Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law

Updating Template:Cite court
Hello, I've done some work on Cite court. I've made live two updates that I believe are uncontroversial. The template now supports archive-url and url-status, and an obscure formatting bug is resolved. I have questions about a few changes. I'm testing these in the sandbox but have no plans to implement them unless there is a demand.


 * [A] Access-date

Should the template display the access date as the CS1/CS2 templates do? The access-date parameter does nothing and has never done anything, but 4,600 out of 10,600 uses of the template contain an access-date. After recently discussing this on Template talk:Cite court with a very knowledgeable editor, it seems like legal citations generally do not place an emphasis on the URL.


 * [B] Should the template make a link

Currently the template provides a link if an editor places one in the url parameter. If no url is provided, there's no link. If the template can auto-generate a URL to the case on CourtListener from its other parameters, should it?


 * [C] Aliases

Currently the template only uses one alias (alternative parameter name). Over the years editors have asked for several parameters to have an alias more in line with other templates. Which of the following aliases (if any) would be useful:
 * title for litigants
 * volume for vol
 * work for reporter
 * at for pinpoint
 * year for date

Thanks, Rjjiii  (talk) 23:54, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have fairly strong opinions on [B] — Linking, as you can see from the Template talk:Cite court discussion. But one of the big issues here is that there are multiple templates with overlapping scope that behave in different ways, but those differences aren't principled or reasoned, they just seem to be personal preference, with the result that Wikipedia is annoyingly inconsistent as to legal citation. I also only care about legal citation in the American legal system, and none of these templates are defined to be specific to the US system, but in practice that's what they're generally used for.
 * We have:
 * Template:cite court (5,500 transclusions)
 * Template:law report (137 transclusions)
 * Template:caselaw source (4,000 transclusions)
 * I think it doesn't make a lot of sense to discuss the behavior of one of these without discussing the others, nor is it clear to me that all three of these should exist.
 * Template:Cite court's documentation suggests favoring Google Scholar. Template:Law report creates links to courtlistener.com. Template:caselaw source gives ten different sources they could possibly use, many of which might conceivably have the underlying opinion (but some are for other stuff, like Cornell's LII has laws: statues and regulations).
 * It's my considered opinion that of the available choices Google Scholar gives the best reading experience for readers, especially ones who care about legal citation and need to resolve pincites, because it gives reporter pagination in the left margin. Courtlistener gives paragraph numbers in the left column margin, which is nice in the abstract, but in practice is almost never used in the legal citation world in general (with some particular local exceptions), so is not helpful to readers. We could walk through the other 8 options (cornell, findlaw, justia, leagle, loc, openjurist, oyez, vlex), but I'm not sure that's productive right now.
 * It would be great if the template could make a link to Google Scholar based on the reporter/volume/page, but Google Scholar doesn't support that. Instead you have to do a search to get the  parameter.
 * I do not think we should make it easy for editors avoid the work to put in a Google Scholar link by autogenerating a link to one of the other sites (including Courtlistener). That results in a less usable encyclopedia and that's not great.
 * As to [A] — , the discussion really came up about support for , but it seems like it's hard to argue that it's wrong to have   there, and most Wikipedia citation-ish templates use it. But I'm not sure I can come up with an actual real live situation where it is important to have it, so it feels a little bit like clutter. But I don't oppose it.
 * No opinion as to [C] aliases, at least right now. jhawkinson (talk) 00:55, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for working on this. In general, I think we need an overhaul of these citation formats so that they can be used for multiple jurisdictions, not just US (BlueBook) citation style. I think that could be done using a parameter with a country code that changes the output based on the most popular citation style for a jurisdiction. One way to decide what to support would be to look at how many articles we have on cases from each country, but I would say at least US and UK citation formats should be included. UK would also probably capture other commonwealth countries. To answer your specific questions:
 * A – No, do not include access dates.
 * B – Maybe? I need to think on it.
 * C – Caption, not title, and changing vol to volume and year to date is fine, but keep everything else as is because that's how cases are cited and it's less confusing when citing. Can't those parameters be passed in as aliases of title, volume, etc., so people can still use those if they want?
