Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Consensu (law)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. (non-admin closure) Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 13:00, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Consensu (law)

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"Consensu" is not really a legal concept, simply a Latin word that exists in a number of quotes. Wikipedia is not a Latin-to-English dictionary. Gccwang (talk) 01:45, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:47, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:47, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Question "How possible is a redirect to Consent (criminal law)?" asks one with very limited latin and legal becakground. 野狼院 ひさし  Hisashi Yarouin 05:29, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * A more likely target would be Law of obligations, where consensu are (briefly) discussed. James500 (talk) 00:41, 22 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Snowball keep and improve. I am afraid the nominator is wrong. "Consensu" is the name of a type of contract in Roman law. See for example Amos, History and Principles of the Civil Law of Rome. From what I can gather from GBooks, "consensu" are the class of contracts that do not require formalities. James500 (talk) 10:14, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * If you look at the quotes in our article "Re, verbis, scripto, consensu, traditione, junctura vestes sumere pacta solent" is a list of the six methods by which a contract can be formed which appears to be taken from Bracton: . James500 (talk) 11:31, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

*Delete with possible copyright violation issues since the article appears to be identical with this passage on this page. The term Consensu usually does not stand alone in Latin legal terminology, but with other words, such that Consensu has no real legal meaning other than "with consent", and in order for it to mean something, must be conjoined with another term (as suggested by the article). My minimal searches did not find substantive discussion of the term as a term, required to meet the GNG, although it may be possible that such sources exist.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:00, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * @ User:Tomwsulcer: That book was published in 2012. Our article has had that content since 2009. Prima facie, they are copying from us. The impression that I get is that Cram101 is a mirror of Wikipedia, as lots of stuff seems to be reproduced verbatim.
 * Consensu is used as a standalone term in Roman law. It doesn't refer to the presence of consent, it refers to the absence of formalities. (People sometimes give things counter-intuitive names). Amos and Bracton don't conjoin it with any other term. They give it as the name of that type of contract. "Minimal searches" do not justify the deletion of any article (WP:BEFORE). James500 (talk) 23:24, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * You may be right about the Cram book extracting info from the Wikipedia page (and then slapping a copyright label on it). Still, the article, in its present form, has no references. I had trouble finding them. Would you be so kind to put something in there that the rest of the community can possibly check as per WP:V?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:44, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This article from "The Teaching Economist" appears to say that Cram101 is a mirror. James500 (talk) 23:58, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The article is not unreferenced. It expressely cites Blackstone's Commentries as a source, a book so well known that it requires no further explanation. It also cites "Seip's Estate", a case reported at page 26 of volume 1 of the Pennsylvania District Reports (that is what "1 Pa Dist 26" means). I have also pointed out that part of it is taken from the book commonly known as "Bracton" (ie "De Legibus et Consutudinibus Angliae" written c 1250 by Henry of Bratton). If you Google the other quotes, I'm sure you will find they are all from public domain law books in GBooks. WP:V doesn't require that sources be cited in the article to avoid deletion of the article, only that they exist. Try searching for consensu law -consensus, consensu+contract-consensus, consensu+roman-consensus and so forth. For example, Gordon's Compendium of Roman Law has this on p 120. And Bracton contains a detailed discussion of all six forms of vestimenta pactorum. It is absolutely inconceivable that any of the handful (4 or 6 depending on which source you use) of types of contract in Roman law will not have received significant coverage over the course of more than two thousand years. James500 (talk) 01:25, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * We don't seem to have an article on Roman contract law or the Roman law of obligations. Why not move this article to an appropriate location and rework it so that it is about the whole thing (to which Gordon, cited above, for example, devotes many pages)? Gordon's Compendium is public domain, so you could use that as a starting point. This article does contain important material that we will want to use even if it is, currently, a bit of a mess. James500 (talk) 05:29, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * On second thoughts that probably isn't necessary. Closer inspection of GBooks indicates that consensu contracts satisfy GNG easily and by a very wide margin. Entire chapters of books are devoted to them. In addition to the chapter in Gordon's Compendium (pp 130 to 136 in the 2nd edition), see also, for example, chapter 26 of Bowyer's Commentaries on the Modern Civil Law, chapter 5 of The Roman Law of Obligations and chapter 12 of An Introduction to the Principles of Roman Civil Law. The level of coverage is enormous. I should point out that consensu is a massive swathe of contract law including all contracts of sale and hire, all agency and all partnerships. I have it in mind to rewrite this article in the near future. James500 (talk) 06:17, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Rethinking things, based on James500 excellent comments, I