On 2/18/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
On Feb 17, 2006, at 4:03 PM, BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
IANAL: In conventional IRL law you usually do not talk about rights.
I don't know where you live, but that's definitely *not* the case in, say, the United States. In the United States, rights are a very important part of law. In fact, the United States was founded based upon the philosophical foundation that the *purpose* of law is to protect people's rights. That's why the US Constitution has a "Bill of Rights" that state, in no uncertain terms, that people have certain rights that the government may not infringe upon. Most cases that make it to the Supreme Court are concerned with what rights people have and how those rights conflict or interact.
Again IANAL but I believe you are right. But for normal trials in the US, is the constitution really involved? If you do something that the normal law does not forbid, but that the US Constitution doesn't guarantee your right to do, can the judicial system then decide whether doing so is legal or illegal?
Steve Bennet said that there is no given right to write whatever you want on your user page. I said that it hasn't been stated in any Wikipedia law that writing pedophile on your user page is forbidden. Considering those two facts (and no other facts such as "blatant trolling") I believe that a normal judicial system would *not* find writing pedophile on your user page forbidden. Yes?
-- mvh Björn