 * Best, voorts (talk/contributions) 14:42, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * To clarify regarding, "Can't those parameters be passed in as aliases of title, volume, etc., so people can still use those if they want?" Yes, that's exactly how an alias works. You can test this or inspect the source to see how it works with date and year, the only alias currently supported. The template emits the same output for either parameter name. Rjjiii  (talk) 07:04, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * writes, "I think we need an overhaul of these citation formats so that they can be used for multiple jurisdictions, not just US (BlueBook) citation style." Why? US citation is the vast bulk of the use of these templates, and has particular stylistic and technical aspects that are not shared by other legal systems (at least, as far as I am aware). It would seem better to have domain-specific templates rather than to try to make one template do everything. Less complexity, easier maintenance, better-looking output. (On the other hand, I'm not sure what problems there are with the current template for non-US usage right now. Has anyone reported or discussed them?). Note, to be perhaps hypertechnical, that Bluebook is not a great term to use for this, because that's a whole complicated citation system that is much more than just case names, reporters, pages, and volumes. But this style is certainly consistent with bluebook. jhawkinson (talk) 16:06, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What I was getting at is that for an article, say, on a US case or US law, the average reader would probably recognize and expect case citations that are at least Bluebook-ish, whereas an average reader looking at an article on UK law would expect something similar to UK citation style. Currently, our template is loosely based on the Bluebook style, which I think is an issue.
 * I think it would be easy for this to be one template: just create a paramater that lets an editor input a two-letter country code (e.g., US, UK, etc.), and the template changes the output in the background. I don't think it would overcomplicate things for editors and probably wouldn't be too hard for a skilled template crafter to make. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:57, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe? You'd have to build the template from scratch, I think. For the 3 mentioned so far, it's relatively easy (even for an unskilled template crafter) to move those closer to the US/Bluebook citation style. I really don't see how we could make them swap formats like that without essentially packing many templates into one, and making the load time multiply by the number of styles added.
 * For example, a case parameter like mentioned above, could be added to create pinpoint links to Google Scholar that could override the URL parameters, but would only work for US cases.  Rjjiii  (talk) 23:53, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I hadn't even thought of load times etc. I'm not an expert on templates. Fair enough, these should probably be separate templates, but I don't know if anyone is really asking for them right now. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * One of the good reasons to not make a huge complicated template is that this template is used in a lot of places and is editprotected, because mistakes could be high stakes. But a template for some UK style would be new, and would want to be able to evolve easily and freely, and ideally would allow unrestricted editing (or maybe semiprotection if it got enough use), so that it could be quickly changed. (Now, of course, this template could call out to a different template for UK cases, but…). Anyhow, I am still missing why "I think we need an overhaul of these citation formats"? Where's the demand? Where are all the requests? Who is making this case? This template has enough problems that are real and we should be worrying about, but I would like to avoid scope creep on these questions if it is not necessary. Thanks.
 * And I was not suggesting the template should have a case parameter! My point was that the Google Scholar URL has that parameter in it, and there's no way to generate it -- you have to do a search in Google Scholar and see what it returns. I don't think it would be particularly helpful to have a parameter that generates the Google Scholar URL versus just allowing/encouraging editors to drop in the full Google Scholar URL. jhawkinson (talk) 00:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've struck my comment above, . I (mis?)took your case 11156910755936011541 parameter. comment as a reference to a potential template parameter on Wikipedia. Also, to be clear, I don't think there is enough interest in these templates to build consensus for major changes right now. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 01:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Asking the potentially obvious question: Is there a reason this template is not a part of the WP:CS1 family? House Blaster  (talk · he/him) 21:08, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Please add the field archive-date to match the archive-url. —DocWatson42 (talk) 05:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I second this. These have been repeatedly requested by multiple users at the template talk and are very beneficial to editors as not all court PDFs that are cited on here have readably accessible backups available. The Internet bot is currently attempting to add these though can only add archive-url though that itself causes some errors with the missing parameter of "archive-date=". Trailblazer101 (talk) 19:11, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * pinging so you'll see the above request. Trailblazer101 (talk) 19:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I have added archive-date as an optional parameter. It will only have an effect if archive-url is used. It can be omitted without issue. The documentation and template data still need to be updated. Could you elaborate on the "errors with the missing parameter" and does this resolve those errors? Rjjiii  (talk) 06:44, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you, and I'm glad you asked! I put together a little visual example of how this template currently looks compared to what is typically expected from other cite temps, just to ensure consistency throughout our templates. The