Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law

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[edit] Securities fraud

Experienced editors are needed to flesh out this article. Please help. It should be at least ten times as long and far more substantive.--Bassettcat (talk) 01:12, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Before I go any further, I want to make sure that........

I happened on Ngan v R and shuddered at the legalese style used in the article. Not encyclopedic at all. Very informative, but bordering on a text dump IMMHO. So I started to edit it, but only got the two opening pars done when the thought crossed my mind that someone/somewhere might have agreed to present these articles in this fashion, and I was wasting my time. Anyone know? I changed the opening pars from

Kevin Jack Ngan v The Queen [2007] NZSC 105 is a decision of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, it was handed down on the 13th of December 2007.[1] It considered the admissability of evidence of a crime that was discovered incidentally to an inventory search of a car accident. The court considered the scope and application of s 21 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure.
Elias CJ, Blanchard, Tipping, McGrath and Anderson JJ. The judgement was unaminous with the reasons of Elias CJ, Blanchard and Anderson JJ given by Blanchard J.[2] Tipping J gave his own concurring judgement,[3] Mcgrath J agreed with the result but employed a different line of reasoning.[4]

to

Kevin Jack Ngan v The Queen is a decision of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, which was handed down on December 13, 2007.[5] The decision held that evidence of a crime discovered incidental to an inventory search of a car involved in an accident was admissible in court. The court considered the scope and application of Section 21 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, regarding the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure.
Sitting on the bench were Chief Justice Sian Elias, and Justices Peter Blanchard, Andrew Tipping, John McGrath and Noel Anderson. The judgement was unanimous with the reasons of Justices Elias, Blanchard and Anderson given by Justice Blanchard.[6] Justice Tipping gave his own concurring judgement,[7] and Justice Mcgrath agreed with the result but employed a different line of reasoning.[8]

OK. Should I carry on? Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 23:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Tks. Have moved it to Wiki Project Law talk. Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 01:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Second one seems preferable to me - can't see why the first would have been the result of any conversation about style or readability. Avruch T 01:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
It's a good idea to keep the citation. We put it in just about every court case. It would be required if anyone were to write a paper using the case. It also identifies the volume and page number in the reporter series so that one could find the case in a library [2007] NZSC 105. You may want to change the judgement sentences to active voice i.e. "Justice Blanchard gave an opinion for an unanimous court in which justices....joined." Second one is much better, it uses complete sentences as well. Legis Nuntius (talk) 04:44, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article criteria for articles about appeal decisions

I've raised this here. Briefly, for many of these articles, there is only one source- the official Law Report. This may make an article fail for lacking "multiple independent sources". Comments there are welcome. --Rodhullandemu (Talk) 15:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Google Book Search Lawsuit

I'm considering starting an article on the Google Book search legal activity. I was surprised to find that the Google Book Search page had only one reference to a lawsuit and that was in a German court. This lawsuit will be critical to anything that touches copyright--that certainly includes all of us (on wikipedia). Any suggestions for name, content, or if I've somehow (embarrassingly) missed an already present article, would be appreciated.LH (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 16:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lyons

Is anyone as shocked as I am that we do not have an article on City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (1983)? Did we before? Was it deleted? Or just never created? I can't believe it's not here it's in just about every con law book... am I missing something? Non Curat Lex (talk) 22:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup on Case law

I'm not versed in legal issues, but I came across the case law article and it seems to have multiple problems. I can't see where there is a list of law-related articles for cleanup, so I thought I'd just drop a note here so perhaps interested parties could work on it?? Anchoress · Weigh Anchor · Catacomb 18:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] English law proposal

Francium12 has proposed a WikiProject devoted to English law here, if anyone is interested in showing support for the proposal. +Hexagon1 (t) 02:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems that there is little support for a separate project, and a Task Force has been mooted here. Accordingly, if anyone is interested in working on this (and there is plenty of work to be done), please signify interest below:

[edit] Request for comment

There is a request for comment at Category talk:American criminals#What should be the threshold for inclusion of this category? which may interest members of this project. Aleta Sing 22:37, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia and vexatious litigants

Editors that have an interest in both law and Wikipedia's policies might want to look at a developing proposal (possible future policy) at User:Raul654/Civil_POV_pushing. It appears to be an attempt to create a vexatious litigation clause for Wikipedia. The overall goal of this draft seems to be to give ArbCom a way to deal with "content disputes" of the sort where variations on a favorite idea are added by a problem editor, removed by someone else, and (re-)discussed endlessly, until all the good editors have been driven away by the wastefully repetitive discussions and the pet theory can be promoted without opposition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:21, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable

This (lonely) article could use any help it can get. --Ludvikus (talk) 21:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the administrative law standard of "arbitrary and capricious", but I've never heard of "arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable". Is that something specific to New York (the state cited in the article)? Chicken Wing (talk) 21:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Addition of Category class

As I noted at Template talk:WikiProject Law, I added a Category-class to the template. There are a number of articles already tagged with it but they were still showing up as unassessed. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:08, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] National instrument

