On 4/16/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia(a)downlode.org> wrote:
It is interesting that there is nowhere in that
article that states
that it describes United States law (except a brief mention of the
states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah) - even in the large series box
on the right-hand side of the article. This appears to be a fine
example of systemic bias[0] (or more specifically, American Cultural
Assumption[1]) in action.
This sort of thing doesn't bother me that much. Look at the intro:
"Under the attractive nuisance doctrine of the law of torts, a
landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on
the land if the injury is caused by a hazardous object or condition on
the land that is likely to attract children, who are unable to
appreciate the risk posed by the object or condition."
I read the contextual assumption as "If you're in a jursdiction where
the phrase 'attractive nuisance doctrine' is used, then here's what it
means". A specific contextualisation would be good, but presumably the
authors of this article didn't know exactly where it is and isn't
used. There is no implication that this doctrine exists worldwide.
What is much grubbier is when you have an article which concerns a
topic which is clearly near-global in scope, but the article makes
many assumptions about that topic being in the US. [[Skiing]] was a
bad example for a while, and many articles about food are similar.
[[Property tax]] does a good job of avoiding this.
Steve