examples and noted differences can be found in my sandbox here. Trailblazer101 (talk) 18:18, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The comma separator is used by cite court and Bluebook on which it's based: Case citation. Compared to Citation, which currently uses commas by default, it looks the same. There was no consensus for adding the access-date parameter, so I never implemented it in the live template. Thanks for the feedback,, Rjjiii  (talk) 06:09, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The easiest way to work with CS1 is to wrap an existing template (category link), as in legal formatting subtemplates like Cite Hansard (or my own attempt at a unified European legal citation template (discussion link)). I've worked a little on putting a basic law template into the CS1 module code the summer before last -- some of the maintainers were encouraging and some were discouraging from the beginning.
 * The reason for writing the template as a subset of CS1, as opposed to wrapping, is because the typical US legal citation is a bit out-of-order, when you think about what corresponds to metadata for "title", "author", "date", etc., and a wrapper can't really do too much in re-ordering. CS1 code has huge advantages that we'd want to preserve, and the disadvantage to just forking it (and not dealing with the existing maintainers) is that you are not on their update stream.
 * My plan was to start with a CS1 module fork (which I think is mostly finished (module link), and see my template draft page for documentation and testing) called "cite law" or something, that can then be wrapped for cite patent, undefined, and the like. If the fork code works well enough, then I deal with the politics of CS1. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:30, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * If you plan on continuing to work on this project, I would suggest sub-templates, such as one that follow US-style citations (I think it should use the Indigo Book, which is a PD version of the BlueBook) and one that follows UK/commonwealth-style citations. voorts (talk/contributions) 19:36, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * For example, I think a U.S. case cite should look something like this: Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). Archived from the original on March 22, 2024. Retrieved March 31, 2024. Another example (taken from the Indigo Book): Macy’s Inc. v. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., No. 1728, slip op. at 1 (N.Y. App. Div. Feb. 26, 2015), http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2015/2015_01728.htm. Archived from the original on March 17, 2024. Retrieved March 31, 2024.If you wanted to go even further, a sub-template for sfn that makes short cites easier (see, e.g., Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp., where I had to do it manually) would be amazing. voorts (talk/contributions) 19:44, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The basic law-style supertemplate for a CS1-style module needs to have its basic metadata-enabled fields in the order: "title [ie litigants or law], journal [ie reporter or journal], authors [ie legislature or court], date"; the wrapper problem is that no existing CS1 template style has this ordering, but almost every legal citation format can be shoehorned in this way. (Making a wrapper for CS1 doesn't allow you to change the order of the fields that are output.) Once the supertemplate is made, with the fields in that order, and a few field aliases are added, then a crapload of correctly-formatted subtemplates can just be wrapped on that. [Addendum: an ID/docket number varies greatly in placement with international citations, so probably wouldn't be universally wrapped.] SamuelRiv (talk) 19:47, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know much about the politics of CS1, but since there's no rules for citations, other than following WP:CITEVAR, I can't see why there should be any issues with developing a set of CS1-forked law citation templates. How long do you anticipate this project taking? voorts (talk/contributions) 19:50, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * It was supposed to just take the summer, but I seem to get discouraged and chased away easily. I think it's mostly done save for tweaks and updating with the latest CS1 code. Anyone is free to modify the module in my sandbox also, or else we should just move it to a stable module project -- it's not like there's no record of the original code. (And by "dealing with the politics of CS1" I meant someone else not me probably has to do that, should integration be a future option. There was apparently a lot of drama with cite patent.)
 * So let's do this as the timeline: get the current module base code from CS1 and update from my sandbox (all changes I made for the "cite law" style should be self-contained functions). (I'm generally familiar with this code base so I should probably be the one to do this, but anyone can do it themselves if they want to get familiar.) The new module and template name are Module:Cite law and Template:Cite law (the latter has to split from its redirect to Cite act, which wraps CS1 cite book -- in doing so an AWB script (or manual -- only 99 articles) has to rename all the existing "cite law" template calls). Alternatively, we can used Template:Cite legal, which is unused, but less snappy imo.
