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https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/united-kingdom contains the warning:

Note that the UK does not have a common legal system across its jurisdictions - consider using [scotland] or [england-and-wales] or [northern-ireland].

Yet many posts with this tag still neglect this distinction, and answerers must ask the questioner or express their confusion about the intended jurisdiction.

Wouldn't removing it teach posters and spur them to choose jurisdictions? From Tom Bolam, Senior Associate (as of 1-29-2018), Fladgate (Solicitors' firm):

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to give it its full name) has three separate and distinct legal systems: (i) Scotland; (ii) England and Wales; and (iii) Northern Ireland.

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The most popular tag isunited-states despite the fact that each of the states is a separate jurisdiction; this is presumably because there is a corpus of American law, based on the Constitution and overriding the states. Though there is no equivalent of 'federal law' in the UK, there is United Kingdom law, based on the unwritten Constitution and treaty-related law such as the Human Rights Act, and elucidated by the Supreme Court (or very occasionally the Privy Council).

I agree that often querents use the united-kingdom tag when they should use one of the three (not four) others, but that is not a reason to delete a tag that has very specific uses.

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  • "Though there is no equivalent of 'federal law'": yes there is. The UK Parliament retains the power to legislate for the whole of the UK, especially for (but not limited to) powers not devolved to the regional assemblies.
    – Steve Melnikoff
    Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 13:07
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I agree that this would be a good idea.

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