Talk:District attorney

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[edit] Intent to de-disambig

District attorney should not be a disambig - the two choices it purports to disambig between are virtually the same officials at different levels of government (the only difference being that the state version is usually the top officer, and the federal version is a subordinate, the equivelant of an Assistant District Attorney in most states). If no one raises a serious objection within the next few days, I intend to make it an actual article on the office, and all the current disambig links will be fine pointing to that article. Cheers! -- BD2412 ^talk 13:56, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I concur. I also think that County attorney, which currently is a nearly content-free stub, should redirect to District attorney. Redirects from State's attorney, Commonwealth attorney, and any other commonly-used titles might also be valuable. (OTOH, in Virginia at least, a county attorney is not a prosecutor; it is more like the general counsel to a county government, with prosecutions being done by the elected Commonwealth's Attorney, so maybe we need a disambig page for County Attorney.) United States Attorney should not be a redirect, because the office does have a history and role of its own that is worth mentioning. A U.S. Attorney is not merely the equivalent of an Assistant D.A.; it is a Presidential appointment, after all, and the local U.S. Attorneys' offices have a fair amount of autonomy, although they are not entirely independent. --Russ Blau (talk) 15:13, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

You are both wrong.

Why should a title used in only some jurisdictions in the United States - and not used at all in many American jurisdictions and not used at all outside of the United States - be used as an inaccurate catch-all for all prosecutors, most of whom have different titles and have never in their lives been called a "District Attorney" by anyone?

If you do that you might as well redirect "prime minister" and "king" and "governor" to "president". It makes about as much sense. Or redirect "sheriff" and "FBI" to "police". Or redirect "Kawasaki" and "motorcycle" to "Harley-Davidson" if you are going to start using terms that apply to a distinct minority to use for all types of related matters.