 * Next, fix the code and test thoroughly for existing templates to replace, starting with the smallest and working up to cite court and cite patent for the US, and simultaneously the UK templates, seeing how much can be kept as wrappers of the single supertemplate. Finally, expand the implementation to replace European and other templates as is practical. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:08, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * cite case law would be the most descriptive name for a template used to cite a legal case. Can that be usurped from cite court, and then any uses of that switched out by AWB or bot? Would that be a controversial change requiring a TfD discussion? voorts (talk/contributions) 20:29, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, looks like cite case law is used on very few pages. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite case law voorts (talk/contributions) 20:31, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Because the supertemplate (or more precisely, the CS1 module "style" that can be called for a template wrapper) formatting seems applicable for typical styles of citations for not only Common Law case law, but also UK legislative acts, as well as French Civil case law and what I poorly understand of French decrees etc. So for the name of the supermodule style, and supertemplate (if needed), I'd rather have something broad ("cite legal" might be most descriptive on second thought). It's really just about getting the title to output before the author in the supermodule. (And the reason you can't just rename the fields is because they have metadata.) SamuelRiv (talk) 20:39, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit confused. Is your intent for cite law to be a template to cite a statute only, or for the template to be used to cite both statutory acts and case law? voorts (talk/contributions) 20:46, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * CS1 can accommodate however many styles one wants to code up, and its modularity on that is... improving, but for each style adding it is politically like pulling teeth. So what I'm thinking, and what seemed feasible from before, is a single CS1 style that is put into a supertemplate (, I'm thinking now) that then can be called into wrapper templates like, , international variants, etc. Minor formatting tweaks that wrapping itself cannot handle can instead be controlled within the CS1 style using flag parameters, (for which iirc I coded one). It might turn out that the the supertemplate is actually sufficient to call as a standalone for anything law related, but I'm not sure (and either way I think users prefer subtemplates that are semantically explicit about the content they are citing, even if the code being called is identical).
 * tldr: the lua module is coded to apply as generally as possible, while I see the wrapper templates, as they already exist, can remain specific to the type of legal work being cited. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:44, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Would there likely be consensus to change cite court and cite patent to call to the new modules and templates? voorts (talk/contributions) 21:53, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * > (and either way I think users prefer subtemplates that are semantically explicit about the content they are citing, even if the code being called is identical).
 * I for one prefer it. And I'm heartened to see that my suggestion has been picked up and the community is running with it. ^_^ —DocWatson42 (talk) 02:04, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @SamuelRiv, just wanted to see where we're at on this. Best, voorts (talk/contributions) 16:02, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Hey, I'm busy all week with a move, but I just finished updating cite act to a proper wrapper template with the right semantics that I'd want for the CS1-based template to work. (I spent way too long on it since the plan is to write a new base template anyway.) I gotta run AWB to deprecate old parameter use, and also to fix some misuse of the EU templates I made last year. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:54, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Legal cases as Primary vs. Secondary
I am working with an editor who believes that legal cases are secondary sources. To me it is common sense that such decisions are WP:PRIMARY. I didn't see it clearly mentioned in WP:RS or here on this project. Is there any place where it is spelled out more clearly? If there isn't one, we could use a section on good legal sources. I did see it discussed here:. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:03, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * We have RSLAW (there's been some discussion recently about getting it to a better state). Cases are primary sources because their holdings are open to interpretation and their factual findings are based on what the parties present to the court and the court's first-hand evaluation of evidence. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:02, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I am late to the party, but for the record I think our position has to be a bit more nuanced. I think the starting point for this discussion has to be WP:ALLPRIMARY. That is, any legal case (by which I'm assuming we mean court opinion) is a primary source in at least some respects. So how we're citing the opinion matters. In that regard, I would agree with voorts that a court opinion is always a primary source as to its own holding and legal reasoning, and probably also as to the procedural history of the case. But a court opinion would typically be secondary as to the background principles of law that the court is applying. Facts are a messier question analytically, although I think most would agree that a court opinion, regardless of whether it is "really" primary or secondary, should only be cited for the facts of the case with in-text attribution (and with great caution, if at all, outside of articles about the opinion).
