Wikipedia:Featured article review/Law/archive1

Law

Notified: WikiProject Law, WikiProject Sociology, WikiProject Philosophy, WikiProject WP1.0, WikiProject Law Enforcement, Yannismarou and Wikidea. The editor who originally nominated this article for Featured Article status, Parker007, was blocked as a sockpuppet.

1. (a) English is not my native language so someone else might do a better job in evaluating this, but sentences like: "In a global economy, law is globalising too." or "Property law governs valuable things that people call 'theirs'." don't strike me as well-written and engaging.

because? As a native English speaker I would like to hearby confirm that these sentences are both well written and are legally accurate, therefore engaging. Wikidea 20:34, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(b) This article lacks any significant coverage of Islamic law. Islamic law is one of the three most common legal systems of the world, and this article is written from Western perspective of common and civil law. Also, something on maritime law would be nice.

Islamic law is not a legal system. It's a form of religious law, based on holy texts. It is not very significant in either population terms or in theoretical terms. It is in fact well discussed, and there are links to subpages. As for maritime law, that is given its line with all the other specialisms under further subjects. Wikidea 20:34, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I was wrong about maritime law, and in fact there are now two very good pages on admiralty law and United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. I'm putting them in. You see, this is what people do with Wikipedia, they make an effort. People, who I wish would go away, just argue and expect others to do the work. Wikidea 20:55, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

According to a properly sourced claim in its article Islamic law is among the three most common legal systems of the world and according to our own article on Legal systems it is a legal system. Faculty of Law at University of Ottawa divides world legal systems into four main categories - civil law, common law, customary law and Muslim law. According to their map Muslim law is predominant legal system in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, Arabian Peninsula countries, Syria, Jordan, Sudan, Libya, Morocco and Mauritania, and significant influence on legal systems of countries from Indonesia to Algeria. Customary law has heavy influence in countries like China, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, and number of African countries. So Islamic and customary law are two major legal systems and they are more or less completely ignored in the "Law" article.

Also concerning comprehensiveness, one of the four main sections of article "Legal institutions" begins with "The main institutions of law in liberal democracies are...". That is fine but what about the main institutions of law in other political systems? -- Vision Thing -- 16:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely disagree with you. Islamic law has its place in the "history of law" and "religious laws" sections, but any further expansion on that would be IMO overdue. Are we then also going to analyze all the Christian canonical laws as well?! Why should we choose to follow your pro-Islamic POV, and ignore these religious laws as well! Following your rationale, as a Greek and Christian Orthodox I demand from Wikidea to add a long and super-analytical section about the Orthodox canonical law, which is practiced by a church of more than 300,000,000 members, and has a huge history as a continuation of Byzantine law, whose influence in modern western systems is ecumenically recognized!--Yannismarou (talk) 17:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He just doesn't know what he's talking about, and I think the University of Ottawa would say the same. Religious law encompasses islamic law, and once again it's not significant either in population terms or theoretically. Wikidea 17:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have any specific POV on this issue; I'm simply stating what the sources say. My rationale is that according to sources Islamic law is one of the main legal systems in the modern world. If you have sources that claim the same for Orthodox canonical law, then yes, we should also deal with it. However, I doubt that you will find sources for such claim. -- Vision Thing -- 21:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(c) Although this article has 130 inline citations many of those are primary sources. Per Wikipedia's policy on primary sources, articles should relay on secondary sources, specially when it comes to interpretive and synthetic claims. Unfortunately nature of this article requires synthetic and generalizing claims and conclusion that cannot be drawn from individual cases without OR. Few examples of bad sourcing: Constitutional and administrative law section contains following claim: "A case named Entick v. Carrington illustrates a constitutional principle deriving from the common law." Who says that that case illustrates constitutional principle? In that section we have another similar claim: "The fundamental constitutional principle, inspired by John Locke,…" and given source is Locke's The Second Treatise. Who says that this constitutional principle was inspired by Locke and not by someone else? Whole "Constitutional and administrative law" has only one secondary source. Similar problems are present in other sections. Also, there are some POV claims like: "Civil society is necessarily a source of law, by being the basis from which people form opinions and lobby for what they believe law should be." (this one is also unsourced).

