On 12/18/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
No, the law is much trickier and more gray than that, and Wikipedia editors need to get out of the notion that they can use original research to outline arguments and pontificate about what the "true facts" are. As well, we really have no idea what people believe, we only know what they say and do. Thus, you can state, "A number of authors have stated X[cite][cite], while legal scholars have stated Y[cite][cite][cite]", but that's as far as we can go, and indeed, as far as we need to go. It makes the point equally well without the smell of argumentative POV-pushing.
Stated is much better than believe, yes, excellent point. I'm not sure what your saying in your first sentence though...
What I was saying was that regarding legal opinion, we don't tell people what is "correct", we just tell them what legal scholars have said on the matter. The latter meets [[WP:NPOV]], the former does not.
Jay.