[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

[zero 0000]

> From: jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<6a8d9d700612180823s701590f2pcfe4bd97a2938ac6 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> On 12/17/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/17/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/17/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Of course that's ok. Original research in that scenario would
> be to
> > > > say "the consensus among legal scholars is A, but they haven't
> > > > considered C, and therefore D is the correct position."
> > > >
> > > > Original research is about posing new theories, or making new
> > > > inferences, or drawing new conclusions that are your own
> opinions and
> > > > involve some element of analysis or synthesis. Fundamentally,
> original
> > > > research is introducing your own original thought into
> articles.
> > >
> > > And, of course, drawing your own conclusions and stating that
> there is
> > > a "legal consensus" on this matter, based on your own research
> into
> > > what various legal scholars have said, is a prime example of
> original
> > > research. Quote the scholars, list their names, state that there
> are a
> > > number of them, but don't introduce your own original thought
> that
> > > these selected sources have created a "legal consensus".
> >
> > I was speaking to the particular example given, where there are two
> > popular positions on the subject held by lay people, while all
> expert
> > accounts support only one of those positions. In this context,
> where
> > all experts who have written on the subject have agreed with the
> same
> > position, surely it is not original research to say so.
> 
> On the contrary, it surely is. All of the people that this particular
> investigator has found, and consider to be legal experts, have one
> view, so it's fine to state something like "Legal experts have stated
> Y", with a series of footnotes. However, one cannot go from that step
> to stating "All legal experts believe that Y", since we have no idea
> what *all* legal experts believe, only the statements of the ones we
> happen to have surveyed. Even worse would be an insistence that we
> must conclude that "the law is Y", since the law is complicated,
> malleable, and context specific, and one often has no idea which way
> a judge, panel of judges, or jury will rule.

I'm happy that my question provoked some useful discussion.  

"All legal experts believe that Y" would clearly be wrong, as it
isn't even verifiable.

On the other hand, even though "Legal experts have stated
that Y [cite][cite]" is clearly valid, it doesn't properly convey
what the sources indicate.  There ought to be some way to
record that a standard legal database did not provide ANY
contrary opinions.  Given how much lawyers love to argue
with each other, this is a highly unusual situation.

Perhaps there is another useful way to look at it: consider
the legal database to be "the" source, rather than a
collection of sources.  Can I say something like "Legal
opinions found in the LawIsUs database uniformly favor Y"?
(The wording may need tweaking.)

Zero.

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