WikiProject Law | (Rated Project-class) | |||||||||
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Looking for help!!
Hey Y'all,
I started a page and need help editing and adding to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Lawson_v._Commonwealth_(1942)
Requested move at Russian war crimes
A move of Russian war crimes ⟶ Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity has been proposed. Your feedback would be appreciated at Talk:Russian war crimes#Requested move 6 April 2022. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:03, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:Annexation of the Jordan Valley#Requested move 23 March 2022
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Annexation of the Jordan Valley#Requested move 23 March 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 07:02, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
FAR for Accurate News and Information Act
I have nominated Accurate News and Information Act for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 14:56, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Help needed at ongoing trial article!
’’Depp v Heard’’, a new article on an ongoing, highly publicized trial in VA, US needs input from editors. In particular, what is needed is help in defining the legal arguments and for general editing related to the evidence heard in trial and other ongoing developments. Thank you! TrueHeartSusie3 (talk) 09:01, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:Use of force by states#Requested move 10 March 2022
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Use of force by states#Requested move 10 March 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 13:03, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:Law on Elimination of Sexual Violence#Requested move 12 April 2022
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Law on Elimination of Sexual Violence#Requested move 12 April 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 20:56, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Notice of RfC on Marcelo Kohen
Hello everyone. RfC available for comment for Marcelo Kohen (Professor of International Law at IHEID Geneva and Secretary-General of the Institut de Droit International, the oldest international law association and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1904), for whom surprisingly there was no Wikipedia article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_talk:Marcelo_Kohen
Thank you!
--Pugliese23 (talk) 13:19, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
United States v. Munsingwear, Inc.
Good opportunity to expand from a redirect, if anyone is interested. Getting some coverage right now based on the mask mandate court action in the US. [1] « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 19:51, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Discussion started at Template talk:English law#"Related systems"
I have started the above-noted discussion to move the countries in "Related systems" to their own separate template box for common law countries (which I think is a better descriptor than "related systems" to English law. This was prompted by a discussion at Talk:Law of Canada. Singularity42 (talk) 17:13, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
User script to detect unreliable sources
I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like
- John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (
John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.
)
and turns it into something like
- John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.
It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.
The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.
Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.
This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
Covered entities and anti-discrimination law
One of my (many ;-)
) pet peeves is people claiming that their HIPPA rights have been violated by family members blabbing about their medical information or friends asking whether they've been vaccinated against COVID.
I have been hearing similar lines of error around Anti-discrimination law during the last couple of years. People want to have Caste covered by US discrimination laws, because (the example I heard most recently) some low-status people have been asked not to touch the food at a dinner party. Under US law, that would still be legal (unless it was an employment-related event and not actually a party). I've heard similar errors about LBGTQ efforts (e.g., that when same-sex marriage became legal, then bigoted neighbors would no longer reject them).
What I haven't been able to find is a decent source that explains this wrt to discrimination law. These laws prevent (in the US, anyway) the government, your employer, your bank, and a few others from engaging in certain forms of discrimination. They don't (in the US, at least) make your neighbor invite you to their private parties or be a basically decent human being. Can anyone find such a source? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing Are you looking for something about strictly American law or something more global/comparative? Just as a note—if you're looking at American law perhaps the keyword "civil rights" will give you more hits than "discrimination". JBchrch talk 14:29, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
- I'd much rather have something global/comparative, but I'm willing to settle for US law if we can't find something better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
- WhatamIdoing, we have an article on Public accommodations in the United States, which I think is basically what you're looking for: the idea that discrimination laws generally apply only to facilities that serve the public. This article in The Atlantic might be also helpful; it notes that "No law, state or federal, forbids 'discrimination' generally....Any type of private discrimination is legal unless a state or federal law specifically forbids it. Civil-rights laws prohibit discrimination on certain grounds, and they specify what activities they apply to. The most common areas of civil-rights protections are employment, housing, and 'public accommodations,' which refers to places like hotels and restaurants." I'm not terribly familiar with other countries' civil rights laws, so perhaps someone can weigh in on that. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 17:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
- I've read that article in The Atlantic twice now, and I am so happy that you told me about it. Thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:03, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
- WhatamIdoing, we have an article on Public accommodations in the United States, which I think is basically what you're looking for: the idea that discrimination laws generally apply only to facilities that serve the public. This article in The Atlantic might be also helpful; it notes that "No law, state or federal, forbids 'discrimination' generally....Any type of private discrimination is legal unless a state or federal law specifically forbids it. Civil-rights laws prohibit discrimination on certain grounds, and they specify what activities they apply to. The most common areas of civil-rights protections are employment, housing, and 'public accommodations,' which refers to places like hotels and restaurants." I'm not terribly familiar with other countries' civil rights laws, so perhaps someone can weigh in on that. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 17:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
- I'd much rather have something global/comparative, but I'm willing to settle for US law if we can't find something better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:10, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
Taking Griswold v. Connecticut to GA?
