Talk:United States contract law

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Start of page[edit]

For a country that is overflowing with lawyers, you guys ought to be ashamed that a British person is beginning this page! Come on, there are plenty of cases, and it's just up to you to organise them, and write something. I'll race you, with the English contract law page. Wik idea 21:44, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I have pointed out elsewhere with other articles started in a similar format, inserting in a bullet-point outline of cases was a terrible idea. Most attorneys look at something like this, throw up their hands and decide they have no idea how to fix it, and click away. The correct approach would have been to start with a prose summary of the consensus version of major concepts as summarized in the Restatement (Second) of Contracts, then digress to cover major outlier cases here and there.

Unfortunately, it takes about five years of practice of insurance or commercial law to develop broad enough experience with real-world contract law to be able to confidently tackle such a project. Anyone who actually has the experience and knowledge to do that kind of comprehensive rewrite is already busy trying to (1) make partner; (2) get tenure or (3) write their own treatise on the law of contracts. Anyone who practices law is too busy dealing with the paying clientele and therefore can only find time to work on WP articles on discrete legal topics like assumption of risk. --Coolcaesar (talk) 01:58, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That comment was from 2008, so there's probably no imminent risk of such a list being created. I don't sense that there's any desire from the editorial community to create articles in a bullet point outline format. Beyond that, I will note that Wikipedia does not require proof of expertise before editors may work on an article, and its purpose is to summarize knowledge within a community of editors. See WP:EXPERT:

Wikipedia has no formal structure with which to determine whether an editor is a subject-matter expert, and does not grant users privileges based on expertise; what matters in Wikipedia is what you do, not who you are. Previously published reliable sources, not Wikipedia editors, have authority for the content of this encyclopedia.

If there are issues with an article, editors may make changes consistent with what they can support through reliable sources. I would venture that there are many non-lawyer editors who, with sufficient time and interest, could significantly improve this article. Arllaw (talk) 17:14, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what you mean about "imminent risk". I'm talking about something that already happened. Most of Wikidea's bullet-point outlines were later compacted into little infoboxes to the right of the article such as the "Cases on consideration", "Cases on breach of contract", etc. But they're still in the article. Also look at the cases under the "Examples" lists.

A laundry list of cases is not how an experienced attorney summarizes a legal topic. The proper approach is always rule first, authority second. This is one of the fundamental skills developed in American law schools when preparing outlines of case holdings in assigned casebooks. One arranges the rules into a coherent summary of an area of law (as I did for product liability) and then for formal legal writing adds inline citations or footnotes to the precedents that articulated those rules. A list of random cases (without proper arrangement, connections, or transitions to form a continuous prose discussion) is missing the forest for the trees.

Your confidence that "there are many non-lawyer editors who, with sufficient time and interest" can improve this has not been borne out by actual experience. If such editors existed, they would have cleaned this up a long time ago. Over 15 years have gone by and not much improvement has occurred. Unfortunately, it took me so many years to improve product liability and insurance bad faith, topics in which I have extensive experience, that I will never find the time to improve this article. If I had that kind of broad interest in contrast law, I would be writing my own hornbook or treatise for publication. At the moment, I am more interested in improving WP articles on discrete civil procedure topics. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:44, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Major Revisions Required[edit]

This article requires extensive revision. 2601:401:503:62B0:A502:8692:2237:10F8 (talk) 19:55, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]