Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia as a court source

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A list of court citations has been compiled. --Michael Snow 21:02, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Leaving a note on article talk pages

I think it is interesting for editors to know that an article has been cited in a court decision, especially by appellate courts or courts of last instance (but probably less so if the citation is in amicus curiae briefs, parties' motions etc.). I've starting leaving the following sort of notice on the relevant Talk pages:

Notice This article was cited as a source in a U.S. court decision, English Mountain Spring Water Co. v. Chumley, 2005 WL 2756072 (Tenn.Ct.App., October 25, 2005). See Wikipedia as a court source.

What do you think? Sandstein 19:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Good. I tried to improve it with this.Remember (talk) 21:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Case law This article has been mentioned in case law.

The citation is in: Godoy v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 2007 WI APP 239 (Wisconsin Court of Appeals 2007-10-16) Link.

Here is the text for how to put in the template above:
{{Case Law|case=Godoy v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. |citation=2007 WI APP 239 |court=Wisconsin Court of Appeals |date=2007-10-16 |url=http://www.wicourts.gov/ca/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&seqNo=30600 Link}}

[edit] Is this supposed to be for citations of the English language Wikipedia only?

Which would be a shame, since at least in the German-speaking countries there have been a number of decisions by senior judicial bodies that have quoted the German Wikipedia. They don't (yet) seem to collect those citations in de:, though. Sandstein 20:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is the English wikipedia, so I think we should limit ourselves to citations of the English version. Feel free to create a similar page in German Wikipedia and add interwiki links, though. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] US citations

Tech Law Prof Blog on June 19, 2006 said that Westlaw gives 20 citations of Wikipedia by US federal courts, one in 2004 but mostly in early 2006, compared to 105 for Encyclopedia Brittanica. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] United States vs. Muhammed Salah and Abdelhaleem Ashqar

On October 24, 2006 in the Federal District Court for Northern Illinois, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Ferguson asked the government's expert witness Matthew Levitt "Have you heard of wikipedia?" and "Do you consider it a reliable source?" Ashqar's Defense attorney, Bill Moffet, objected and Judge Amy J. Steve sustained the objection. It's not known how the prosecution intended to use wikipedia as evidence. Bjd773 12:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Does this count?

http://www.citizen.org/documents/ACFDB9C.pdf is a "certified complaint" in Nickolas v. Fletcher, et al. It mentions "blogs" a little ways in, but I don't know if it's legit. 68.39.174.238 01:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conversion into table

The equivalent of this list in the German Wikipedia has been converted into a sortable table. This seems quite useful and well arranged to me. Why not proceeding similarly here? Framhein 18:29, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Please take a look at my suggestion of how the table could look like. If nobody should complain, I will exchange the present list for that table. Framhein 17:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Wikipedia in judicial opinions

I was not aware of this, so I started Wikipedia:Wikipedia in judicial opinions. However, the entry I started contains the actual quotes showing use - should we connect or merge these projects (I plan to keep building my list up). bd2412 T 18:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I would rather not merge the lists. In most cases, the full quotes seem to contain only little valuable information. Including them in this list on a regular basis would make the really interesting quotes - e.g. where judges reflect on the reliability of Wikipedia - only harder to find. Those who want to read the quote in context can easily follow the link to the text of the opinion. Framhein (talk) 19:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)