Hi! Seeing as how it will be nonstop discussed in global journalism and political races in the US, I was wondering if there were editors interested in taking this article to GA level. The more informed the public debate on this issue the better the decisions that will be taken. — Ixtal ( T / C ) ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 07:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
- I'd be interested. My time varies wildly based on work but I've been looking to take a legal article to GA for a bit now. Alyo (chat·edits) 13:25, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
The Precedent article needs more citations
Stare decisis redirects to the Precedent article. The news coverage of the release of a US Supreme Court draft decision apparently reversing Roe v. Wade will draw a lot of attention to stare decisis & I expect we will now get a lot of traffic to the article. Although I often concentrate on improving citations, I am personally unknowledgeable about law & legal sources. I am hoping to prevail upon WP:LAW members to help remedy this situation.
@Hairy Dude: you were the one to place the {{refimprove}} template. Do you have anything to add? Peaceray (talk) 16:11, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
Analysis of leaked abortion case opinion
Is it appropriate to add details on reactions to content of the leaked Dobbs opinion beyond the President and nation-wide protests? Please respond at Talk:Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization#Gertner-Reinstein opinion. -- Beland (talk) 01:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
LegalShield COI edit requests
Hi! I've posted some COI edit requests at Talk:LegalShield. Sharing in case anyone here is interested in taking a look. Thank you for any help or feedback! JZindler (talk) 19:39, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
Category:Establishment Clause case law
Hi, simple question for the attorneys here: what is the requirement for this category? For example, I’m not sure all the cases in Category:Ten Commandments are also members of Establishment Clause case law. Is it okay to add them or does this category have specific requirements? Thank you. Viriditas (talk) 22:40, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
Merge
Should legal status be merged into legality? Are they the same subject? The legal status feels like a WP:PERMASTUB to me. PhotographyEdits (talk) 10:05, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
- While it may always be a short article, it has it's own meaning and should probably stand independent. I'll see what I can add. Alyo (chat·edits) 13:27, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Alyo Thanks! PhotographyEdits (talk) 18:44, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
False statement in defamation
When referring to the article False statement I was curious to find no content on Defamation despite this article saying that: Defamation is the communication of a false statement... Could any of you legal brains that understand this stuff have a look at this? GregKaye 12:31, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
Changes to Mental Health Act 1983
Hey. I've been making some changes to Mental Health Act 1983. This has mostly consisted of:
- Adding tables summarizing different sections or holding periods.
- Adding information about informal patients / voluntary patients
- Linking to relevant case law.
More generally, my aim is to add information relevant to:
- the individual who is incorrectly or marginally coerced or controlled through the act.
- the individual who risks long term harm as a result of others use of the act, or threats based upon it
I am aware of some stylistic tensions here. So I'm giving people a heads up here if they would like to provide feedback. Talpedia (talk) 11:08, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
Primary source reference as neutral
Pinging members that have recently joined the law project with hope they can field a query or advise on ways to take it further.
