Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of legislation named for a person


 * 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. Consensus is that this is a valid list. Davewild (talk) 19:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

List of legislation named for a person

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Way too broad of a page, WP:IINFO...does this include laws in every city, county, state, and country in the world? C T J F 8 3 11:47, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nom. This is a bottomless pit. Who has to dub a law with a person's name for it to feature here? A newspaper? A legislature? My maiden aunt? We might pause if there was even a reason given as to why such laws need to be linked together in a list. I don't know how to add these, but I would suggest also deleting List of legislation named for a place and List of short titles, which are both mined from the same seam. asnac (talk) 14:18, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding List of short titles, see e.g. the Index to the Statutes and the Index of Government Orders. James500 (talk) 07:08, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 20:04, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 20:05, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 20:05, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong keep. The list is quite obviously not indiscriminate. James500 (talk) 03:32, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Being "broad" is not a reason to delete a page. The page can be split if it becomes too long. It isn't at that stage yet.
 * "Who has to dub a law with a person's name?" Obviously a reliable source. The names of the UK statutes were taken, in particular, from Halsbury's Statutes, Snell's Principles of Equity, Clerk and Lindsell on Torts, Winfield and Jolowizcz on Torts, The Law of Real Property by Robert Megarry, Constitutional and Administrative Law by Bradley and Ewing, A First Book of English Law by O. Hood Phillips, Britannica, Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice and possibly other books that escape my memory. These names are in widespread use. They are so famous that I assumed that I did not have to put sources in the list itself. Obviously I was wrong.
 * The other sources I mentioned included Bromley's Family Law, The Criminal Law Consolidation Statutes of the 24 & 25 Victoria by James Edward Davis, Constitutional and Administrative Law by Hilaire Barnett and, in one case, the Short Titles Act (Northern Ireland) 1951 and the Short Titles Act 1962.
 * The deletion of these lists would make it considerably more difficult to browse for articles on legislation. If there was not a problem, I would not have tried to create a solution. James500 (talk) 04:00, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:INDISCRIMINATE is very specific about what it applies to and does not say anything about lists of legislation and is not relevant. James500 (talk) 04:08, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * O. Hood Phillips' book does contain a discussion of the way in which early legislation was named (variously by subject, by the place in which it was passed, after the person responsible for it, and in the canonical manner), so this is an encyclopedic topic. James500 (talk) 05:19, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * So....which criteria of WP:SK applies? C T J F 8 3  08:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have replaced the word "speedy" with "strong". James500 (talk) 08:36, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Umm...also, IINFO doesn't apply to just those specific 3 examples, it's far broader then that. "merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia"...that's a very broad criteria for what falls under IINFO. Also, can you tell me what Lord Brougham's Act and Nelson Act have in common? They are completely different laws and different countries, so nothing in common other than a law named after a person. If the page was List of United Kingdom legislation named for a person, I wouldn't have as big of a problem with the page, because it would at least all be from the same country. C T J F 8 3  08:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If they are only examples, where are the words "in particular" or "for example"? All I see is an instruction to remove three types of article. In any event, I don't see an instruction to remove this.
 * My source says that the four ways of naming legislation that I mentioned above are recognised by academics. So they are not indiscriminate at all.
 * In my view this list is needed for navigation purposes. Some people don't remember the specific names of these Acts. What they remember is that a statute is called "Lord so-and-so's Act" or "Whathisname's Act". Remove this list and they will have difficulty finding these things.
 * I don't see why the fact that the list contains legislation from more than one country is a problem in of itself. At this stage it is not overly long and does not need to be broken up. James500 (talk) 09:41, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Nor does it fail to identify which country the Acts apply to. (Not that that would be a reason to delete it either). James500 (talk) 10:56, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment: This discussion provides the opportunity for an interesting application of current list related guidelines. I intend to withhold my position until I see further discussion, but have these general comments.  If we were to apply list notability guidelines to this article, then I would expect to see sources that demonstrate Legislation named for a person has been discussed as a group by a reliable source.  I suspect those sources exist but a quick Google search doesn’t reveal them.  Quite possibly this is because we haven’t really characterized this list very well.  Quite possibly (I am not a expert in law), what we are really referring to are Namesake Laws or Namesake Legislation.  Whether those are traditional legal terms, I do not know, but if they were, and there was an article entitled Namesake laws (there isn’t), then this list would be a perfect extension of the main article, regardless of how broad a topic that might be.  The other alternative is to view this list as a set-index article where the only entries were namesake laws that had WP articles.  Red-linked articles would not make the cut.  