Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 February 10

= February 10 =

Subpoenas vs. non-disclosure agreements
Tonight's episode of NCIS features a federal agent interrogating employees of a private company who gets interrupted by the company's lawyer with a reminder that the employees signed a non-disclosure agreement. The context is a death that occurred on a US ship offshore. It makes me wonder whether, in real life, such individuals would be required to testify in court if subpoena-ed.

In US admiralty law, and/or any other applicable fields of law, how do subpoenas balance out with non-disclosure agreements? Is this an established exception to contracts (i.e. testifying when subpoena-ed isn't considered breach of contract), or is this an established exception to subpoenas (i.e. this is one of those situations when testimony isn't required, comparable to how spouses can't be compelled to testify against each other), or is the situation not so cut-and-dried? Finally, note that I'm intentionally ignoring a taking-the-Fifth-Amendment situation, which would probably be relevant in this TV episode; I'm only interested in something in which the witness isn't going to become a suspect. Nyttend (talk) 01:36, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * According to Non-disclosure agreement, "Typically, the restrictions on the disclosure or use of the confidential data will be invalid if [...] the materials are subject to a subpoena – although many practitioners regard that fact as a category of permissible disclosure, not as a categorical exclusion from confidentiality (because court-ordered secrecy provisions may apply even in case of a subpoena). In any case, a subpoena would more likely than not override a contract of any sort". If NDAs superseded subpoenas, then the subpoena would become effectively useless in the field of corporate law since companies would just ask their employees to sign NDAs as standard. Smurrayinchester 12:24, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * In general, the purpose of NDA's is to protect trade secrets or other legal confidential activity which an organization is engaged in. I would be shocked if you could use an NDA to stonewall a criminal investigation. But it's well to keep in mind that TV crime shows don't necessarily reflect reality. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:32, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Some come closer than others. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:36, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Did all slaves get American citizenship in 1865?
Regarding citizenship, what happened to slaves in the US in 1865? Did those who had recently been brought to the US gained citizenship too? The last known slave ship was the Clotilde (slave ship) (this is disputed by some) and the Wanderer (slave ship) was the last documented ship to bring a cargo of slaves. Anyway, there were slaves in the US who were not many years in the US as slavery was abolished.--Scicurious (talk) 01:59, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * An interesting question. As a practical matter, many could probably not document the fact that they were born in the US, or brought to the US as slaves. Records, at the time, seemed to consist mainly of the first name of the slaves, and their ages, listed on census forms, and many former slaves probably lacked even that.  I doubt if this was enough to prove citizenship.  And since southern states were looking for any excuse to keep former slaves from voting, this would seem to be a good one.  After the Reconstruction Era, there was no serious opposition from the north, until the 1950's, so the South could do as they pleased.