@Pennsylvania2, S.shedore, Duke of Somewhere, Trolligarch, Semanticz0, Тежава, EuanHolewicz432, CaptainEek, MKT92, Such-change47, Dberg2, Aarf613, Critical Hippo, and Solipsism 101:
Hi legal brains, (if you feel its been answered or if this isn't your thing, feel free to ignore).
I've been doing an overhaul on the Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd article, so far taking the Verdict section from this to this all without complaint. When tackling another matter elsewhere an editor pointed to the fact that I'd been editing with significant use of the main WP:Primary source material (Justice Nicol's Judgement) which got me wondering about my approach.
Perhaps the most significant changes related to the development of section Alleged domestic abuse incidents perpetrated by Depp to Alleged violent incidents (with that title being chosen to match the subtitle previously used in the Background section of the article, Alleged violent incidents)
My impression working through was that there had been biases perhaps based references that secondary sources had chosen as reference or that editors had chosen to cite and my argument is that a work through references from the Judgement paper to make up their own minds. The material is proven to be WP:Notable by the fact that appears in RS and, on that platform, I've referred back to Primary Source.
I'm asking whether or not this is a positive and warranted approach to take or not.
GregKaye 12:44, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- @GregKaye Wikipedia prefers secondary sources whenever possible. Legal articles are sometimes an exception, since many key cases aren't broken down very thoroughly in the literature. But most notable cases should have enough coverage out there. Since anything Depp related got a real frenzy of media coverage, you shouldn't need to rely on the primary source hardly at all. The danger in using primary literature from the court is that it requires a lot of legal understanding to parse correctly, oftentimes requires extra context, and even the court can be biased. Thus unless strictly necessary, rely on secondary sources. The best are law review articles, but I didn't find any about this case. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 16:48, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- FWIW, my understanding is that a court opinion is a secondary source (though not necessarily a good one) as to the facts of the case and the existing law, and a primary source (though not necessarily a bad one) as to the court's own holding and reasoning. See WP:PSTS ("A source may be considered primary for one statement but secondary for a different one"). Since we have access to the actual judgement (yay!), in principle I think the ideal thing would be to use that to evaluate specific independent secondary sources for reliability and POV, and to use those reliable sources to shape the coverage in the article, with just a reasonable smattering of quotes and citations to the judgement. Given the pressures on this sort of momentarily high-visibility topic, I can understand why you went with this approach, but I think ideally the article would not rely so directly and heavily on the judgement itself. (On a likely irrelevant side note, I would respectfully dissent from the above claim that law review articles are broadly "the best"; the situation is somewhat variable worldwide, and as far as I know UK law journals are generally fine, but most US law review articles are not peer-reviewed and should be handled with considerable care as to anything controversial.) -- Visviva (talk) 17:20, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
I think there are a few views on this: 1) Referencing from primary legal material (judgments or legislation) is very different to historic or political primary sources as it is less likely to express a bias and is highly authoritative; however 2) Wiki may not trust editors to make informed readings from authoritative legal sources as it doesn’t have a good certainty that writers are qualified lawyers/informed/correct - secondary sources make this easier as the writer is reviewably an authority themselves; however (again) 3) Many secondary legal sources are rubbish (such as legal reporting in the enws) and these sources are often notably erroneous.
