Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Archive 4

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6 → Archive 10

Wikilink work

Last week I took it upon myself to examine Wikilinks to Supreme Court and redirect many of them to Supreme Court of the United States. I redirected some to other countries' or states' high courts. I was unaware of this project at the time, and did the best I could to keep the existing text as-is. If you want to see and fix my work so far, look at Special:Contributions/Davidwr. Because there are hundreds left to search through, I added a disambiguation link to the top of Supreme court. Once it's no longer needed it can be removed. I also created Supremes (disambiguation) and the related Wiktionary entry, defining the slang term "The Supremes" as the members of the Supreme Court, as in "This week, The Supremes will take up the case of The Big Company v. The Little Guy". davidwr 09f9(talk) 23:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on it. There are an abnormally large number of entries about Justices of the Prince Edward Island Supreme Court, so I'm working through that too. JCO312 01:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

wikiproject template

You might want to put your wikiproject template on your project page, to make it easier for non-project members like me to find. Just a thought. — Swpb talk contribs 02:02, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

SCOTUS template

The SCOTUS template currently does not have a means to describe as FindLaw puts it:

WHITE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and BRENNAN, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, REHNQUIST, STEVENS, and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined. POWELL, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 709

the Federal Reporter does the same but leaves out the joining justices

This wouldn't be per curium because the opinion has a particular author and there is one concurrence in this 9-0 decision. Majority means "the greater part". We don't say, "The majority of states are in the United States of America." I tried typing in " |Opinion=White" and of course this did not work. I am not sure how to change a template.Legis Nuntius 23:34, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

It's a pretty easy fix, however my concern is that a new parameter named "Opinion" may become quickly overused as a substitute for a more proper parameter. Anyone else care to weigh in? --MZMcBride 00:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
The proper field would be Majority. Anytime there are 5 or more justices joining an opinion that would be the appropriate field. The other justices would be placed in the JoinMajority field. I hope that addresses the question/request.--08:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Image at Harold Hitz Burton

Image:Harold Burton.jpg, the only image of Harold Hitz Burton, has been tagged as lacking source info. Could someone follow up and verify that this is an official SCOTUS portrait and state that more clearly? (I unfortunately don't have as much time to spend on here as I used to.) Postdlf 03:05, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Found a website with a google search (first image result). Would someone let me know if this is adequate?--Chaser - T 02:51, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Watch out on article names!

As I have recently discovered, after numerous others have, sometimes the simplest name is NOT the best. EG. Stewart v. United States is the name of AT LEAST four different cases before the court: two from the 1800s, one from the 1900s and one from a few years ago. I suspect the standard use of parenthesis to indicate this is appropriate. 68.39.174.238 02:13, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I left a reply on that article's talk page. In brief, we create disambiguation pages as they become necessary, moving the original article to a more specific title immediately beforehand.--Chaser - T 04:04, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Adding oyez sources to the template

How does everyone feel about possibly adding links to the actual oral arguments, briefs, and docket when available on Oyez to the template? I think it would be very helpful and informative, but that is just my opinion. (I'll also posted this on the template page). Remember 17:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I guess there is no feelings on this so I will go ahead, be bold and add it. Remember 18:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, I've added this to the template. Check out Bush v. Gore for an example. Remember 03:06, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

possibly libeleous articles

i didn't quite know on where to inform about this, but i've found some fairly libeleous claims made towards the USA on Fatah-Hamas conflict, where the US is blamed for supporting "a coup" while supporting the only government that is approved by the Arab world, while there is no mention to the support given by other countries to the Hamas coup.

anyways, i'm not about to get involved in this article personally, although i figure this issue should be promoted on some USA relating group so that the article can be NPOV-ed. JaakobouChalk Talk 02:41, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

The article is well-referenced and one cannot libel a country. I have no idea whether the article is neutral. In any event, I don't understand your complaint. · jersyko talk 03:29, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Due to the difference between standard democracy and Arab democracy (totally different), Hamas, while it is in fact the elected party was not the ruling party, and in fact, they are the ones making a(n extremely violent) coup with the aid of Iranian (and perhaps Saudi also) funding. it being that this is being presented in a very POV fashion on the article (no mention of Iran/Muslim Brotherhood, and the "standardized" accusations at the US), i think US members with some level of interest in the subject should help NPOV the current situation on the article. JaakobouChalk Talk 04:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
I suggest Wikipedia:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board. This isn't really the goal of this particular wikiproject.--Chaser - T 04:24, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
thank you for the directions. JaakobouChalk Talk 04:30, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc.