Pick up any first year public law text and it will talk about the case. The moral of the story in Entick is that without a warrant, the sheriff (a government body) had no authority to act, therefore could not act. This is also an especially interesting case because it preceded the US declaration of independence. So it is law in all common law nations. Examples of cases throughout the article try to be relevant to as many readers as possible. You can find the Locke source in the footnote, and if you read Lord Camden's words they are quoting Locke verbatim. As for civil society, Robertson QC's quote is telling you the same.

But that's just it, isn't it Vision Thing. You don't care about reading things, or getting it right, that you're happy to keep wasting everyone's time, and you're just pursuing a sour grapes agenda. Wikidea 20:34, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I should add, Entick is (for you guys from the States) the leading inspiration for the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Wikidea 20:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:PRIMARY states: "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. To the extent that part of an article relies on a primary source, it should:

only make descriptive claims about the information found in the primary source, the accuracy and applicability of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge, and
make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about the information found in the primary source." -- Vision Thing -- 16:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is absurd to speak about referencing problems in such a well-researched (mainly thanks to Wikidea), and rich with sources article. Just look at the sources section (all of which are used in the article; this is no fake list!); legally speaking, I rest my case!--Yannismarou (talk) 17:29, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He doesn't understand the point of this distinction between primary and secondary sources. If you can't quote from a case, or say what is in a statute, then everything that I have written on this website should be gotten rid of. Wikidea 17:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another example of poor sourcing is Judiciary section. This section has five inline sources but let us look what is sourced. Four sources are links to webpages of appeals courts, and one source is US Supreme Court verdict. Claims that are sourced are establishing the names of appeals courts in the US, UK, Germany, France, and EU. Fifth source is supporting claim that the United States Supreme Court did reach one verdict. At the same time some very specific claims are not sourced - "In most countries judges may only interpret the constitution and all other laws." "...the UK, Finland and New Zealand still assert the ideal of parliamentary sovereignty, whereby the unelected judiciary may not overturn law passed by a democratic legislature." -- Vision Thing -- 21:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This section also vividly shows lack of comprehensiveness – it only talks about judiciary in Western countries. What about judiciary in Arab countries, India, China, Japan...? -- Vision Thing -- 21:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(d) Beside Western POV problem caused by the lack of comprehensiveness there are some POV problems with a lead.

This is why VT brings this here. He's effectively bringing his neutrality issues to an FAR. Wikidea 20:34, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

2. (a) Lead section opens up some questions that are not discussed later in the article. It says: "The study of law raises important questions about equality, fairness, liberty and justice, which are not always simple." If those questions are important why they are not discussed in the article? What is relation of law towards equality and liberty? What does the "rule of law" mean (it is mentioned in the lead and only in one place in body of the article)? Also, lead contains (in my view) a POV quote by Anatole France. For one, Anatole France is not a well-known legal scholar, he is not even a legal scholar, so undue weight is given to him. He or his views are not mentioned anywhere else in the article, and, as far as I can see, for a good reason. Also, he presents a specific point of view that goes unanswered. -- Vision Thing -- 18:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is his original gripe (among many others on many pages). Anatole France won the Nobel Prize for literature. His aphorism is widely known, and quoted in law classes the world over. It's not France's view that is the problem. It's just Vision Thing here, who is bringing a neutrality dispute from this, the history of economic thought and the competition law page. He just wants to push some conservative authors' quotes, and so far as I can see, is a very uninteresting and worthless contributor to Wikipedia. Wikidea 20:34, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If his aphorism is so important that it must be quoted in the lead then it also should be important enough to be discussed in the main body of article. However, that is not the case. -- Vision Thing -- 16:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Go away. Wikidea 17:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please notify significant contributers as well as associated wikipedia projects and post these notifications at the top of this FAR (see the instructions at WP:FAR). Thanks! --Regents Park (count the magpies) 18:50, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I was an "Object and refer to peer review" when this article passed FAC; I don't think it has ever warranted featured status. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Vision Thing is nominating this because he's a bit sour. Wikidea 19:47, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: This is the first time I have commented on a FAR, so . . . :

The article seems to be primarily about "western law" or at least has a "western law" explanative view reference point.
There does not seem to be anything about non codified or oral tradition or "tradtional law", for example the law in "indigenous societies"
The "definition" of law seems to be only from a codified perspective. Should it say something about "socioanthropomorphic constructive" law, for example:

the law is in reality the set of social behaviours enforced within a society, whether or not they have been legitimately codified, are conscionable, etc. . . . even if the law was draconian, arbitrary, illegitmate, unconscionable, . . .