So my personal view is that the standardised approach to primary sources is not effective for legal content, but reference to authoritative legal secondary sources (journal articles, law gazette, government commentary or reports) offers the best of both worlds. MKT92 (talk) 17:43, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
*news MKT92 (talk) 17:49, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- I agree with this. It seems like it would be a good idea to have something (maybe just an essay) on how WP:RS operates in legal topics. -- Visviva (talk) 19:10, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you your noble Honourables, CaptainEek, Visviva and MKT92
- On Visviva's,
"the ideal thing would be to use that to evaluate specific independent secondary sources for reliability and POV"
I confess to lacking confidence that editors may always achieve that ideal of NPOV. - On MKT92's
"Many secondary legal sources are rubbish"
Currently, at Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd#References, citations are from (deep breath): ACLU, BBC/BBC News*5, Canadian Broadcasting Cinemablend, Corporation*2, CNET, CNN, Deadline Hollywood*5, Entertainment Weekly*2, The Guardian*15, The Hollywood Reporter*2, The Independent*3, Insider, The Irish Examiner, The Irish Times, ITV News11, LA Times*2, London Evening Standard, The New York Times*2, People*2, Press Gazette*4, Refinery29, Reuters*4, Sky News*3, The Sun (obviously), USA Today*2 and Variety*4. I'd appreciate specific pointers to relevant papers pertinent to the case (though acknowledging that I am a lowly muggle beside your great Grindelwaldlinesses). On"1) Referencing from primary legal material (judgments or legislation) is very different to historic or political primary sources as it is less likely to express a bias and is highly authoritative; however 2) Wiki may not trust editors to make informed readings from authoritative legal sources as it doesn’t have a good certainty that writers are qualified lawyers/informed/correct - secondary sources make this easier as the writer is reviewable an authority themselves;"
I'm wondering whether it's best to stick with the primary sources as I've so far done at Alleged violent incidents, whether I should return to the popular RS as currently used or if there's some other documents you could point me to. An even cursory view on how you think it's going so far could also help. GregKaye 20:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC) - Ho, hum, just got a ping that my work's been reverted. GregKaye 21:09, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- Well for starters, probably because you included an incredibly large amount of material. Wikipedia articles need to be of a reasonable length. Second,I'm not really sure what using the Judges writing achieves over just using press coverage? Like, the press have done the hard work of figuring out what is notable, so why not just rely on that? CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 21:32, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- A positive-sum solution might be for each sentence about what the court said to be supported by citations to both a secondary source and the opinion (perhaps with a quote embedded in the citation template rather than directly in the article text). That's what I was thinking of in terms of letting the secondary sources shape our coverage. But that's double the work and some people wouldn't like it either. Kudos for putting in the effort, anyway. As for me, I don't want to go anywhere near that article. -- Visviva (talk) 21:43, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- Just a thought but maybe the solution is to raise the standard on Secondary Sources for something this controversial. That's the method I have taken on other legal articles where uninformed journalists are mostly just reacting to whatever piece is the most salacious. A lot of them are not really reacting to the lawsuit per se but to the news and scandal, and it would be good to privilege sources with a higher reputation for legal analysis. Jorahm (talk) 15:19, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- I agree with Jorahm. In general, our best practice is to always use the highest quality source available. Sometimes you only have meh journalism to go on. But when you have a lot of coverage, and you have a choice between the Daily Mail or the NY Times, the choice is obvious. If you ever need access to a certain source, there are lots of editors with subscriptions to the major newspapers. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 17:06, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- Just a thought but maybe the solution is to raise the standard on Secondary Sources for something this controversial. That's the method I have taken on other legal articles where uninformed journalists are mostly just reacting to whatever piece is the most salacious. A lot of them are not really reacting to the lawsuit per se but to the news and scandal, and it would be good to privilege sources with a higher reputation for legal analysis. Jorahm (talk) 15:19, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
Hi, CaptainEek, Visviva and MKT92, update and hopefully minor question (and thanks).
- I think I achieved a system that will supply readers with desired reference that I wanted by filling out citation refs with result of the reference section going from this (with many of the to be edited refs from #98-109) to this. Here goes:
- Are "Particulars" and "Judgement" appropriate reverences? The Defence (NGN) raised 14 alleged violent incidents listed both under the title
The defence of truth: the Particulars on which the Defendants rely and the Claimant's reply
(from para 45) and following a close to a paragraph (205) which says,...this is a civil, not a criminal case, I shall follow this guidance.
The two sets of wording I've used in the citations is:Depp v NGN & Wootton (2020), Particulars: Incident #: title, para #-#
andDepp v NGN & Wootton (2020), Particulars: Judgement #: title, para #-#
. Any suggestions? - The article list has subsections on the incidents in two article locations, under >Background >Defence... >? and under >Judgement >? Currently I've edited titles both to read
Alleged violent incidents (perpetrated by Depp)
. Due to the difference between the UK and US trials, I thought it useful to present titles in a similar way but, for the sake of readers, it could help readers if the titles had some difference. Is that something that can be done in a not so obstructive way?