I recently created the article NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc. and I was hoping that someone here would take a look at it at let me know if it meets the expectations of this WikiProject for US Supreme Court articles. Thanks for your help.Dekkanar 17:24, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

splitting the lists?

I was checking up on a comment I made about a proposal to split List of United States Supreme Court cases from the Rehnquist Court through the Roberts Court into just the list of Rehnquist cases and the list of Roberts cases, when I noticed that all of the SCOTUS case lists organized by CJ are pretty arbitrarily put together. For example, List of United States Supreme Court cases from the Hughes Court through the Burger Court spans 56 years and completely encompasses one of the most important periods of SCOTUS history, the Warren Court. I want to revive the suggestion made here to split the lists by individual CJ. It's just more logical for readers that way. Thoughts? Wl219 02:36, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, of course. A split will facilitate reading - and encourage completion since the lists will be less daunting. -- Y not? 03:11, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree they need to be split, though I'm not sure about implementation. Splitting by CJ has logical appeal, but the first four courts had 2, 0, 4, and 11 notable cases, respectively (or at least those we have articles about). Those would be pretty short lists. As a whole, list one is short enough and there are no obvious split points besides by CJ, so I suggest leaving it alone. The second list is way too long (71kb). One solution is to split off the lengthly Burger Court, although splitting off the Warren Court as well makes sense because of it's historical importance and the fact that we have an article about that court. The third list, at 61kb, is 10kb shorter than the second, but it's constantly expanding as we cover more of the most recent cases, so splitting that by CJ seems logical, too. So I propose the first list, then Hughes through Vinson, then Warren, Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts courts as stand-alone lists.--Chaser - T 03:43, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Chaser, I'm still not sold on your idea. To me, article length doesn't matter as much as topical organization, which would be by CJ. Yes, the first 3 CJ's will basically be stubs so I wouldn't oppose grouping them together under a renamed or redirected title "List of SCOTUS cases prior to the Marshall Court." I think it's safe to say that the consensus in the US legal community is that SCOTUS didn't really come into its own until Marshall became CJ and decided Marbury v. Madison. And beginning with Marshall, we have significantly more notable cases for each CJ (recentism? LOL) so if we split those, none would be stubs. Wl219 04:51, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Besides Warren and possibly Marshall, CJs have limited effect on the cases courts decide (Burger made significant changes in the administration of federal courts). That said, I've figured out a way to achieve my goal of holding onto large searchable lists (create a master list using noinclude tags in the daughter lists). So now I'm indifferent to the proposal and happy to go along with it. Sometime soon I'll be able to help split them. In case someone starts before me, don't forget to note in the first edit summary of new pages where the data comes from to preserve attribution history.--Chaser - T 13:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, I'm mostly finished. Lists are linked from Template:SCOTUScaselists, and that master list I referenced earlier is here. It should be ready to move into mainspace tomorrow evening.--Chaser - T 04:55, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Case whose page is a suspected copy-vio

The article at Harris v. McRae is troubling; I and at least a couple other admins strongly suspect it to be a copyright violation. But we can't prove it. It also doesn't read like a neutral coverage of the case (and given the source whose copyright we suspect is being violated, this is exactly what we'd expect). Can someone from the project tackle a major rewrite? GRBerry 19:29, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Sure. JCO312 19:46, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Template broken

Could someone take a look at the template on Harris v. McRae. I think something is wrong with it, or maybe I just can't figure out how to use it. It's not automatically creating the court membership when I put in the appropriate year, and it isn't creating wikilinks for the justices in the info box when I put in their last names. Thanks, JCO312 20:32, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The issue was the dash in between 1975 and 1981. It's a regular hyphen ( - ). Cheers. --MZMcBride 23:47, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I assume this poster meant {{SCOTUSCase}}. What's happened with it? It seems to have suddenly disappeared from every article. Daniel Case 16:55, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Category:United States Supreme Court cases by date

I think this and all of its subcategories should be deleted.

