Portal talk:Law

This is a good place to discuss in a general manner the way in which pages about law are organized.

Scope
Is the scope of this meant to be law only, or also including works on the law (like the Federalist Papers) and resolutions (such as Declaration of Rights and Grievances and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799)? --Spangineerwp (háblame) 18:07, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This is an interesting and important question. It speaks to the borderline between political history and law.  I would like to say that in the long run the answer is a clear "yes," but the effect of saying that in the short term may very well be to make the whole gnarly subject area unmanageable. The turning point should probably lie with the passage of legislation by a duly recognized person or other national or sub-national government.  It could include committee reports immediately surrounding the passage of legislation, but not public discussion or newspaper articles surrounding that event. After the passage law would of course include the application of those laws in courtrooms.  Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 19:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Categories and Law
If we view Law as a top level category, it would make sense that in a hierarchical system most sub-categories should begin with the word "law". A few key sub-categories such as "Statutes" may be used, but the number of these should be very limited. After that, in a hierarchical system, a member of a narrow category is necessarily an element of the broader category that contains the narrower. It would still be correct for a newcomer, who has minimal familiarity with the category system, to put an article into the broader category with the understanding that a more experienced may later apply a finer division.

Any article, of course, may belong to more than one category when hierarchies are developed using different criteria such as geographical subdivision and type of law.

There are several formats available for dividing the general category of law.
 * 1) Single word sub-categories. These should be used sparingly for certain major areas.
 * 2) Parentheses. These distinguish synonymous topics of equal rank. Initially very few of these will be needed.
 * 3) Multi word categories. These may be in natural order when "law" is normally the first word as in "Law enforcement", or in inverted order with commas as in "Law, Criminal".
 * 4) Subdivisions. These would be identified by the established use of the forward oblique "/".
 * 5) Geographical subdivisions. To distinguish and separate these from other forms of subdivision, an alternative indicator, such as an m-dash (or a simple hyphen between spaces) would be helpful.

More detail can be developed as the law category develops. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 08:35, 14 May 2009 (UTC)