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Wikidata:Property proposal/Properties for legislation

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Properties for legislation edit

enacted on edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Not done
Descriptionthe date on which legislation became law
Representsenacted (Q101753155)
Data typePoint in time
Domainproperty
Allowed valuesdate
Example 1Theft Act 1968 (Q7777756) [UK Act] → 1968-07-26
Example 2Official Languages Act (Q481372) [Canadian Act] → 1988-07-28
Example 3Patriot Act (Q221689) [US Act] → 2001-10-26
Example 4Civil Procedure Rules (Q1055840) [UK delegated legislation] → 1998-12-10
Example 5Item TBC [Irish delegated legislation] → 2021-04-15
Example 6Item TBC [UK private Act] → 1987-05-15
Planned useFor any items of legislation.
Number of IDs in sourcemillions
Expected completenessalways incomplete (Q21873886)
Robot and gadget jobsno - far too much variation in format and method of designation

Parliamentary Archives ID (United Kingdom) edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

Descriptionidentifier of this item on the Parliamentary Archives website
Data typeExternal identifier
Domainproperty
Allowed values\w+
Example 1Theft Act 1968 (Q7777756) [UK Act] → HL_PO_PU_1_1968_c60
Example 2Civil Procedure Rules (Q1055840) [UK delegated legislation] → HC_CL_JO_10_2636_231
Example 3Item TBC [UK private Act] → HL_PO_PB_1_1987_c1
Sourcehttps://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/parliamentary-archives/
Planned useFor any items in the Parliamentary Archives.
Number of IDs in sourceunknown
Expected completenesseventually complete (Q21873974)
Formatter URLhttps://archives.parliament.uk/collections/getrecord/GB61_$1
Robot and gadget jobsmaybe - many of the item descriptions are shortened/vague/alternatives, and some are just wrong

Parliamentary Office number (United Kingdom) edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

Descriptionreference number assigned by the Clerk of the Parliaments to original Acts of Parliament passed in a given Parliamentary session to be kept in the House of Lords Record Office (now the Parliamentary Archives)
RepresentsParliamentary Office number (Q108990292)
Data typeExternal identifier
Domainproperty
Allowed values\d{1,3}
Example 1Piracy Act 1721 (Q7197656) → 40
Example 2Privilege of Parliament Act 1512 (Q16933732) → 8
Example 3Item TBC → 259
Planned usefor any Acts of Parliament passed between 1497 and 1902, for which this system is still used
Number of IDs in sourcetens of thousands - they restart from 1 each Parliamentary session, and will need to be paired with part of the series (P179)
Expected completenesseventually complete (Q21873974)
Robot and gadget jobsno - these are kept in two series of contemporary handwritten records kept in the Parliamentary Archives as well as being transcribed on the original Acts themselves

short title edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Withdrawn
Descriptionthe designated short title of an item of legislation
Representsshort title (Q2470803)
Data typeMonolingual text
Domainproperty
Allowed valuestext
Example 1Theft Act 1968 (Q7777756) [UK Act] → Theft Act 1968
Example 2Official Languages Act (Q481372) [Canadian Act] → Official Languages Act
Example 3Patriot Act (Q221689) [US Act] → Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001
Example 4Civil Procedure Rules (Q1055840) [UK delegated legislation] → Civil Procedure Rules 1998
Example 5Item TBC [Irish delegated legislation] → Judicial Council Act 2019 (Commencement) Order 2021
Example 6Item TBC [UK private Act] → John Ernest Rolfe and Florence Iveen Rolfe (Marriage Enabling) Act 1987
Planned useFor any items of legislation that have a formally designated short title.
Number of IDs in sourcemillions
Expected completenessalways incomplete (Q21873886)
Robot and gadget jobsno - far too much variation in format and method of designation

long title edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Withdrawn
Descriptionthe designated long title of an item of legislation
Representslong title (Q105206575)
Data typeMonolingual text
Domainproperty
Allowed valuestext
Example 1Theft Act 1968 (Q7777756) [UK Act] → An Act to revise the law of England and Wales as to theft and similar or associated offences, and in connection therewith to make provision as to criminal proceedings by one party to a marriage against the other, and to make certain amendments extending beyond England and Wales in the Post Office Act 1953 and other enactments; and for other purposes connected therewith.
Example 2Official Languages Act (Q481372) [Canadian Act] → An Act respecting the status and use of the official languages of Canada
Example 3Patriot Act (Q221689) [US Act] → An Act to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and across the globe, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.
Example 4Item TBC [UK private Act] → An Act to enable John Ernest Rolfe and Florence Iveen Rolfe to be married to each other.
Planned useFor any items of legislation that have a formally designated long title.
Number of IDs in sourcemillions
Expected completenessalways incomplete (Q21873886)
Robot and gadget jobsno - far too much variation in format

Motivation edit

A series of properties primarily focused on UK legislation, but some have applicability in other jurisdictions. The short title is officially designated and is (usually) how most people would refer to an Act, while the long title is (technically) the full title of the Act but rarely sees much use. Neither of these are necessarily the most appropriate title for the item, however (see the Patriot Act example). The "enacted on" date is when legislation becomes law and should be fairly self-explanatory, but it should be differentiated from effective date (P7588) due to the fact that a lot of legislation does not come into effect until a designated later date (or when a specific event occurs). The Parliamentary Archives ID refers to the online database of the Parliamentary Archives, and is often the only place to locate local or private Acts (which may have little to no other online presence). Note that this system is ultimately derived from the National Archives system, so my understanding is that the URLs all contain GB61 to denote that they're at the Parliamentary Archives. Finally, the Parliamentary Office number carries significance in that it was formally designated on Acts for hundreds of years and is usually written on the Act itself, so carries authoritative weight in referencing.

One relatively minor concern that's occurred to me (in relation to data types) is where legislation is formally multilingual with no single language taking precedence (e.g. English/Welsh for Acts of Senedd Cymru or English/French for Acts in Canada). I'm not satisfied with any of the currently-possible workarounds that I can think of: "monolingual text" doesn't seem appropriate for obvious reasons, but neither does "multilingual text" given that it would not be appropriate to translate them into any further languages. Having separate properties for each language is clunky, and also causes any legislation to which this applies to be inconsistently formatted. It would obviously be inappropriate to ignore or give precedence to one or the other. The only solution I can think of is that the short title and long title properties need to be hybrids, where multiple languages can be added if and only if they are both (or all) the text of what was actually enacted. In the short-term, though, I wouldn't want this issue to hold things up. Theknightwho (talk) 00:33, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion edit

In relation to "enacted on", I would be fine with modifying this proposal to rename date of promulgation (P7589) to "enacted on" for two reasons: in modern times, the date of assent of an Act is by definition the date on which the Act is enacted. However, date of promulgation (P7589) is unnecessarily restrictive as it cannot be used for secondary legislation in the UK (statutory instruments etc.) which don't involve royal assent, or for jurisdictions where assent by a head of state is not part of the process. Secondly, in the distant past, royal assent was not necessarily the last part of the process, as it was sometimes given before a Bill had passed Parliament. In those situations, the Bill wouldn't become an Act (quite literally, to be enacted) until Parliament also assented. However, for Acts to which that applies, the date of royal assent may be unknown, and it's completely irrelevant when compared to the date of enactment as that's the point at which it actually becomes law. Having it as a separate property would invariably cause confusion. effective date (P7588), on the other hand, wouldn't be appropriate for the reasons given in the original proposal. Theknightwho (talk) 05:13, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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