still wonder what is best here. See, the word consensu essentially is an adjective, in terms of the Latin language, meaning "with consent". My question is: is this word, in itself, sufficiently notable to merit an article in Wikipedia according to the guidelines such as WP:GNG? That's my question. The article lacks inline sources; I did not find sources discussing "consensu" as a Latin term in law, in itself, in depth. Rather, what I think James500 is saying, and I think these points are right, is that there are references when the adjective "consensu" is combined with other Latin terms to form Roman legal constructions, such as Contracts Consensu, and that such subjects are encyclopedic, meriting wiki-articles. So, my thinking is still that either the current article Consensu (law) should be deleted or else reduced to a sentence or two, explaining that the term had meaning in ancient Roman law, with an expanded "See also" section pointing to articles existing or to be written, such as "Contracts consensu" (which merits an article).--Tomwsulcer (talk) 11:34, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I am going to write an article on this type of contract. If you don't like the name of that article, feel free to move the article to one of the many alternative names of this type of contract attested to by the sources. Bear in mind, however, that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so, no matter how many different names this type of contract has, we will only have one article on it, because there is only one topic. We will not have separate articles for, say, "contract consensu" and "obligatio consensu" and "obligation ex consensu" because they are, unless I am badly mistaken, one and the same thing. Like "bike" and "bicycle" are the same thing. James500 (talk) 12:24, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * When you say "this type of contract" are you referring to Contracts consenu? As I said, I think that would be a notable encyclopedic topic and not a dictionary definition, and I think if you write such an article, or move the existing content in the current "Consensu" article to such an article, and add references, that you will be on firm ground, and I think that would be fine and that the community would agree. But having only one article on a Latin adjective can be problematic since there is the term Consensu omnium meaning "By the agreement of all" and ex consensu meaning "by agreement" (without the all part); and there is tacito consensu meaning "With tacit consent -- Done with the unexpressed but presumed consent of a principal party". The different meanings illustrate my continuing problem with this article, specifically, that "consensu" is only an adjective, that presuming that "consensu" is the same as "Contracts consensu" or "obligations ex consensu" is misleading and is an act of original research, that it makes sense to have separate articles if that is what you wish, with perhaps the current article "Consensu" being turned into a disambiguation page to point to the more specific referenced articles.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:21, 22 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I searched numerous Latin-law dictionaries for the term "consensu" but all were empty, suggesting that the term is not used in current discourse in the legal world. Consensu is not in Beck's Law Dictionary, not in Duhaimes law dictionary, not listed in Wikipedia's list of Latin law terms, and not in Law.com's dictionary, and not in Legum.org's dictionary either, nor here either. If the word 'consensu' is directly related to 'consensus', such that one is a different case of the other (eg dative, nominative, ablative, interrogative etc) then the term 'consensus' does not appear as a stand-alone term either, but is used with other words to form terms such as "consensus facit legem" meaning "consent makes the law".--Tomwsulcer (talk) 15:02, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It isn't OR, Amos says that "consensu" is an alternative name for "contracts consensu", but since it bothers you, I will move the article to an unambiguous title. There is some material in the article of doubtful relevance which I will also remove. James500 (talk) 01:21, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅. The article requires and will receive further expansion but should be completely immune from deletion in its present form. James500 (talk) 12:05, 24 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks James for the point. Again with very limited latin and legal becakground, by the two sentences in Law of obligations, I would say the article works better being about Gaius' now-defunct classification of contracts, hence Tom's dab/move/create-articles suggestion. Other categories have flourished well with their own articles, with contracts litteris at Literal contracts in Roman law and contracts re at Real contracts in Roman law. I would wager the Roman Law textbooks already cited in these two other could easily discuss contracts consensu in good weight also. BTW speaking of consensu(al) contracts, how relevant is Locatio conductio? It pops up when I search for "consensual contract".  野狼院 ひさし  Hisashi Yarouin 15:37, 22 September 2014 (UTC) Rephrased 15:40, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Locatio conductio is a type of contract consensu. It should be merged into or summarised in the main article. James500 (talk) 01:31, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep, most educational and encyclopedic. Also persuaded by exchange, above. Cheers, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 02:44, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 17:25, 28 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep Switching to Keep based on article improvements, and renaming the article, although it still has a long way to go, with a primary concern that (possibly) too many Latin disparate legal terms are linked under one term, but that is a content issue, not a keep or delete issue.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:06, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Confirms keep after great fixes.  野狼院 ひさし  Hisashi Yarouin 02:34, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.