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Vandalism of this page

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To whom it may concern,

The opening line of the "Law of the United States" page has been quite clearly vandalized. It reads as follows: The law of the United States comprises many bananas. bananas are great things that have happened in life.

I am not the person to resolve this, lest I produce an edit that makes even less sense than the one above. However, I considered it something of a civic duty to bring attention to it, in the hopes that the next person who is painfully behind schedule on their research paper is not needlessly impeded by such villainy.

To the person who might be capable of fixing this: you are the hero humanity needs, but does not deserve. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.78.52.100 (talk) 01:40, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This article should be permanently protected

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I just caught and reverted some fairly severe vandalism to this article from 3 March 2019 that no one caught. This article should be permanently protected indefinitely from edits from any editor who does not have a well-established account. --Coolcaesar (talk) 01:19, 16 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Abbreviations in citations

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@Coolcaesar: Greetings! Regarding this revert...Wikipedia law articles are not written for lawyers; they are written for a general audience, especially overview articles like this one. There is a general mandate to explain jargon, and this abbreviation was something, even having taken a law class in college, I had to look up. Wikipedia also has the benefit of not being paper, so we can take the space to expand abbreviations that would otherwise be confusing. Thanks, Beland (talk) 01:27, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

But see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Legal. We follow the "legal citation convention for the jurisdiction that handled the case." The Bluebook consistently abbreviates "rehearing" to "reh'g." (See pages 30 and 501 of the 20th edition.) --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:01, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bipartite/tripartite in lead

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As found:

In the dual-sovereign[1] system of American federalism (actually tripartite[2] because of the presence of Indian reservations), states are the plenary sovereigns, each with their own constitution, while the federal sovereign possesses only the limited supreme authority enumerated in the Constitution.[3]

References

  1. ^ Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452 (1991).
  2. ^ Kowalski, Tonya (2009). "The Forgotten Sovereigns". Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 36 (4): 765–826.
  3. ^ United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995).

As modified just now:

In the dual-sovereign[1] system of American federalism, states are the plenary sovereigns, each with their own constitution, while the federal sovereign possesses only the limited supreme authority enumerated in the Constitution[2] (note that on the ground, it is more complete to regard American federalism as tripartite rather than bipartite,[3] with many Indian reservations operating under charter to preserve and maintain distinct legal traditions).

References

  1. ^ Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452 (1991).
  2. ^ United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995)
  3. ^ Kowalski, Tonya (2009). "The Forgotten Sovereigns". Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 36 (4): 765–826.

I intensely disliked the overtones of "actually" in how it implicitly privileges the formalist method of counting over the historical or pragmatist method of counting. Small exceptions often exist in a grey zone where they are first class from one vantage point, and second class from a different vantage point; to pretend otherwise somehow ignores [edited] that human language embeds in a frightfully complex world in a constant state of incompleteness in nearly all regards.

My principle horror concerning my bold edit is the word "charter". In the Canadian legal context, to discover that the native populations are operating under a distinct charter would be the legal arrangement of least surprise to the armchair brigade loosely following along. I'm probably off my gourd transplanting this term in the American federal context, but I'm sure the next editor who comes along can resolve my phrasing in short order.

Far more important is whether "Indian reservations" should remain the head noun in this construction. Is the reservation structure of indigenous affairs really the proper anchor point for the skinny leg of the triune stool. I highly suspect this can also be refined or improved at the same time. — MaxEnt 16:27, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's my text you're editing. The word "charter" reflects a lack of sensitivity to the rights of indigenous peoples and should have been discussed here first. Go read up Indian reservations and Tribal sovereignty in the United States to see why that's offensive; the tribes were already sovereign and did not need to be chartered by anyone. (To be clear, I am not Native American, but my law school is widely known for its Indian law programs, so I had several classmates who were Native Americans and Alaska Natives.)
The United States is often described as a "dual-sovereign" system. I used the word "actually" to signal that there is a third category of sovereigns out there, even if many people often forget about them. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:22, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It may be time to merge back in the State law (United States) article

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We've having problems with people tagging parts of this article as requiring clarification. The reason, of course, is that many parts of the article are very difficult to understand unless one also reads the state law article. The only way to overcome that issue is to merge back in the state law article. Any objections? Coolcaesar (talk) 00:21, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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