If that is the purpose of the list, then Index of Namesake Legislation is a better title. I'd like to see some of the WP:WikiProject Law weighin on this. I am appending the WP:ARS tag to this discussion, to see if some of the above can be addressed in the article and this discussion. --Mike Cline (talk) 11:59, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I put a note on the projects page to link them to this discussion. C T J F 8 3  12:13, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. My source was O. Hood Phillips. A First Book of English Law. Fourth Edition. Sweet and Maxwell. 1960. The author was a professor of law. He doesn't give this group of statutes a name as such. Since that is only an introductory text, I would be surprised if this wasn't discussed in more detail elsewhere. Our article Citation of United Kingdom legislation refers to these names as "'conventional' short titles", although I don't know whether that is a technical term. James500 (talk) 12:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This article has been nominated for rescue. Mike Cline (talk) 12:24, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * OSCOLA refers to them as "popular titles". James500 (talk) 12:59, 28 October 2011 (UTC) (4th Edition at paragraph 2.4.1) James500 (talk) 03:49, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Excellent: If the name of this list was List of legislation with popular names (People) then here's two sources that would meet WP:NOTESAL requirements: ;  I will add these sources to the article.  We should consider moving to List of legislation with popular names (people).  The only caveat might be what this type of legislation is called in the UK.  --Mike Cline (talk) 13:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * FYI, it appears that the UK terminology is Short title. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:47, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "Short title" certainly does refer to a citation that is authorised by statute, but some of these names are not authorised by statute, and I am not convinced that they are called "short titles" by anyone. James500 (talk) 03:20, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See my comments on the article talk page.--Mike Cline (talk) 16:57, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have answered there. James500 (talk) 17:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. The main problem I'm having with this list is that there isn't a single common reason why legislation is named after a person, making the relationship among these acts merely superficial.  In both the U.S. and the UK, it may have a common name after its sponsor(s) (Lord Cairn's Act, McCain-Feingold).  Or, and this to me is the more interesting phenomenon, it may have an informal name based on a victim of a situation that the law is intended to prevent in the future, as in Megan's Law or Jennifer's Law.  These are obviously two very different categories of naming.  Obviously the names are verifiable, and the geographic and chronological scope shouldn't concern us because we can subdivide into sublists by country or time period if necessary.  But I just don't see the informational utility in listing what is ultimately naming coincidence.  Is there something meaningfully different about acts that become known by their sponsors' names from those that don't?  It seems to me a rather mundane basis for a list because it's too commonplace.  Maybe splitting this into List of legislation known by its sponsors' names and List of legislation known by a victim's name (ick, bad title, I know) might improve it, but I'm still having a problem of "why bother?"  postdlf (talk) 15:40, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I felt that the names of these Acts would not fit into the List of short titles. James500 (talk) 05:11, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep The criterion for a list like this is useful. the criterion for inclusion is that the article is in WP, either under that name, or with it mentioned prominently as an alternate title. (If any one is concerned about notability , the facts that books have been published about the subject should be adequate). As the person interested in this will likely not have much knowledge of why the legislation was so named, a single list would do better than dividing it; the listing should explain the relationship in one or two words. There are, by the way, a few hundred more such items to include.    DGG ( talk ) 17:53, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep The criteria is fine. If the list gets too long, it can be split.  The list article aids in navigation.   D r e a m Focus  18:24, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That's what we have categories for. C T J F 8 3  19:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * List Policy for $200 - WP:NOTDUP What isn't a valid argument for list deletion? --Mike Cline (talk) 20:50, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep The list is indescriminate, the topic unique, the people are verifiable, more sources can be added to the article. – Phoenix B 1of3 (talk) 19:16, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. A useful navigational aid. Certainly whether a piece of legislation is named for someone is objectively and independently verifiable. bd2412  T 18:49, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep I am confident the list meets WP:NOTESAL requirements for notability and that we can sort out inclusion criteria. Needs work, not deletion. --Mike Cline (talk) 11:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, most relevant and encyclopedic idea for a list page. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 04:57, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete. Per postdlf, basically - these laws are "named for a person" for wildly different reasons, and no encyclopedic purpose is served by grouping them together. If it were split into two or more articles, then we could discuss whether this categorization by shared naming was useful at all, but as it stands, this is not a useful list. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 03:57, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The reasons are not "wildly" different. They are, at most, few in number and minimally different, and could be summed up in one as "because that person has something to do with it". The list serves a navigational purpose. If the list can be "fixed" (not that I think it needs to be) by splitting it, or, in this case, since there isn't, at this time, enough to split, by regrouping the entries under different headings, then it shouldn't be deleted. The list is useful, and even if wasn't, that isn't a reason to delete it either. James500 (talk) 14:46, 3 November 2011 (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.