 * The kind of court opinion we're talking about also matters. IMO trial court opinions should be probably be treated as if they were self-published primary sources, even when they have secondaryish aspects (not least because many such opinions, at least in US civil litigation, are drafted by the prevailing party). But an appellate court's recitation of background law should IMO be considered a fairly reliable secondary source for those points -- not least since it is, at least in the common law jurisdictions I'm familiar with, reviewed by multiple jurists before publication, and is the type of source on which experts in the field rely. If a particular area of law in a particular jurisdiction hasn't attracted scholarly attention, appellate opinions may be the best available source.
 * In general, context matters. And in that spirit I think we also have to keep in mind the general weirdness of the law relative to other fields. Sources Wikipedia considers generally reliable in other contexts are often comically bad about getting legal details correct. (See pretty much any news article about pretty much any litigation.) We would serve our readers poorly if we didn't take that inconvenient reality into account. But exactly how to take it into account is IMO a case-specific question. -- Visviva (talk) 02:37, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * But an appellate court's recitation of background law should IMO be considered a fairly reliable secondary source for those points -- not least since it is, at least in the common law jurisdictions I'm familiar with, reviewed by multiple jurists before publication, and is the type of source on which experts in the field rely. I think the problem with that is that "an appellate court's recitation of background law" is often vague (usually a product of compromise among judges on a panel) and are sometimes left intentionally vague such that they are open to interpretation in a later case. For example, lawyers distinguish case law in their briefing and courts sometimes end up limiting doctrines or outright redefining them. While some propositions of law are so settled that they can't reasonably be open to a different interpretation (e.g., that a contract requires consideration), many legal questions are resolved through analysis and synthesis of ambiguous case law. This is why we should rely on secondary sources that analyze legal cases and trends and attempt to make sense of what's actually going on in judicial decisionmaking. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:58, 29 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I do not find the primary/secondary distinction to be very useful as applied to court opinions. As for the court's own holding, the opinion is obviously a primary source.  But for other purposes, the distinction may not be so clear.  For example, the findings of facts in a trial court's opinion is the judge's assessment after reviewing proposals from both sides.  Is that really primary, or should it be considered secondary?  What about the appellate opinion?  There a panel of judges is reviewing the opinion below.  In addition, one judge writes the draft opinion, but then it is reviewed by the other judges.  That certainly starts to look very secondary.
 * I'm influenced here by my experience with Happy Birthday to You. For decades, the history of the song and its copyright were obscure, leading to claims of copyright ownership by Warner/Chappell Music.  Professor Robert Brauneis in 2010 wrote an excellent article exploring the history and arguing that these claims were invalid.  Litigation resulted, and a court conducted a detailed review that closely examined Brauneis's work.  So at this point the most detailed, reliable, and scholarly source is the court's opinion.  I would argue that that is a perfectly acceptable secondary source (although the article does not currently cite it as such).
 * I've also seen the argument that a court opinion is a secondary source for background law, and it does seem like there should be something to it. However, it does require a careful assessment of what is background law versus what is the court's holding.  John M Baker (talk) 22:59, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think the facts are a primary source because they're the judge's interpretation of what the parties have presented, either on a motion or at trial. As we know, sometimes the facts presented at trial are not the full facts of what actually occurred, whether that be because the parties have selectively argued only specific facts or because certain facts have been omitted under the rules of evidence. Likewise, an appellate opinion is bound by the facts that were developed below. I also disagree that citing an opinion for background law is valid because the law changes; someone without access to or who does not know how to conduct a proper search of a legal database might find an appellate decision that says X as "background law", but without realizing that X was repudiated by a later court, or even a court of coequal jurisdiction (such as in the case of one intermediate appellate court creating a split with another). See also my comment above. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:15, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Facts are always at risk of being incomplete, even for the most reliable secondary sources. I also don’t think that the considerations you mention prevent an opinion from being a secondary source of background law, although you do highlight some reasons why we might ordinarily be hesitant to use that source. John M Baker (talk) 03:38, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it's better to counsel not using opinions as sources. While an editor who is a lawyer should know how to parse out the law, an editor who has limited experience with law-related topics might not. It's better to avoid the issue of having editors trying to parse judicial opinions and extract points of law from them (which in my opinion is OR), when scholarly sources or treaties are usually available. Any differences in interpretations of the case law in those sources can be attributed and explained. