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For anyone who has been living without electricity or access to print media for the last five years, Wikipedia is a communally edited encyclopedia of just about everything from the profound to the ridiculously mundane. Wikipedia is not Britannica in that it's content is subject to change by just about anyone. The theory is based on the concept of the wisdom of the herd. By letting everyone comment, the good information will push out the bad (a least over time). The question is whether Wikipedia is authoritative enough to constitute formal evidence in a court proceeding or for purposes of judicial notice.

Much has been written on this question in legal circles. See, e.g., this article. In the context of this case, the Court was apparently asked to refer to Wikipedia for information concerning the process of refining gasoline. In other words, BP pointed to Wikipedia to support its assertion of pure facts. In footnote 10, the Court took issue with this. Although it acknowledged controversy over the veracity of Wikipedia, the Court concluded that "Based on the ability of any user to alter Wikipedia, the court is skeptical of it as a consistently reliable source for information. At this time, therefore, the court does not accept Wikipedia for purposes of judicial notice."

Fair enough.

Placing my Adjunct Professor hat on my head, I want to change the facts a bit. My reason for this is that I think Wikipedia may have a valuable and specific role to play in classification cases. In these cases, a question to be decided is the common and commercial meaning of tariff terms. Note that the common and commercial meanings are presumptively (but rebuttably) the same. So if Wikipedia defines some term, and that definition has presumably been vetted by the Wikipedia masses, does that constitute evidence of common meaning? It strikes me that it might.

Harking back to an earlier case of mine, is the fact that Wikipedia says that pitch "can be made from petroleum products or plants." Something I should have cited in my briefs on the issue? Does your answer change if you know that I might have been the person that inserted that sentence into the definition (which I was not)? It's a tougher question than the one the Court faced in BP, and one that I think remains to be resolved.

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