev. - Nevada, US
  • Nth. Irl. - Northern Ireland, UK
  • Nun. - Nunavut, Canada
  • N.B. - New Brunswick, Canada
  • N.C. - North Carolina, US
  • N.D. - North Dakota, US
  • N.H. - New Hampshire, US
  • N.J. - New Jersey, US
  • N.M. - New Mexico, US
  • N.S. - Nova Scotia, Canada
  • N.S.W. - New South Wales, Australia
  • N.Y. - New York, US
  • N.T. - Northern Territory, Australia
  • N.W.T. - Northwest Territories, Canada
  • N.Z. - New Zealand
  • Okla. - Oklahoma, US
  • Ont. - Ontario, Canda
  • Ore. - Oregon, US
  • Pa. - Pennsylvania, US
  • P.E.I. - Prince Edward Island, Canda
  • Qld. - Queensland, Australia
  • Que. - Quebec, Canada
  • R.I. - Rhode Island, US
  • Sask. - Saskatchewan, Canada
  • Scot. - Scotland, UK
  • S.A. - South Australia, Australia
  • S.C. - South Carolina, US
  • S.D. - South Dakota, US
  • Tas. - Tasmania, Australia
  • Tenn. - Tennessee, US
  • Tex. - Texas, US
  • UK - United Kingdom (Westminster/Whitehall)
  • US Fed. - US (Federal)
  • Va. - Virginia, US
  • Vic. - Victoria, Australia
  • Vt. - Vermont, US
  • W.A. - Western Australia, Australia
  • Wash. - Washington, US
  • W.Va. - West Virginia, US
  • Wis. - Wisconsin, US
  • Wyo. - Wyoming, US
  • Yuk. - Yukon, Canada

Notes: The above list contains (almost) every US state, Australian state and territory, Canadian province and territory, inter alia. Abbreviations for U.S. states are based on old (pre-two letter) US postal abbreviations (They are easier to remember and less likely to conflict than the new two letter ones.) Australian states/territories are given standard postal abbreviations. Canadian provincial and territorial abbreviations are pre-two letter postal abbreviations. U.S. states not mentioned should just be cited using their full name. Abbreviations contain full stops, acronyms (i.e. abbreviations used as words, at least in my dialect of English, e.g. US, UK, EU, ACT) don't.

-- SJK

I haven't had time to review your proposal yet, but I am intrigued by the intent. Perhaps it would be better to move this proposal to wikipedia talk:naming conventions (legislation), where people who are interested in naming conventions will notice it more easily. --maveric149

[edit] Laws

It just came to my attention that Wikipedia does not favour a policy for naming laws or statutes. A number of articles have recently come on line where this is an issue. These appear to be the products of one member. One example is The Johnson Act of 1934 or Foreign Securities Act. As things stand the latter redirects to the Johnson Act. My own feeling is that it usually should be the other way around with entry under the Act's (short) title as the primary entry. The informal naming of statutes after their congressional sponsors seems to be a peculiarly American custom that doesn't say much about the law unless you have some background to its history. Any contrary opinions? --Eclecticology, Monday, June 10, 2002

As a general rule I think Eclecticology is correct, however I think this particular case is an exception. A search for "Foreign Securities Act" 1934 yielded only 3 results and "Johnson Act" 1934 yielded 264. And here in wikiland we try to link the widest use that has a minimum reasonable amount of ambiguity. "Foreign Securities Act" is less ambiguous than "Johnson Act" but three results hardly makes it a valid (Read: widely used but less ambiguous) alternative. A name of Johnson Act of 1934 might still be a bit better -- "Johnson" is a common name and there is bound to be another "Johnson Act" in world, if not American, history. I'm sure there will be many other exceptions to this so I am wary about establishing any type of convention on this. --maveric149
I agree. The taxonomy ought to be, common name of statute, year, country. But this starts getting really rather unwieldy and I would propose that we go for (minimum) statute, year (+ country if necessary).sjc


  • The above discussion is quite old, but users should be aware that it is only a proposal, not an accepted community policy or guideline. My own view leans towards User:Maveric149's; that is, since Wikipedia is intended as an encyclopedia for the general reader, not a specialized legal work, the names of articles should be based on the most well-known name of a law (or any other topic), not the most technically-correct one. Peculiar or not, many U.S. laws are known by their sponsors' names (such as the Taft-Hartley Act) and hardly at all by their official names. And disambiguation should be used only where there is actual ambiguity – Judiciary Act of 1789 is sufficient to identify the U.S. law, unless there happens to be a "Judiciary Act" of the same year from another jurisdiction. --Russ Blau (talk) 19:40, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
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