Wikidata

Wikidata:WikiProject UK and Ireland/law

< Wikidata:WikiProject UK and Ireland

This is, from March 2021, a project to load UK Acts of Parliament from 1801 onwards into WD, and, probably, to document the ~136k+ items of UK primary & secondary legislation already on WD.

Sources edit

1801 Acts upload progress edit

By series reports should match the Statutes source. By date reports will probably have waifs & strays that fall outside the Series, but which are useful for duplicate spotting.

Geo 3 edit

Geo 4 edit

Will 4 edit

Vic edit

Edward 7 edit

  • 2 Edward 7 - [] - []
  • 3 Edward 7 - [] - []
  • 4 Edward 7 - [] - []
  • 5 Edward 7 - [] - []
  • 6 Edward 7 - [] - []
  • 7 Edward 7 - [] - []
  • 8 Edward 7 - [] - []
  • 9 Edward 7 - [] - []
  • 10 Edward 7 / 1 George 5 - [] - []

George 5 edit

  • 1 & 2 George 5 - [] - []
  • 2 & 3 George 5 - [] - []
  • 3 & 4 George 5 - [] - []
  • 4 & 5 George 5 - [] - []
  • 5 & 6 George 5 - [] - []
  • 6 & 7 George 5 - [] - []
  • 7 & 8 George 5 - [] - []
  • 8 & 9 George 5 - [] - []
  • 9 & 10 George 5 - [] - []
  • 10 & 11 George 5 - [] - []
  • 11 & 12 George 5 - [] - []
  • 12 & 13 George 5 - [] - []
  • 13 & 14 George 5 - [] - []
  • 14 & 15 George 5 - [] - []
  • 15 & 16 George 5 - [] - []
  • 16 & 17 George 5 - [] - []
  • 17 & 18 George 5 - [] - []
  • 18 & 19 George 5 - [] - []
  • 19 & 20 George 5 - [] - []
  • 20 & 21 George 5 - [] - []
  • 21 & 22 George 5 - [] - []
  • 22 & 23 George 5 - [] - []
  • 23 & 24 George 5 - [] - []
  • 24 & 25 George 5 - [] - []
  • 25 & 26 George 5 - [] - []
  • 26 George 5 / 1 Edw. - [] - []

1801 Acts issues edit

  • Short names are probably bogus - need to revise these at some point. Right now they're being used to avoid having to think about truncating long titles into a 256-char label field.
  • I would suggest the labels be how they are referred to in the series volumes (or should simply refer to the citation otherwise) where no short title exists. Many will have been retrospectively given short titles by later Acts, which we should use. This is nontrivial to sort out, and will take many hours. Theknightwho (talk) 02:04, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Discussion about the possibility of URL references to point to page on which Act appears, rather than the source book in general
  • Only regnal citations are correct pre-1963. Using calendar citations doesn’t make sense unless it’s for 1963 onwards (when the calendar years replaced regnal years), as you could theoretically get more than one Act with the same citation that way due to the regnal series not restarting in January. I have no idea why legislation.gov.uk does that, as they recognise the genuine citations in the URLs. Seems like lazy coding, but in any event what they state is factually wrong in that sense. Theknightwho (talk) 02:04, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Check for Acts with Series having no Official name = Act's name was too long. Need to truncate.
  • This will cover many thousands of Acts, and will make many very difficult to find due to the long titles often being very generic/long. This will require some level of thought, and should be appropriate to the Acts in question, rather than subject to a blanket approach. Theknightwho (talk) 02:04, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Check pre-1807 jurisdictions
  • This isn’t quite correct. Public General Acts are an invention of the mid-19th century (iirc), and there were a few different frameworks used for the different series over the decades. Unfortunately this means the older series don’t all map one-to-one with their replacements, so it’s not necessarily a case of just saying that the name of the series changed. I’ll need to map out a framework of exactly what happened, so as to ensure we’re categorising them properly. However, it does mean that for older Acts that we may need to recategorise them accordingly. Theknightwho (talk) 02:04, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP URL reference for short titles are wrong for 54 Geo 3 to 1 & 2 Geo. 4 - e.g.https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q106154510#P1813 points to 1801 53_Geo._3, should point to 1821 1 & 2 Geo 4
  • Possibly recover legislation.gov.uk references for short titles (i.e. where there's a legislation.gov.uk ID) ... refs for short titles currently point to WP.

1801 Series edit

  • series of which Acts can be part of the series (P179)
    • Need to split some Series, e.g. 62 & 63 Vic / 63 Vic (Q105777843) into 2 (or more?) series. "In this case, the two are different parliamentary sessions, and should be split. (You'll also find that some years, e.g. 47 George 3, have two sessions, abbreviated 47 G 3 [s., session, or stat] 1 / 2. Again, these should be split." [1]

Properties edit

Wikipedia has a list of properties for its 'Infobox UK Legislation.' These seem suitable as attributes for Wikidata items. An additional attribute that would be very useful, is Parliamentary session, which will allow for a closer relation between M.P.s and the legislation they debated and passed.

Texts edit

Each statute / wikidate item should have a link to its text. The best sources for these texts are:

  • Volumes of the Statutes, as digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, etc.
  • Similar volumes, mainly for pre-1800 statutes, being transcribed on Wikisource
  • Texts on the Legislation.gov.uk site. Holds very few historic statutes, and for some of those only the revised, not original, texts. But the definitive repository for modern (late c20th / c21st) legislation.
  • The original statute, as held in the House of Lords archive. Some of these have been digitized, presumeably more will be in the fullness of time.

See also edit

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