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:55, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * As a practical matter, I suppose that is right, with perhaps a caveat for U.S. Supreme Court opinions. My points are (1) I don’t find the primary/secondary distinction a helpful way of thinking about it and (2) the findings of fact are often the best available source for the facts of a particular matter. John M Baker (talk) 04:14, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Even SCOTUS changes the rules though. Just last term, there was a case where they effectively overruled another decision while claiming they were just "clarifying" it. (Forgetting the name, but when I read the decision, I thought to myself thaat it was obviously a compromise opinion because some Justices wanted to overruled while others agreed with the outcome but didn't want to overrule.) I don't think it's wise to have non-lawyers relying on these cases as statements of the law without the benefit of outside analysis. voorts (talk/contributions) 11:46, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Legal case is in dire need of sourcing
Can someone have a look at this article? Cheers! BD2412 T 15:48, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It should be merged with Lawsuit. Currently Litigation is a redirect to the latter but, in my eyes, it should be the article with Legal case and Lawsuit as redirects to it. DeCausa (talk) 16:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think Legal case is a valid summary-style article, since it includes both civil and criminal cases, and a criminal case isn't called a "lawsuit" in common usage. Both Legal case and Lawsuit are in pretty bad states, though. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:42, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Exactly, a criminal case and a civil case are both kinds of legal cases, with many aspects in common (jurisdictional questions, proceedings, factfinders, processes for obtaining and admitting evidence). BD2412  T 22:17, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It's difficult to say because "lawsuit" is an Americanism whereas "legal case" has wider usage across the anglosphere. Because of that, lawsuit and legal case is better wrapped up into "litigation" (which can be civil or criminal) which is the only word that avoids the whole WP:NOTDICTIONARY taint. DeCausa (talk) 22:40, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
 * We could also add Legal proceeding to the mix. IMO that might be the best home for a globalized BCA. I'm a little wary of smooshing all of these together without further deliberation, especially given that so many other Wikipedias also have separate articles. But I suspect that any encyclopedic distinctions between case/lawsuit/litigation/proceeding would be jurisdiction- or tradition-specific, so one general BCA might be the way to go. -- Visviva (talk) 03:09, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that a BCA is needed. Litigation can redirect to Legal proceeding, which can be the top level article. Then, Criminal litigation and Civil litigation can be separate BCAs that are summarized at Legal proceeding, and each of those articles can be BCAs for different jurisdictions. I think lawsuit could then appropriately redirect to civil litigation. Before these changes are made, however, I think we need a formal move request with notification to all affected page. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:35, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * My current thinking is to propose merging legal case into legal proceeding and retarget litigation to that. I'll go ahead and post a merge discussion for that and we'll see how it goes. Agree that separate articles on civil litigation (currently a bad redirect) and criminal litigation could also be good; there's certainly plenty of subject matter for all of those. After taking a closer look at lawsuit, I think that should probably just be moved to Lawsuit (United States law) and then the original page turned into a redirect to a hypothetical civil litigation BCA -- but that's probably another issue for another time. -- Visviva (talk) 00:22, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I generally agree, but I'm not sure why Lawsuit (United States) needs a separate page. Lawsuit is a generic term that is used for any kind of case brought by one entity against another. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:13, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I guess I would say that we should have a "Civil litigation in X"-type article (among many others) for every jurisdiction X for which adequate sources exist. Even when the broad principles are similar, every jurisdiction's law is its own specialized subject area with its own sources and history. The US is only unique in that, thanks to the heavy US slant of our existing legal coverage, that article is pretty much already written -- it just needs to be untangled from the global concept. But anyway, I'm not proposing to do that just now. -- Visviva (talk) 01:50, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:2023 Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:2023 Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. RodRabelo7 (talk) 00:21, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § RfC: Legal Insurrection
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § RfC: Legal Insurrection. Mokadoshi (talk) 04:19, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Notability of Kristina Baehr
There is a new article for an attorney Kristina Baehr. I'd welcome discussion of whether the article meets notability requirements. ScienceFlyer (talk) 15:56, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Can I get some help with Bathroom bill?
Hi all