The real lead needs to be longer. It is one very short sentence. The rest of the lead perhaps should be very slightly expanded in to an introduction section - law is such a broad area, and the current lead leaves one a little befuddled. It does not lead one into the following sections as well as it might.
What is there seems to be good, but it needs more.
While there are many references, there seem to be a few unreferenced key assertions.

Peet Ern (talk) 05:56, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy close. This is another clear case of content dispute, following Reagan and Roman-Persian Wars. The nominator is in a content dispute with Wikidea, and he thought that the best way to continue this personal feud was to bring this article here. I really can't take seriously arguments like not covering maritime law (?!!!!) or even Islamic law; such an article cannot cover every religious law in detail. Also saying that the article does not include adequate secondary sources is more than mere nonsense (and it reminds me of the same nonsense [but in an even worse version now] when Pericles was nominated here), and a poor excuse for Vision Thing's only and real problem, his 1d argument (which here is just one line, although this is what caused this nomination, and I'm sorry about the nominator's lack of straightforwardness). Therefore, I am per the speedy closing of this nomination and the continuation of the content dispute issue in the article's talk page. Finally, I would like to point out that this tactic to nominate an article here as a result of a content dispute (and as a "means of pressure" towards the article's main editors to succumb to the nominator's demands?) is getting really really annoying, and we maybe should discuss how to deal with it.--Yannismarou (talk) 07:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reacting with personal attacks to a good faith attempt to improve article won't get us anywhere good. -- Vision Thing -- 16:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you regard my above comments as a personal attack, then I am sorry but you have no idea about what a personal attack is, and you definitely have to distinguish in your mind the terms "personal attack" and "criticism". Trying to defeature the article, because other editors do not agree with some of your edits is no "good faith attempt to improve the article"; it is exactly the opposite. And I do insist on everything I wrote above. Your arguments are more than weak (this the most "gentle" term I can find in order to characterize them without making you believe that I personally attack you!), and this is definitely the wrong place to pursue your content dispute goals.--Yannismarou (talk) 17:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy close and keep. Although I see a few omisions of citations, this could have been handled on the talk page and would not require a review. Now, for the things that should be cited: 1) "The United Nations, founded under the UN Charter, is one of the most important international organisations. It was established after the League of Nations failed to prevent the Second World War." and the lines following. 2) "This increases the number of disputes outside a unified legal framework. Increasing numbers of businesses opt for commercial arbitration under the New York Convention 1958." 3) "The leading judge, Lord Camden, stated that," 4) "Lord Coleridge, expressing immense disapproval, ruled, "to preserve one's life is generally speaking a duty, but it may be the plainest and the highest duty to sacrifice it."" and what follows. 5) "The boy sued the goldsmith for his apprentice's attempt to cheat him. Lord Chief Justice Pratt ruled that even though the boy could not be said to own the jewel," and what follows. 6) Law#Further disciplines section should have some links, or one reference at the top to show where this list can be found, etc. 7) Law#Legal systems would need a source at the end, all though it is general, it would be nice to link a general source or a couple provided later. After that, there are only a few scattered spots. Less than 20 total citations needed, which is easily fixed. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:59, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep open. How did this ever pass through FAC to begin with? An article on a topic as complex and important as the law should not garner only four support votes (one of which was cast by the main author). Anyways, the article doesn't exemplify our very best work. I agree entirely with Vision Thing's comments about the sourcing. In many instances, instead of citing reliable secondary sources with professional editorial oversight, the article directly cites cases and philosophical texts hand-picked by a Wikipedian. If the information is significant, it should be easy to find and cite a reliable secondary source to support it. Not to mention that entire paragraphs don't have a single citation. Punctured Bicycle (talk) 22:24, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]