Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2013-03/Standards of identity and legal definitions of terms

Background

For those who don't have time to read the three long previous discussions, I rehash my summary: In 2009, the community (bd2412, DCDuring, Lmaltier, Ruakh, msh210, Equinox, EncycloPetey, Carolina wren) decided, not unanimously, to include legal definitions of terms like "semisweet chocolate" ("sweet chocolate that contains not less than 35 percent by weight of chocolate liquor complying with the requirements of Sec. 163.111 and calculated in the same manner as set forth in paragraph (a)(2) of this section"), etc. Unaware of that, I RFDed the legal definition of "mayonnaise". A number of editors who were not part of the old discussion joined me in voting "delete" (including Chuck Entz and Widsith), before bd2412 pointed out that it would be wiser to have a general policy than to have individual RFDs. - -sche (discuss) 19:31, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

What inclusion of every attested legal definition looks like

Because terms have different meanings in each of the world's thousands of legal jurisdictions, and have also had different meanings at different points in time, if entries include every attested legal sense, they will start out looking like these diffs of murder, first-degree murder, and second-degree murder, and grow as contributors find time to add hundreds more senses. Readers may still find the common senses they're looking for amongst all the legalese, and law-school students may not be mislead, because we may find a way to keep each of the dozens or hundreds of senses in each entry up-to-date...pigs may even be transported by air freight, if there aren't laws against it... but that last one is the only one I'd count on! - -sche (discuss) 19:47, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Hosting place

This is a proposal to refine criteria for inclusion. Thus, it should better be hosted in a section of WT:CFI rather than at Wiktionary:Standards of identity and legal definitions, IMHO. For brevity, the section heading should be "Standards of identity" or the like. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:12, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with your first sentence. (I don't care much about the second (brevity). Surely if it's a separate page someone will devise a shortcut for it anyway.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 14:48, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Reword to allow battery and avoid 47 senses of felony murder

I would like it if:

1. a legal sense which is common across many jurisdictions, even though jurisdictions have somewhat different (precise) definitions of it, continues to be included in generalised form: i.e., we continue to include the sense "crime of intentionally striking another person" in battery, because it is common across jurisdictions, while we continue to ignore (or relegate to appendices) the detail that n US states and m Commonwealth nations consider spitting on someone to constitute battery, while o US states...etc, etc, etc.
2. a legal sense which is unusually different from the term's usual definition is included only once, in a generalised form: i.e., we include a general sense which covers all similar "felony murder" laws’ use of murder, and continue to ignore the details various jurisdictions with felony murder laws add, such as that hijacking is included or excluded as a crime that can trigger it, or that if the inducement of a pregnant woman to have a miscarriage at any time after n lunar weeks have passed since conception can trigger it, or... etc, etc, etc.

I'm going to take a stab at rewording the proposal.

I wonder if it should be a policy at all, accorded all the rigidity that people adopt towards policies, or should be a guideline expressing the sense of the Senate community (if this is the sense of the community)... as I wrote in the BP, this whole area is inherently nebulous and hard to write hard-and-fast regulations of! - -sche (discuss) 16:17, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Make it a guideline and see how it flies over the next few months. There are a lot of details that can be tweaked in response to editing. If it’s stable for a long time, then it will have more weight, and can graduate to policy (does it work that way?). —Michael Z. 2013-03-31 17:25 z

I like that idea. I suppose the thing to do now is find test cases to try applying it to... mayonnaise is the obvious one to start with. - -sche (discuss) 03:12, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

If there are 47 state-specific definitions of battery (or 147 due to changes over time), I think we should definitely have an appendix listing all of them. This would be useful both to lawyers and to non-lawyers who might be charged with battery, or might be entitled to bring a civil claim for battery. The same goes for mayonnaise. bd2412 T 13:04, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Requiring attestation in item 1

If specific mention is made of the requirement for attestation (as it is in the current wording of this proposal) then I think the leniency for words of this nature must be included also. (As Mzajac noted in the BP: "Definitions from technical or legal authorities don’t have to be attested in the usual way. We don’t need to find three general quotations for pound proving that the writer meant 453.592 g and not 453.58 g, for example. This is one reason why we have technical-subject labels: to show that the definition is given by authorities and accepted by practicioners in specific fields.")​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:18, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, by "leniency" you mean...? (I would have assumed "leniency" meant "exemption from the attestation requirement", but I don't see how that can sensically be "included also" with an attestation requirement.)

I'm unwilling to exempt legal words from WT:ATTEST. We don't allow words in simply because a lexicographical authority (such as another dictionary) defines them: even if the authority in question is a language's legally-empowered ruling regulator, we demand proof that the words and senses it promulgates are actually used. I don't think there should be a different policy for non-lexicographical regulators that lets their definitions in without proof of use. - -sche (discuss) 08:36, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

That's what I meant by leniency. By inclusion "also", I meant that if we're going to make special mention of attesttaion (which is unnecessary in context: we can just leave it out), then that might make it seem as though such attestation will be difficult, and we should ameliorate that. Of course legal words should need attestation. But the use of mayonnaise in a U.S. mayonnaise advertisement should/does count as attestation of the U.S.-legal sense, which is the sort of leniency I was referring to.​—msh210℠ (talk) 14:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I've taken out "such as attestation". I've left in "if it meets all other relevant criteria for inclusion", lest an unqualified mandate that "it should be included" be taken as pre-empting the attestation/year-spanning and other criteria, by the principle that lex specialis derogat legi generali (and, for that matter, lex posterior derogat legi priori). - -sche (discuss) 03:12, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I (don't see that you've done so already, but) think that sounds great. Thanks.​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:33, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

If we are speaking of legal definitions, then that is what the thing is in the defined jurisdiction. In other words, if you are selling a product labeled "mayonnaise" in the United States, then either it conforms to the FDA's standard of identity for mayonnaise, or you are breaking the law - and although small businesses might edge towards the latter, any large corporation (like Hellmann's or Kraft) will adhere to it religiously. The same thing applies to crimes and torts like "battery". Every charge sheet alleging battery in Louisiana uses the word to mean battery as defined by the laws of Louisiana. bd2412 T 13:10, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

This topic is moving beyond lexicography, although I can’t say exactly where the line is. You’re not describing word usage in the legal field, but the precise wording of specific regulations. I’m tempted to say go ahead and start an appendix, but this doesn’t sound like the kind of systematic information that belongs in Wiktionary at all. Can we even do it justice without simply copying the entire legal code and keeping it up to date? —Michael Z. 2013-04-09 20:17 z

If "battery" means one thing in Louisiana and another thing in Arkansas, then the charge sheet stating "Defendant committed battery" uses a word with a different definition from one state to the other. It doesn't matter that these definitions are enacted by legislation or court decisions, rather than by kids inventing slang usages, which can be just as regional and just as fleeting in the duration of their usage. It is lexicography to say that this is the definition of this word, in this place, at this time, so long as the usage yields three durable citations spanning a year. However, we do not need to copy the exact wording of every such definition, nor do we need to change our definition if the law is changed in some particular that need not affect a general definition. For example, if a new crime is made into a felony, we need not update "felony murder" to include this addition to the roster, because felony murder will generally include every felony, or every violent felony. I would go so far as to say that if the battery laws of three or five or ten states are effectively identical, then we only need one definition line for the lot of them in an appendix. It is really the states that have oddball definitions of things that require highlighting of the difference. I would add that we have no legal liability if our definitions are wrong or out of date; we should keep them up to date for the same reason that we keep the definitions for all words up to date, but we are just as much in the right if we say, this was the meaning of this term in this place and at this time. bd2412 T 03:23, 10 April 2013 (UTC)