I would really appreciate some help improving Bathroom bill, as far as I can see the main issues are


 * It is extremely America focussed, there are many laws in the UK, France etc which are similarly aiming to exclude trans people
 * There is no real historical context given, these kinds of arguments have been used for a long time (I added some more info on the talk page)

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 14:01, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Section on reasonable person article needs dire attention
Reasonable person needs attention, there is a lot of citation needed tags and blocks. Not all of these might be needed, I'm not an expert and wouldn't know any prominent cases or other sources to find, so I'll refrain from editing the section MarkiPoli (talk) 13:31, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Weight of evidence
Should there be an article titled Weight of evidence? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:06, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, as a broad-concept article. My understanding is that it's not just the law that uses "weight of evidence" as a term of art. See, e.g., this article on risk assessment: . voorts (talk/contributions) 21:49, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Agree that a BCA covering both scientific and legal uses of the concept would be ideal. On the legal side, it would be nice to have a section covering the "manifest weight of the evidence" standard of review (of which our coverage is currently almost nonexistent). -- Visviva (talk) 02:08, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Weight of evidence (how convincing the evidence is) seems duplicative of Burden of proof (how convincing evidence needs to be). SilverLocust 💬 03:06, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They're not the same concept. The burden of proof describes who has to prove what. The standard of proof (e.g., beyond a reasonable doubt, preponderance of the evidence, and clear and convincing evidence) describes how probable the facts described by a party need to be. Weight of evidence describes how convincing a particular fact or set of facts are. For example, a jury might weigh the testimony of one expert to be more credible than another. Weight of the evidence (or manifest weight of the evidence) is also a deferential standard of appellate review. For example, in some jurisdictions, an appellate court is required to uphold a jury verdict so long as the jury can rationally reach that conclusion based on the evidence presented. voorts (talk/contributions) 03:21, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Standard of proof/burden of persuasion and burden of production are not identical concepts, but they are sufficiently related to be covered in one article. I am suggesting that the same is true of weight of evidence. SilverLocust 💬 04:02, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * But go ahead and create an article for it if you wish. SilverLocust 💬 05:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Kudos to everyone involved in burden of proof (law) for sure! It is a shining beacon of adequacy, at least as to the three closely-related legal systems it covers. (Check the legal systems covered in the altlangs to get a notion of how much larger an even partially globalized version of that article would be.) And I would agree that the burdens of persuasion and production, which are closely-related subtopics of the main topic of that article, are pretty decently covered there. In contrast, that article contains only a couple of brief mentions of evidence-weighing, and only in the context of a couple of specific US proof standards. Subtopics are one thing, but trying to squeeze in coverage of a merely related topic like this would IMO stretch that article to the breaking point.
 * I don't know if this is where you're coming from, but for me, there's an impulse to look at our coverage of legal topics, which in the cold light of day mostly runs the gamut from "literally nothing" to "somehow less informative than nothing", and think "I am an adequate Wikipedian and law-talking person, Wikipedia's coverage of legal topics is something I am part of, therefore our coverage of legal topics is also adequate." It hurts to confront the scale of what we're still missing, more than two decades on -- especially given that writing or revising even one core legal article is a bruising task. But even if we allow ourselves these comforting illusions from time to time, it's important to remember that they are illusions, that the work remains to be done, and that anyone seeking to do it should be encouraged. -- Visviva (talk) 02:15, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hence why I am recommending it be expanded rather than starting another such article. SilverLocust 💬 03:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this is where you're coming from, but for me, there's an impulse to look at our coverage of legal topics, which in the cold light of day mostly runs the gamut from "literally nothing" to "somehow less informative than nothing", and think "I am an adequate Wikipedian and law-talking person, Wikipedia's coverage of legal topics is something I am part of, therefore our coverage of legal topics is also adequate." It hurts to confront the scale of what we're still missing, more than two decades on -- especially given that writing or revising even one core legal article is a bruising task. But even if we allow ourselves these comforting illusions from time to time, it's important to remember that they are illusions, that the work remains to be done, and that anyone seeking to do it should be encouraged. -- Visviva (talk) 02:15, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hence why I am recommending it be expanded rather than starting another such article. SilverLocust 💬 03:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Leasehold estate § This article needs major improvements
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Leasehold estate § This article needs major improvements. &#x0020;This article is rated "High-importance" to WikiProject Law, but it is missing a lot of information, and the prose needs rewriting to be easily comprehensible to the average (non-lawyer!) reader. SmileySnail (talk) 23:53, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Request input on constitutional law topic: Content split proposal for 'separation of powers'
Valued fellow law contributors:

