Talk:Everything which is not forbidden is allowed

10th amendment?
Would it be legally correct to mention the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution? Tony (talk) 16:41, 30 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I have added this to the See also section. Andrew D. (talk) 11:53, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Link Bad
http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=40088 does not go to a relevant page. Glennglazer (talk) 13:56, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

National Traditions
In Norwegian there are ways to express "must not" that is discernible from "doesn't have to", such as "får ikke" (which is entirely identical in meaning to the Swedish "får inte") or "kan ikke". This entire paragraph seems unnecessary and misleading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.202.115.49 (talk) 17:33, 4 November 2016 (UTC)


 * "The claim that “everything which is not forbidden is allowed” is a principle only of English law does not stand the test of reality." - What does this even mean and what does it have to do with National traditions? Johngraybosch (talk) 20:26, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

German Law
It is bad that this article perpetuates a myth about German law. A legal system that really forbade everything that is not expressly allowed would be unworkable. You would have to have laws allowing breathing, eating, sleeping, defecating, washing, dressing, undressing and you just name it - and you would still forget umpteen things that we all take for granted - walking, running, putting on or losing weight. The only example given is from an abstruse area of civil (not criminal) law. Obviously if the law doesn't make provision for certain kinds of ownership, then you can't own in that particular way, but that is - possibly - a gap in the law, not a prohibition.

The article is way below the standard I would normally expect of Wikipedia. Norvo (talk) 01:22, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Heinlein
"Everything not compulsory was Forbidden" is used in Robert Heinlein's short story 'Coventry' (1940) to describe an authoritarian state based on the functionalist doctrine. Thought I'd drop this here for consideration since it predates the North Korean parallel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.211.64.11 (talk) 00:38, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

How do you put this page forward as a candidate for deletion?
The title is a made up phrase from nowhere it seems, the content is wishy washy and to no point, but then there is no point because this isn't in itself a principle of law or English law, witness the lack of citation. The references all lame, the only item of interest is a link to Nulla poena sine lege which actually is a principle of law and a useful page. Timbow001 (talk) 17:16, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

It's alright I looked it up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timbow001 (talk • contribs) 17:41, 20 January 2020 (UTC)


 * It appears that Timbow001 is satisfied now and the AfD is malformed so it should be speedily closed. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:14, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Andrew, you are mistaken. I looked up how to propose an article for deletion. This one I think needs consideration. Timbow001 (talk) 18:27, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, I misconstrued what was meant and, as the AFD discussion page was not correctly formatted, thought it simplest to close the matter. To avoid further confusion, I suggest that we discuss the matter here to clarify your objections.  Above, you state that "The title is a made up phrase from nowhere".  It is, in fact, a stock phrase which describes a principle of a free society.  Above, there are a variety of search links for the phrase and these yield many sources which discuss or use it.  Here is a brief selection:
 * "For the individual citizen, everything which is not forbidden is allowed; but for public bodies, and notably government, everything which is not allowed is forbidden" – The Rule of Law: The Presumption of Liberty and Justice
 * "In a closed system in which all obligations are stated explicitly the following inference rules are valid: (XI) Everything which is not forbidden is allowed..." – The Role of Rules
 * "If we take the famous clause "Everything which is not forbidden is allowed" as one of main axioms of the use of Law" – The Right to Innocence
 * These seem adequate to demonstrate that the phrase has not been made up from nowhere. Does Timbow001 still disagree? Andrew🐉(talk) 19:13, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

The page fails notability. The phrase has no provenance: it has never been said by a notable person, it doesn't appear in any notable text and it has never been used in notable circumstances. You have googled, as have I and found that several people have strung the words together once or twice but that doesn't really cut the mustard.