I've created a disambiguation page at national instrument. There appears to be a legal sense of the term, but I can't quite figure out what it is by googling. Can somebody help? Thanks Tuf-Kat (talk) 19:18, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

the term does not exist in Black's Law Dictionary 8th edition. Of the 24 different types of instruments listed in that source, the closest is public instrument, which is itself a synonym for public writing, "The written acts or records of a government (or its constituent units) that are not constitutionally or statutorily protected from disclosure." Treaties are instruments, but the term would be redundant because treaties are by definition agreements between 2 or more states, and therefore always national. A search for the term over every American federal court case yields 22 hits. Besides the federal litigation for the company, a couple of courts have used those words. Two Supreme Court cases from 1824 and 1917 involving banks and interstate commerce, and another from 1973 involving a standardized test for teachers used by the Department of Education. In each, the term is not used exactly the same based on context, but it is used as a descriptor for banks, The National Bank, and tests used to regulate teachers. This must be why it has not appeared in a google search. It is not a legal term. Legis Nuntius (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Drug Policy

Should we make Wikipedia:WikiProject Drug Policy a sub-project of this one? Chin Chill-A Eat Mor Rodents (talk) 17:22, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

not a sub-project but possibly a "related project." Legis Nuntius (talk) 19:23, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Due to Chin Chill-A's banning, I've taken over the brunt of the administration of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Drug Policy. It's new, but we've got a lot done. We're definitely in need of some good legal minds, though, as there's a lot of overlap between policy and legality. If any of the members here feel that they might be able to contribute to Wikipedia:WikiProject Drug Policy and the more legal/legislative pages within it, please consider this a formal invitation and thanks in advance. Regards Shamanchill (talk) 03:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rape v. sexual assault

Rape has strayed from the legal definitions of the offense, although it is still under wikiproject law. Sexual assault is a much shorter article. I have made a proposal for reorganizing the two articles on the talk:rape page. Comments are welcome. Legis Nuntius (talk) 02:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion sorting

Not sure if participants are aware, but there is a system for sorting deletion debates by topic area, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting. I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Law to allow law-related deletion debates to be sorted, and allow interested parties to watch and participate in debates relevant to their expertise or area of interest. Hope it is of use, all the best, Hiding T 19:45, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Burger King legal issues assistance request

I followed a GAN review trail to Burger King legal issues recently and ended up in a difference of opinion on quality issues with the article's GA nominator and principal author. One concern I have is that a number of assertions made in the Lead are unsupported by or representative of the material in the article body. I'm not saying the statements are necessarily inaccurate, but for various reasons the other editor doesn't feel the need to place the relevant statements in the body. Similarly, he feels that statements made in sources and links do not need to be explicitly referenced in the article, thus the need to only summarize them in the Lead and leaving it to the reader to explore the links (external and internal). My major concern is over statements that the three cases treated in the article are characterized as "precedent-setting", but none of them has any reliable sources supporting that analysis (and only one of the three is actually described as such in the body (a description with which I agree since it was heard in the US Supreme Court), although all three are characterized as such in the Lead). If I understand precedent correctly, either the decision has to be of binding nature based on the court which rules on it, or it is a decision on which numerous or significant subsequent case decisions are based. For whatever reason, the other editor sees no need to address the impact the decisions of those three cases (reliably sourced, of course).

My knowledge of WP legal articles is nil, but can the Lead statement "Several legal decisions have set contractual law precedents in regards to long-arm statutes, the limitations of franchise agreements, and ethical business practices; many of these decisions have helped define general business dealings that continue to shape the entire marketplace." be made without the observations of legal scholars or experts? Isn't this OR? Since I'm unfamiliar with this territory, would someone take a look at the article and provide guidance, please? If I'm off-base, fine, but I'm worried about the article's quality, especially since it is undergoing GAN review. A good place to start is here. Thanks.
Jim Dunning | talk 23:58, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Help save Litigation involving Tesco

Can interested people please go and say something against deleting this page here? As a lawyer I think each case should have an article, and this is a convenient grouping with some valuable information. Wikidea 22:27, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Société à responsabilité limitée - Assistance Required

This is a call out for an expert on French corporate law: please take a look at this article. It appears to have been translated from French, and is in dire need of attention from an expert. I have tagged it for expert assistance. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 16:24, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to rename "Pedra Branca dispute"

There is a discussion on whether to rename "Pedra Branca dispute" as "Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks and South Ledge (Malaysia v. Singapore)", as this is the official name of the International Court of Justice case: see "List of International Court of Justice cases". Your comments on the article's talk page are welcome. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 17:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Would like to get involved

Hi guys, I would like to get involved with this project; my specialisms are in private/contract law. Please tell me how I can be of help.(Willrgby (talk) 22:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC))

It would be really helpful if you could sign up for the proposed English law wikiproject here which needs members and would help develop the English law corpus on wikipedia. Lamberhurst (talk) 19:07, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject Prisons

If anyone's interested, I've proposed a new wikiproject for the creation of articles regarding specific prisons here. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 20:41, 8 June 2008 (UTC)