 * However, during Reconstruction, many blacks were elected to southern state legislatures, and this implies that they were able to vote. Note quite sure how they were able to legally register, if they couldn't prove citizenship, though.   StuRat (talk) 04:17, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * As I understand it, it was considered questionable at the time (1865) whether even those born in the US were citizens of the US. See Dred Scott v. Sandford and for example. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was supposed to make them citizens, but not everyone agreed and it was only with Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified in 1868) and its Citizenship Clause that it became fairly definite. As to what happened to freed slaves who weren't born in the US after the fourteenth amendment, I'm pretty sure they were treated as naturalised although I admit I couldn't find a source which explicitly states this. (One of the problems is I get a lot of sources talking about how birthright citizenship is a myth or children of undocuments immigrants aren't entitled to birthright citizenship or whatever. The other is many sources simply say the fourteenth amendment granted citizenship to newly or recently freed slaves without explicitly talking about former slaves who weren't born in the US.) I can't find any evidence this was ever tested in the Supreme Court, perhaps because the numbers were small and the southern Democracts decided there was no point fighting it when they could just use various means to stop them voting etc despite them being citizens and the northern Democrats wanted them to be citizens even if they were actually being denied the full rights of citizens via various means. P.S. For the avoidance of doubt, I'm only referring to the understanding at the time. I'm pretty sure most modern commentators would argue legally they should have been treated as citizens even before 1865 even if unfortunately not actually treated as such. Nil Einne (talk) 06:56, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * As StuRat indicates, this was one of the important issues of Reconstruction. Here's a good article that goes into why it took several years to establish that the former slaves were citizens, and how it was done. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 04:30, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * An interesting pre-1865 tangent is the Three-Fifths Compromise. Not directly answering the question, but if your interested in attitudes towards slaves and their citizenship rights, that's another interesting thread to follow.  - Jayron 32 15:59, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Voter registration doesn't address this aspect, but StuRat, remember that registration hasn't always been required for voting. In many places (especially rural areas and small towns), local residents would know each other, so there wasn't a need to verify the residency of the guy to whom you sold cabbages a couple of weeks ago.  Of course, as far as black voters were concerned, there was room to disqualify them in some circumstances, but if the people at the polls were friendly toward blacks, or afraid of those who were, there wouldn't be any reason to reject them even if they didn't have paperwork.  Nyttend (talk) 19:45, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * It should also be noted that the very concept of voter registration is also entangled with other, now illegal, voter qualifications practices and voter intimidation methods such as "civics tests" "literacy tests" "poll taxes", which were rigged to exclude black voters (that is, the white power elite who were assessing the tests or taxes would simply "fail" black voters on the qualifications, while simply ignoring the fact that white voters never took the tests or paid the taxes). Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era covers much of this, as do articles such as the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made the practices explicitly illegal.  Also the term Grandfather clause, which originated as a way to allow white voters to be exempt from such qualifications, since their grandfathers had the right to vote.  -- Jayron 32 19:54, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Bureaucrats tend to require formal proof of things that are entirely obvious, like that an elderly person is old enough to vote. StuRat (talk) 19:57, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Slava Kurilov
Hi all. Has Slava Kurilov's book, One with the ocean (Odin v okeane), ever been translated? Splićanin (talk) 02:05, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * According to worldcat, no.&mdash;eric 04:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Human life-span before the 20th century
I'm trying to figure out how long people lived before the 20th century. I came across Wikipedia's list of kings of Jerusalem. I noticed that a majority out of every King of Jerusalem on the list died in his thirties or forties. If that's the case, I assume that this was how long people normally lived prior to the 20th century. So does this mean that people who were 50 or older were rare before the 20th century? Ebaillargeon82 (talk) 02:44, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Our article about Life expectancy has very good information addressing this very question. make sure the read the whole "Variation over time" section, not just look at the numbers. The answer is a little more complex, because in the past if you survived until you were 21, your life expectancy was actually quite "high" (60+) even as far back as the 1200s. So people who were older than 50 were not really "rare", but overall your chances of making it to 50 from the time you were born were significantly lower than they are today. Vespine (talk) 03:16, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * See the Sword of Damocles for one reason why judging average lifespan by the life of royals doesn't work. (Also, kings historically were expected to lead armies, and they travelled a lot exposing them to extra dangers). Of the kings who died in their 40s or younger, they mostly fall into two categories: murdered, or caught a disease while leading the army (another medieval risk factor is shown by the two queens who died in childbirth). You have Godfrey of Bouillon (either shot with an arrow or poisoned), Baldwin III (either poisoned or caught a disease while travelling), Amalric of Jerusalem (caught a disease while travelling), Baldwin IV (leprosy), Baldwin V (unknown, died at age 9), Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem (caught a disease while travelling), Guy of Lusignan (can't find any sources), Conrad of Montferrat (assassinated) and his wife Isabella I (unknown), Henry I (balcony collapsed), Maria of Montferrat (childbirth), Isabella II (childbirth), Conrad I (malaria), Conrad II (executed), Hugh (caught disease while travelling) and John II (unknown, possibly poisoned). Smurrayinchester 11:12, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * If you're asking if the typical human lifespan before the 20th century was 30-40 years, the answer is no. 72 years has pretty much always been the natural human lifespan. Mortality data from 1841 to 1848 for England and Wales, mortality data from 1841 to 1845 for Belgium, mortality data from 1821 to 1840 for France, Quebec life tables for married adults in 1755-1769, and Swedish life tables for 1754-1756 show that the most common age at death (this excludes infants and children, because the diseases infants and children died from usually did not develop in their bodies; instead, infants and children usually acquired these diseases from other people, so these aren't natural deaths) was almost always 72 years. VRtrooper (talk) 09:14, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * When researching for writing the Plymouth Colony article many years ago, I extensively used John Demos's book A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony, which has in the appendices all sorts of great demographic information gleaned from the official colonial records (birth and death certificates, for example). In the 17th century, Demos notes the same basic stats as noted above.  1) For adult men (those 21 and older) the average life expectancy was 69.2 years, and over half lived into their 70s 2) For women, the figures are lower because many women died in childbirth.  If women lived past their childbearing years, however, they tended to live as long as men.  3) Children tend to drag the overall averages down because they died of childhood diseases we tend to vaccinate for today.  So, more data points, but yes, the average adult human lifespan by which time one dies of Senescence-related causes rather than infection, war, or childbirth has not changed a lot in the centuries.  Most adult humans can expect to live into their 70s until old age takes them off this mortal coil, and that has been the same for a very long time.  -- Jayron 32 15:55, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Number of Remote workers
Is there any statistics out there on what's the percentage of workers who telecommute to work a majority of the time in the US? If there's no US data then statistics from any other G8 country would also work. Johnson&#38;Johnson&#38;Son (talk) 06:31, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Does This help? -- Jayron 32 15:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Paying to renounce citizenship
According to this BBC article, the USA charges $2,350 to her citizens who wish to renounce their citizenship. Do any other countries charge for this, and if so, which and how much? DuncanHill (talk) 08:21, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Hong Kong is the only part of China where, in practice, a Chinese citizen always has to take positive action to lose their Chinese citizenship. The fees vary depending on the mode of loss:
 * - HK$145 (US$19 if applying from overseas) for "reporting a change of citizenship" (this is where someone has settled abroad and acquired foreign citizenship, so under Chinese law would have automatically lost Chinese citizenship, but in Hong Kong an extra administrative step is required).
 * - HK$575 (US$74 if applying from overseas) for applying to renounce Chinese citizenship (this is for people who do not qualify for the first route). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:10, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * This Forbes article has an interesting infographic comparing fees across countries. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:21, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you, that's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for! DuncanHill (talk) 13:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * For Romanian citizenship there is a 605 Euro nominal fee + many other forms and bureaucratic procedures which also cost money, see e.g. . Basically one cannot renounce Romanian citizenship if he/she will remain stateless. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:44, 12 February 2016 (UTC)