This is important because the article claims that it is a legal principle but it isn't. Common law, Roman Law and the Napoleonic code have different formulations which they use for vaguely similar purposes like 'presumption of innocence'. It's misleading to wp users to present this phrase as some kind of legal formula without any kind of citation or evidence. It's misleading to associate the phrase particularly with English Law when it doesn't have any association with English Law. Timbow001 (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I see it's a 'constitutional principal' now. If it is it should have some references, but it isn't one I have ever heard of. Timbow001 (talk) 21:27, 20 January 2020 (UTC)


 * The author of the first quote above was Sir John Laws – a Lord Justice and professor of legal science. The second quote was by Ota Weinberger, a notable legal philosopher.  The authors of the third quote don't seem to have made into a Wikipedia yet but are professors of law and so their statement that the phrase in question is "famous" seems reasonably reliable.  So, we have plenty of notability.
 * For an example of the principle being presented as explicitly English or Anglo-Saxon, see Everything that isn’t forbidden is allowed.
 * For an example of the concept as a matter of English constitutional law, see Malone v United Kingdom, which is discussed in detail in sources such as this.
 * Andrew🐉(talk) 23:15, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I added these quotes. Kaihsu (talk) 06:29, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

This page remains a complete nonsense.
No Law code ever worked on the principal of allowing stuff instead of disallowing, but here this phrase from nowhere is presented as a special principle of English Law. The references are feeble. One of them is literally a joke - "In England everything that isn’t forbidden is allowed: in France everything that isn’t allowed is forbidden.” and a lame old joke at that.

The stuff about maritime Law is obscure and hardly relevant, just shoe-horned in to try and give the article some substance, the stuff about German Law is afaict simply wrong, but again obscure and shoe-horned in after a bit of googling.

I have to ask - what on earth is going on??

Googling reveals that here and there a fake right wing claim is being made that in some way European Law is more repressive than British Law and this page is used to support that claim. Is this a Brexit thing? Timbow001 (talk) 00:56, 4 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The page was started in 2009, which was long before Brexit, which the article does not mention. The topical issue at that time was the Localism Act 2011 which "which extends the power of all local authorities, from parish and community councils to county councils, to 'do anything that individuals generally may do'..."  As the principle arises in a variety of contexts, it is a broad topic – "an article that addresses a concept that may be difficult to write about because it is abstract, or because it covers the sometimes-amorphous relationship between a wide range of related concepts". Andrew🐉(talk) 10:00, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

I tried to restructure but the article is still in a bad shape. Kaihsu (talk) 06:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Examples
I just came across the case of William Price (physician) who was prosecuted for cremating his infant son but was acquitted on the grounds that there was no law against it. We might look out for other notable cases but we must be mindful of WP:LAUNDRY too. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:24, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Ram doctrine
Hello,

I thought I'd add here that I've made substantial edits to this page today, primarily reorganising it and adding information about the Ram Doctrine, which strangely, I could not find any reference to on Wikipedia.

However, I do agree with comments echoed earlier in this talk section that the article is a bit messy and without-purpose. I would also suggest that parts, particularly in relation to induvidual rights, have a signficant overlap with the Rule of Law article.

All the best,

FollowTheTortoise (talk) 14:00, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

The Ram doctrine is a good addition -- thanks for that. I'm not so sure about the structural changes which have added more headings and sub-headings which tend to make the page read like a set of Powerpoint bullets rather than a prose article. More anon. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:19, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Feel free to reverse the structural changes if you see fit. FollowTheTortoise (talk) 19:02, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

2020 Lockdowns?
There is a section here (under "Generally") that discusses the adage in regards to the 2020 COVID lockdowns in the UK. The quotes might be interesting to keep, but I think the text might violate WP:NPOV. I'm not sure how to reword it properly though, advice would be helpful...

ArthurDent 42 121 (talk) 22:23, 5 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree that it could do with shortening (at least) and rewriting with a more neutral tone. I might also take issue with parts of its factuality: assuming that it is talking about 2020 (not 2021 as it says), The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 only imposed limits on leaving the home and gatherings, not on, for instance, what you can post on the internet(!) or what you can spend money on. Thus in these areas the British tradition of negative rights continued. FollowTheTortoise (talk) 22:14, 6 June 2021 (UTC)