- Are "Particulars" and "Judgement" appropriate reverences? The Defence (NGN) raised 14 alleged violent incidents listed both under the title
edit: also, which section at lawsociety.org.uk/../research-guides/how-to-find-law-reports or elsewhere is best used for Wikipedia relate materials? GregKaye 05:10, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
As to (1) ‘particulars’ tend to refer to the content of the claimant’s allegation and not the defence. At least in England and Wales, there is a widely held convention that the judicial statement on the result of a court case is a ‘judgment’ not ‘judgement’. Though a judge may nonetheless express her judgement on the quality of a particular argument in her judgment.
I will have to look more closely before answering (2) so will come back to you.
That guide on law reports is good. A simple rule of thumb is to always use the neutral citation (normally in the top right of the first page of modern judgments) or the ICLR as the next most authoritative report. MKT92 (talk) 08:25, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- MKT92 I'm conscious that I'm asking a lot so just if it's of interest to you. ..appreciated! GregKaye 09:05, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
Intention to create legal relations
I have proposed moving this page to intent to be bound. As far as I can determine, this is the most common name for the concept in all common law jurisdictions. I don't think this is likely to be controversial, but since the page has been there for a while (and has a three-year layer of dust on it, although that's pretty good for a law article these days), I thought I'd see if anybody can think of a reason it should stay at its current title, or be moved to some other title that I haven't thought of. -- Visviva (talk) 23:59, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
On further review I may have talked myself out of this move, but I would still welcome any input. -- Visviva (talk) 00:34, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Maya Forstater Input requested
Please would members join the discussion on Talk:Maya Forstater - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Maya_Forstater#June_2022_article_changes. The discussion is about the wording to describe a UK employment case. Amongst other problems, an editor is insisting on saying that the case has been awarded to Forstater, when the decision of the second tribunal is still awaited. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:03, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
request
Could someone make a reasonable article or redirect about the "text and history" standard for judicial scrutiny, that seems to have been introduced in NYSRPA v. Bruen? I guess it is supposed to serve alongside and/or replace the existing strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, etc. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:FD2B (talk) 20:33, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
Alcohol laws of New Jersey Featured article review
I have nominated Alcohol laws of New Jersey for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:19, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
International citation template
As part of some general citation cleanup I went to fix some of the EU law citation templates: {{CELEX}} and {{ECLI}}, and the latter still needs help finding individual sites to resolve addresses, Slovakia for one. I was thinking in the utter mess of Category:Law citation templates ( 128 ) (btw that category doesn't even cover half of them -- law templates need a category cleanup too) that there are potentially a lot of metadata fields that could be shared among a lot of countries' templates. Of course, plenty of the templates are just url masks and nothing more, but even taking something like {{Cite court}} as a reference base (as it's based on CS1) it may have less flexibility of formatting for getting started) would be worth trying to do. The hardest part is really just making sure all the individual regions' identifier code templates work.
There's a lot of styles for citing a mix of international law in a single publication, including that specified in Bluebook, but also Oxford (which is also different from what the university's criminal justice school uses, apparently) and a bunch of others for every university and journal (a MOS with bad typos!) out there. But as CS1 likes to point out, the citation style on Wikipedia is unique to Wikipedia, so there's no stone-set rulebook anybody is following anymore here. Regardless of style discussion, the main point is whether people think this is something that is possible to do in the first place, or at what scope it might be possible (e.g. everything in one template, or split treaties, decrees, legislation, and court cases up), and then style can be changed at any time.
