Talk:Statutory law

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Neutrality[edit]

The only two sources on this page are both links to a website presenting Vatican statutory law. There are no sources referring to any other types of statutory law — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.10.22.220 (talk) 08:24, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

sovereigns[edit]

I ask the question of whether statutory law pertains to sovereigns. It is my understanding that statutory laws were made for the purpose of limiting governments or "persons" power over sovereigns, or, "The People". I have read many supreme court cases where it states that sovereigns are not a party to statutory laws,codes,or regulations.

[Note: The above question and comments were posed by an anonymous user at IP address 209.193.29.101 on 28 February 2006.] Regards to all, Famspear 21:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What the user at 209.193.29.101 meant by the phrase "statutory law pertains to sovereigns" is unclear. At any rate, statutory laws were and are made for various purposes, depending on the law. Taxing statutes are enacted primarily to impose taxes, etc. Criminal statutes are enacted primarily to define behavior deemed by society to be punishable, and to punish that behavior (among other things). Statutes on contracts are made primarily for the purpose of laying down rules for contracts. Thus, the phrase "sovereigns are not a party to statutory laws [ . . .]" etc., might not be the exact wording that our fellow user intended. Perhaps the user is instead asking about another legal concept, such as Sovereign immunity (??).
In fact, it's unclear what the user means by a "sovereign" although it appears the term is being used in the sense of "The People" (as in, The People of the United States are sovereign, etc.) Like many terms the word "sovereign" may have different meanings depending on the context in which the term is used. It may have one or more technical legal meanings -- which may or may not be the meaning being intended by our fellow user.
I'm guessing that what the user was trying to ask was: "Was statutory law developed for the purpose of limiting the power of government over The People (with The People being the sovereign)?" My answer to that question would be: Perhaps yes, in some cases, but not necessarily as a general proposition. Each statute, regulation, etc., has its own purpose or purposes, which may or may not be related to the desire to limit the power of the government.
So, perhaps some clarification would be needed from the user in order to properly address his or her questions. Famspear 21:42, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup tag[edit]

Added 17:11, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

This article is horrible. The bulk of it refers to tangential issues. Very little discussion is given to just what statutory law is, how it came about, etc.

Also there is a link near the beginning of the article to "Common Law" that goes to "Non-Statutory Law" instead that I dont know how to fix.

Link error[edit]

I fixed the error in that link to the common law page. I don't have the time or much expertise on the subject of statutory law to update the page at the moment, though.

Civil Law[edit]

How does Statutory law relate to Civil law_(legal_system)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.168.177.231 (talk) 19:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments of merge[edit]

IMHO : Statutory law and Civil law_(legal_system) should be merged to Statutory_law_(legal_system), because the term "Statutory law" is used for the written codified legal system that opposes the "Common law" or Non-statutory legal system . This remark will result in applying a merge request and a modification to change the title of certain articles please submit your comments below --DerekvG (talk) 15:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Moreover the term civil law is a body of law within the statutory law (legal system) that refers to relations between persons (i.e. individuals and organisations (that have the judicial capacity of acting like a person, legal persons).--DerekvG (talk) 21:15, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Higher constitutional laws?[edit]

"Statutory laws are subordinate to the higher constitutional laws of the land."

This phrase is, at best, unclear and at worst meaningless. It's a tautology to say that statute laws are subordinate to "higher" laws, and what laws are "constitutional" varies by jurisdiction. So in the US it would be fair to say that statutes enacted by congress must be in adherence to the US constitution, but whether a statute is or not is decided by the US Supreme Court, so the phrase above doesn't really capture the essence of that. The UK, meanwhile, has an uncodified constitution and so statute laws are the "high constitutional laws of the land" (whatever that means), save for the concept of constitutional statutes like the Human Rights Act (and this concept is far from fully fleshed out). In any sense, in the UK, Parliament is sovereign, and so there is no such thing as a law "higher" than statute law - the Human Rights Act 1998, technically and constitutionally speaking, occupies the same legal altitude as the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.

That's not to say that in some jurisdictions like the US, the constitution isn't a "higher" law than statutes enacted by congress, but the phrase above is an all-encompassing statement which is a) tautologous and b) inaccurate. The inclusion of "of the land" makes me think this is a vexatious edit put in by a "freeman on the land" type conspiracy theorist. I'll leave this up for the time being in case anyone wants to challenge me on my points, but if that doesn't happen then I'll delete it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.79.211.150 (talk) 13:39, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statute = Statutory law?[edit]

It's not clear to me what the difference is between the two articles, Statute and Statutory law. This page says "for other uses, see Statutory law" but they seem quite similar to me. I'm not well versed in law and I wonder if they should be merged. Uglemat (talk) 02:30, 16 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was wondering the same just now... Something should be done about this! I'm not sure if I'll be able to dig into the issue in the near future, unfortunately. But I did want to make known that I share your concern. LegesFundamentales (talk) 17:07, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nuts & bolts needed.[edit]

So, how are laws created (federal, state, local), at least in the USA? How are they altered? How are they rescinded? This article does address these questions and there are no "See also" links that give that information. Thank you for your time, Wordreader (talk) 16:12, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 13 July 2020[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn. Article similar to proposed target (Act of Parliament) already exists. ItsPugle (talk) 21:23, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]



Statutory lawAct of law – This RM partially help to adress the outstanding (and painful) eurocentric bias that plagues this article. The phrase "Statutory law" is pretty much only used in North American legal contexts - the UK and most Commonwealth nations for example, call them acts. Internationally the phrase "act of law" is searched >6x as often as "statutory law", which would mean that "Act of law" is the appropriate title as per the common name policy - it's also a more global term. Plus, for everyone else who isn't coming from the US, the phrase "statutory law" doesn't really make sense - a statute is the American term for a law, so a statutory law is the same as saying a "law law"... ItsPugle (talk) 04:25, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose per WP:ENGVAR, we don't switch from one version of English to another. And though it's largely irrelevant, your linguistic analysis of "statutory law" is very flawed. Rreagan007 (talk) 07:45, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think you meant to like to the national variations in article titles policy (WP:ENGVAR is for article content), but this reply applies to both entries. To be clear, this RM isn't a thing of British vs American English. This is a thing of limited terminology used in a marginal geographical area vs popular terminology used in most of the world's population. Wikipedia isn't British or American, it's global, so using the more commonly recognised name used across more regions is the best course of action for a better experience for the vast majority of readers. The current title, by virtue of being used only a sixth of the alternative title, also fails to meet the common name and recognisable name policies. Of course, Statutory law should (would) be included in the lead as an alternate name once moved. And yeah, my 'linguistic analysis' was more a passing remark than of meaningful consideration :) ItsPugle (talk) 09:43, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you that this is an American term, but as I said above we don't switch versions of English, whether in the body of the article or the article title. And I think the scope of this article should be specifically on American statutory law. A separate article on Act of Parliament for the UK and Commonwealth countries already exists. Just redirect "Act of law" to that article if you wish. But this article should remain where it is. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:32, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Agh! I didn't see the Act of Parliament article. Thanks :) ItsPugle (talk) 21:23, 13 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]



The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Malpractice 😷/criminal Statue Law,Veteran?"[edit]

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