Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Positive law (United States Code)


 * 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. Courcelles (talk) 00:17, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Positive law (United States Code)

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1) The article is poorly sourced. 2) It completely misapprehends what federal statutes are saying about positive law. It repeatedly refers to a "restricted sense" of "positive law" that simply does not exist. All the statute is saying is that the Code is prima facie evidence of federal statutes (meaning it can be rebutted by better evidence of the congressional enactment, which are positive law) unless the particular title has been enacted into positive law itself, in which case it supplants the original act and is conclusive evidence of the law.

Thus, the article is completely OR and is unsalvageable because there is no special definition of the term in relation to the United States Code. Rrius (talk) 15:50, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. I am sorry to disagree with Rrius, but this article strikes me as a straightforward and uncontroversial statement of the admittedly arcane, but nonetheless extant, distinction between the positive-law and non-positive-law titles of the United States Code. The article is at pains to emphasize that this distinction generally does not have practical significance on a day-to-day basis (the article probably could be improved by discussing the comparatively rare instances in which the distinction has actually mattered). I am sensitive to the concern, although not overtly raised by the nominator, that "positive law" technicalities have been misused by tax protestors, and a cross-reference to that issue might also usefully be added, but this is not an argument for deletion. When I am at work during the week and have access to my library, I will be glad to add some additional references to the article. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:55, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry but that's not quite right, and I hope you'll agree by the end of this discussion that the best alternative is to restore the text at positive law and delete this article.
 * First the use of "restricted sense" throughout the article is a result of its coming from positive law. The broader sense it is set against is a raft of political-philosophical meanings. There is obviously a difference between positive-law and non-positive-law titles of the United States Code (USC), but that does not mean that "positive law" means something different in the context of the USC.
 * The article, however, suggests exactly that. The first sentence says, "Positive law is a restricted category of codified federal statutes of the United States." That is absurd. It is accurate to say that some some titles codified in the USC are positive law, but it is just silly to say that "positive law" is a term of art with special meaning in the context of codified federal statutes. The first paragraph continues, "While both codified and uncodified statutes are, in the broad sense, 'positive law', the term 'positive law' also has a separate, more restricted meaning when used to refer to codified statutes." Again, this is not true. "Positive law" means precisely the same thing with respect to codified and uncodified law."
 * If you remove that opening paragraph and excise all references to "the restricted sense", all you are left with is a discussion of the difference between titles that have and have not been enacted into positive law. Does such a discussion belong at Wikipedia? Of course, and we have one at United States Code. If, again, the introduction were eliminated, what would remain would not be something makes sense at the article title "Positive law (United States)"; rather, it would be something like "Enactment of United States Code titles into positive law" (or something somewhat pithier).
 * The problem, in the end, is that the one editor (a lawyer) wrote the bulk of the text within the context of positive law. Another editor (who I believe is probably not a lawyer) then spun the text out as a separate article, redrafting the paragraph to make sense as a stand-alone article, but doing so inaccurately because he didn't really understand it.
 * The text was never meant to be a stand-alone article, and the solution here is not to keep the article because it contains a reasonable explanation of positive law in the context of the USC, but to return it whence it came: positive law. Doing so would be quite easy indeed. -Rrius (talk) 22:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the text here was split off from "positive law" because, as you correctly point out, the use of the term here has nothing to do with the philosophical meaning. I think restoring the text there, other than as maybe a one-sentence disambiguation, is going to be very unhelpful in the context of that article. If you really think this should be folded into a broader article rather than stand alone, as to which I am undecided, maybe it should be a section of United States Code itself? Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:19, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The information is already included at United States Code. -Rrius (talk) 01:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep - it is a perfectly good little law stub, which can be sourced. If we must get rid of it, please redirect per WP:CHEAP. Bearian (talk) 01:01, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The valid information provided there is already provided at United States Code. Can you explain what purpose the article serves that isn't served by the explanation at United States Code? I don't have a strong objection to redirecting to the appropriate section at United States Code, but who would ever search for Positive law (United States Code)? -Rrius (talk) 06:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 15:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Needs some additional cleanup (I just did some), but it is a distinct concept from the philosophical sense of "positive" law as distinguished from "natural law," as that term is discussed at positive law.  TJRC (talk) 17:17, 24 June 2010 (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.