A starting point could just be to see whether all the important bibliographic parameters in anything with an ECLI or CELEX be handled by a single template. Then what are the parameters and which are mutually inclusive/exclusive? And with a similar process in other jurisdictions, maybe some templates would be naturally suited to be wrappers on the same template. But as I have zero legal background (and almost no Wiki coding experience), just a passion for good citations and data, this is where I could use feedback. SamuelRiv (talk) 23:34, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
- It sounds to me like you are on the right track and have some idea of the complexity of the problem. One thing I would add is that, in my experience, the existing specialized citation templates all have very limiting ideas of what such citations are for, which makes them clunky to use much of the time. Perhaps a good way forward would be to figure out all the purposes we expect a legal citation on Wikipedia to be able to serve.
- On that note, I've found that a pervasive problem, regardless of legal system or citation standard, is that I need to be able to cite a legal authority clearly as such (which is what standard professional citation formats like Bluebook are good at, and is also done for example by {{cite constitution}}), and to "say where I got it", preferably in such a way that a non-specialist can at least find and evaluate the authority I'm citing (which is what the CS1 templates are very good at) -- without confusing the two. It's awkward to use {{cite web}} to cite a constitutional provision as if I were merely citing a particular webpage, but it's also very unsatisfactory to use {{cite constitution}} to merely cite a constitution in the abstract while leaving the reader to figure out how to check my work. (What possibly-out-of-date online edition did I refer to? Which possibly-flawed translation did I rely on? On what date did I retrieve it? If I just cite "the Constitution of Benin, Article 57", the world may never know.) Medium-neutral identifiers like {{ECLI}} can be a big help where they are available, I think, but are probably not a full solution even then: I'd want to be able to provide at least an access-date and possibly some other {{cite web}} parameters. The approach I've been working on lately is to just smush the two types of citation together somehow, in the simpler case with something like "<contextually appropriate professional citation>: <cite web>" in a single ref, or in the more complex case with something like Veto#Constitutions cited (which I am not entirely happy with at present). But it would be much better if we could have some sort of standardized way of handling these problems, perhaps with some sort of CS1-based meta-template that could then be tailored for various forms of authority and legal systems, and smoothly integrated with {{sfn}}-style refs when appropriate. -- Visviva (talk) 03:46, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
- CS1 is a module, so all Lua, but they're nice enough to support outside identifier templates. The identifiers alone in CS1 are complete with error checking and of course metadata, and it's a similar story with the rest of the parameters. Extending support in that template's code base for something like law would just seem weird in the short term -- there's often no author and no title, and a perhaps more granularity for numerical locators than is currently supported. A CS1|2 wrapper with creative aliases is the easy short-term solution if some errors and metadata can be suppressed (I'll ask CS1 Talk, but Vancouver CS disables metadata by default), and then proper Harvard-style/sfn citations can be supported individually with {{harvid}}.
- Your point about WP citations being for a non-specialist audience is an important one. The typical format of U.S. legal citations, as reproduced in {{cite court}} and others, is completely opaque unless you know the convention of the field. To be fair we all have to learn how to read the basic bibliographic citation at various points in school, but there's also a basic literacy assumption on en.WP, and CS1|2 also does a great job of extending the basic understanding most people have of bibliographic citations to multiple formats. It did come of on CS1 Talk recently, however, that we nevertheless present journal "volume-issue" as "21(3)" or the like, which is the standard for many academic fields, while other templates use "vol. 21 no. 3". As I would support moving to the latter in {{cite journal}} so would I support more explicit reference to parameters in WP's legal citations. But that again is a matter of style that can be decided at any time, whereas determining what parameters are feasible is of first importance. If a CS1|2 wrapper is the first preference for immediate compatibility with harv/sfn, then I'll see what I can find out as far as what's possible. SamuelRiv (talk) 05:51, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
State Department Inspector General article
Hi, on February 23, 2022, I proposed a few updates to improve the quality of the Steve Linick article here that I think may be of interest to members of this project, especially since the Request Edits Queue seems to be pretty stalled. I can’t implement the requests myself since I have a conflict of interest as a personal connection and am aware that would be a violation of Wikipedia policy. Thanks.Skijackson (talk) 18:21, 5 July 2022 (UTC)