Template talk:UnitedStatesCode

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Contents

[edit] How to use this

Cornell University has the United States Code online in its entirety: this template adds a URL to titles and sections of the code.

{{UnitedStatesCode|title|section}}

Template:Usc redirects here, so you may also use the shortcut {{usc}}.

{{usc|title|section}}

[edit] Example

[edit] See also

[edit] Discussion

Why not use Cornell's site (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode) instead?

I'm working on a new template, Template:USCode, that will implement it.

However, I'm not good at these things, so any (all) help would be greatly appreciated.

--Markles 21:23, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. Code

The following comment was copied from my talk page to here, to make it easier for people to follow the discussion in the future. Markles has been notified on his talk page. --Arcadian 20:32, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

You've made a great template, Template:UnitedStatesCode. It uses FindLaw. I'm an attorney and I use and like Findlaw. On the other hand, Cornell's site is a lot cleaner, slicker, and more attractive to the common user & Wikipedian. So I'm looking into trying a Template that uses Cornell's site: Template:USCode. However, I'm not having much luck because I'm not good at this stuff. Can you give me some advice? You can answer here instead of my user page. --Markles 21:40, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. Unfortunately, I think that it might be beyond my ability to create the needed template. I did a little research on the format of the URLs. Here are two examples, to contrast FindLaw with Cornell:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=28&sec=1350
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode28/usc_sec_28_00001350----000-.html
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=18&sec=922
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00000922----000-.html

As you can see, Cornell's site requires padding of the zeros, while FindLaw's site does not, and unfortunately the Cornell site crashes if you leave the extra zero out, and I don't know how to get the template feature to provide this padding. But the door isn't necessarily closed -- we'll leave this discussion here, and if somebody with better skills than me comes along, or if new features are added to the MediaWiki software to support padding, then we may be able to switch over in the future. --Arcadian 20:32, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

OK. I found some of the same problems at the Cornell site (the leading zeros, etc).  :( I am undaunted. Can someone figure this out? Maybe we need to contact the Cornell people. --Markles 21:19, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
I just discovered this template... as I was working on the USA PATRIOT Act I have actually sorted out this issue independently. You might want to look at {{usc}} and {{usc-clause}}. - Ta bu shi da yu 16:50, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
(Recently discovered and conformed these templates.) Cornell does have title-section (and, for that matter, title-chapter, etc.) links: cut everything after the "uscode/" and replace with titlenumber/sectionnumber.html, e.g., http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/28/1350.html. (Chapters are coded as titlenumber/chchapernumber.html, e.g., http://www.law.cornell.edu/17/ch1.html and so forth.) -User:Sisyphe

[edit] Other Sources

[edit] Washingtonwatchdog.org

http://www.washingtonwatchdog.org/documents/usc/ttl5/ptIII/subptE/ch61/subchI/sec6103.html, used by Holidays of the United States (as of 20:10, 2 January 2006 (UTC)). This is nice because it allows linking to specific titles, parts, subparts, chapters, subchapters, or sections. I think Template:USC only allows linking to the section. I generally prefer the Cornell links, however. Just thought I'd pass this along. —Markles (markles) 20:10, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting

I removed the italics. —Markles (markles) December 28, 2005

I also removed <span class=plainlinksneverexpand>. I think the reader should know (at least in this case) that they're going outside of wikipedia. —Markles (markles) 18:54, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

You just broke the article when it is printed. I'm putting it back in - when you print I really don't care about the URL in the text. Try printing one of my USA PATRIOT Act articles and you'll see what I mean. The link, incidently, is a slightly different colour and this indicates that it's not an internal wikilink. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I changed spaces to &nbsp; (non-breaking spaces) so now the citation will all stay on the same line. —Markles (markles) 01:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I brought the title number into the wikilink to result in only 2 colors in the output as opposed to 3 colors. --G1076 00:02, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The periods

Ta ba shi or whatever his name is took out the periods in U.S.C. on March 15. I put them back in on March 18 because that's the way the U.S.C. is always cited in Bluebook style, which most federal and state courts adhere to. --Coolcaesar 01:40, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Should I feel insulted you can't get my username right when it's right in the page history? Anyway, I see what you are saying and agree with your decision. It's just that most other sources that I read don't use this, however THOMAS does and as you say Bluebook style wants this. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:35, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Footnote trouble

After looking at the 80ish footnotes of redundant listings I figured why not actually put the links into the text and have a real reference for the cornell site. That reduced the footnotes down to a reasonable size but someone should go back and look over it to make sure I didn't put something out of context.-Darkwraith 19:35, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with what you did to USA PATRIOT Act, Title III. It makes the text harder to read. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] how to cite entire title (no sections)?

Suppose I simply want to refer to an entire Title sans chapters/sections/etc. Can I do this with one of these templates? For example, I want to state that the mission of the U.S. Census Bureau is defined in Title 13 U.S.C.. Any suggestions? older ≠ wiser 20:14, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)?

I just found and made my first use of the UnitedStatesCode tempate. Thanks for it! Now, is there a similar template for the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)? The US GPO has an electronic version posted at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/index.html . In searching Wikipedia, I've not found any appropriate templates. --Jdlh | Talk

[edit] switch from Cornell to a non-commercial site?

It appears that Cornell is now requiring cookies and asking for donations. Would it be possible to like to a non-commercial site instead? It appears that http://law2.house.gov/search/criteria.shtml may let us construct appropriate URLs and that would be to a more authoratative source anyway. Wrs1864 20:28, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

They do that once or twice a year. It's no big deal. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with TBSDY, but if anyone can find a better way to link to a better site, then I'm all for it. I've been having trouble, for instance, making {{Usc-title-chap}} work right.—Markles 14:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-protected

This is a high visibility template because that it is used on {{PD-USGov}}. Cburnett 02:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New template: USCSub

I wrote a new template {{UnitedStatesCodeSub}} because the cornell pages have anchors embedded for each subsection, subparagraph, etc. I'm not sure of the precise wording that would go best in the docs so please correct if needed.

Example: {{uscsub|21|811|d|2|B}} yields 21 U.S.C. § 811(d)(2)(B). Note the "d_2_B" anchor in the URL which will jump the browser to the appropriate clause.

Cburnett (talk) 04:36, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why does this not use the Office of the Law Revision Counsel?

Great template! Thanks a lot. I'm curious though, why are we not using the Office of the Law Revision Counsel instead? It may not look as cute, but it's somewhat of a more direct source I believe. WDavis1911 (talk) 08:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law#Why use Cornell.edu instead of us.gov?. Cheers! bd2412 T 08:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)