The separation of powers doctrine is a core principle of constitutional law in every Western-style legal order. As such, it is a shame that our article on the subject remains at 'start class' quality. It is deficient in legal analysis and generally unbalanced.

I have thus proposed splitting off what amounts to well over half the article into one titled 'branches of government' or similar. These parts are dedicated to describing the structure of individual governments, instead of analysis or a summary of the principle's manifestations (see Wikipedia essay: cargo cult editing for a description of the type of writing I mean). Also, there appears to be no comparative law analysis in the article, which is entirely focused on political thought; whereas, to my mind, an article called 'separation of powers' would mainly be about: (1.) the normative principle in political philosophy, (2.) its impact on political systems in reality, and (3.).

(The second one of these certainly has its place in the article; but right now, the article just lists a number of countries in which government powers are divided, and what the bodies belonging to these branches of government are called. Yes, if the separation of powers principle had never been posited, we would not customarily sort bodies of government into mutliple branches. But each instance of a notionally divided government does not need to be listed in the article referring to the principle.)

I think creating a different article, focused on comparative government analysis of 'branched' governments, would allow both a fresh start for the separation of powers article (I may be able to provide a complete re-draft myself in a couple more years), and also drive qualitative improvments to the newly split article by putting it entirely in the scope of descriptive political science editors. The way things are, I think everyone is a little paralyzed by uncertainty on what the article is there for, since it is admittedly a huge topic with implications for many fields.

Readers will also have an easier time finding what they are looking for if we distinguish these differing focuses. There's clearly a lot of interest in institutions and branches of government as a topic in itself; it's probably worth its own article.

Please let me know what you think. If you agree with my assessment, I could really use your help building the necessary consensus to enact this change: I fear that all the POV editing going on in the WP:CARGO parts of the article might transform into obstructionism upon enactment of the change.

Thanks. —§§ LegFun §§ talk §§ 18:31, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Israel has an RfC on the topic: mention apartheid in the lead?
Talk:Israel has an RfC. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page.  starship .paint  (RUN) 05:17, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Prosecution of Donald Trump in New York
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Prosecution of Donald Trump in New York that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. RodRabelo7 (talk) 18:49, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program Authorization and Accountability Act of 2014
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program Authorization and Accountability Act of 2014 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Safari Scribe Edits! Talk! 19:07, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Right of way
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Right of way that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Safari Scribe Edits! Talk! 14:22, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:2024 Taiwanese legislative reform protests
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:2024 Taiwanese legislative reform protests that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Векочел (talk) 12:21, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 15:19, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I would like some help understanding something apparently invlolving the US Justice Department
Please comment at Talk:Simon_Ekpa if you can help. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:34, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Jacobson v. United States
Jacobson v. United States has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 19:08, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Which notability criteria apply to decisions by the Bundesverfassungsgericht?
I'm looking to create articles on some of the more significant decisions, which (to the best of my knowledge) do not yet exist. Would media coverage and scientific literature be sufficient to establish notability (along the lines of THREE) or do they need something special? FortunateSons (talk) 16:22, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * GNG. We don't have specific notability criteria for court cases. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:45, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. GNG would mean that almost all “standard cases” are notable, is that an issue? FortunateSons (talk) 21:05, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Most modern SCOTUS cases are probably notable, so it doesn't surprise me that most of the BverfG cases would be. I'm shocked that we don't have articles on most of the cases in Federal Constitutional Court. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:32, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and even that list is lacking many of the “core” cases regarding free speech, freedom of assembly etc. Might work my way through some of them, it’s good practice for me anyway. Thank you! FortunateSons (talk) 22:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Constitution of the People's Republic of China
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Constitution of the People's Republic of China that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 14:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Free Press (organization)
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Free Press (organization) that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject.  98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂  •  [𝚃𝙰𝙻𝙺]   22:42, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Proposal: Jurisdiction-specific task forces?
Would it be useful to have jurisdiction-specific taskforces? We have some subprojects listed—WikiProject Canadian law and WikiProject Australian law. Both are marked inactive. Articles are put in the Australian and Canadian projects respectively by adding law=yes to the WikiProject Australia/Canada talk page template. In the past we had an "EW" parameter for England and Wales—it no longer works, so I removed the documentation for it earlier in the year.

Module:WikiProject banner allows the creation of taskforces in a fairly simple way, and it seems like a reasonable use case for jurisdiction-specific articles. I'm keen on setting one up for England and Wales where I think I can reasonably contribute. —Tom Morris (talk) 09:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If people are interested, I'd be fine with that and would participate in a US one. Otherwise, I think we'd just end up with a bunch of inactive task forces. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:47, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Concurrent use registration
Concurrent use registration has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 18:20, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Law broker


The article Law broker has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "I am not sure that this is a real and widespread term even in the claimed regions. The previously removed external links seem to point to one person (with a company with 'law broker' in the name), who uses the term to describe lawyer referral services. I don't think any validation of this as a term that is used will ever be discovered in the future."

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Gnisacc (talk) 19:53, 19 July 2024 (UTC)