1. The sub-sub categories are divided by month, such as Category:United States Supreme Court cases, June 1950. This is completely useless, as this indicates no special or inherent relationship among the cases decided within that month, and will result in a ridiculous amount of very sparsely populated categories.

2. Even if only divided by year, inclusion of an article in these categories will encourage editors to remove them from Category:United States Supreme Court cases as "redundant" (why categorize it as both a "United States Supreme Court case" and a "United States Supreme Court case in 1950"?) This will make it difficult, if not impossible, to find a case article by browsing (how often do you remember the year, rather than a party name), and alphabetical browsing through the category is absolutely necessary to find an article given the difficulty of remembering case names and dealing with the variations of abbreviations.

3. We already have three separate list forms for organizing case articles chronologically: by Court (e.g., List of United States Supreme Court cases by the White Court), by term (e.g., 2006 term opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States), and by reporter volume (e.g., List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 197). We should expand these, not cripple the category system. Postdlf 21:36, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the monthly system makes no sense and endorse deletion. If I'm not mistaken, the court actually releases a torrent of decisions in June/summer, so that cat would have about half the year. The annual categories are similar to our categorization of new cases into Category:1980 in law and the like, though that doesn't inspire removing the cases from the master category. Anyway, one questionable method of categorization doesn't justify another. The term opinion lists are superior in their detailed analysis. Beyond that analysis of the term as a whole, it's not helpful to find other cases that happened to be from the same term. Such analysis by term lends itself to lists/tables and not categories. Weak delete on those.--Chaser - T 14:48, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
The author of the categories emptied the monthly ones and requested their deletion, which has been done. So now we just have the categories by year to contend with. Postdlf 16:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
CFD open here.--Chaser - T 18:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Good Article: Brown v. Board of Education

I have reviewed the article Brown v. Board of Education and found it to be a Good Article. You may wish to update you assessment accordingly. --Gavin Collins 12:30, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


New Article - United States of America v. Students Challenging Regulatory Procedures (SCRAP)

I have added a new article on the SCRAP Supreme Court case, and tried to have the article follow the example Good Articles. However, I have no experience formatting the article. Perhaps someone could assist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EdManchester (talk • contribs) 21:35, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

"avoid redirects"

I'm not sure what all this fuss is about on your style guide about rewriting all the links to SCOTUS. According to WP:PIPE, "It is not necessary to pipe links simply to avoid redirects. The number of links to a redirect page can be a useful gauge of when it would be helpful to spin off a subtopic of an article into its own page." - i.e. there is no reason to write [[Supreme Court of the United States|United States Supreme Court]] when [[United States Supreme Court]] would do. Calliopejen1 19:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

If you're already editing an article, it doesn't hurt to pipe the link. However, no one is advocating or should make an edit just to fix a link per WP:R. Also, this particular link can't act as a gauge because the page can't and shouldn't be split into a subsection. Cheers. --MZMcBride 19:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I think you're both making good points. There's an entire subsection that says "change every instance" to piped links, and I've always read it the way Calliopejen1 is reading it. I don't even think piping the links during initial editing is particularly important and would be happy to just remove that subsection. I've been planning to do so in an overhaul of our guide on the project page, but haven't gotten to that yet.--chaser - t 20:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
The more I think about it, that section needs clarification or removal. Also, I've never liked the layout of the project page (obviously no offense intended to those who built it). It's incredibly text-heavy and there's little to no media or images. I realize that it doesn't an article, but frankly, I doubt more than ten people have ever read the entire thing because it's simply too drab. I'd be happy to help clean it up. --MZMcBride 23:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Links to volume lists

Something I noticed recently is the addition of see also links to volume lists, like this. From what I can tell, Cdogsimmons has been adding these links since the beginning of the summer (and has added quite a few). To be frank, I don't think this is a good idea because of the same reasoning above: the pages linked don't contain any information that's relevant to the particular cases except for other cases from the same time period. Almost without exception, that's not relevant. The only case I can think where it is relevant is when the court considers several related cases, such as the insular cases listed in volume 182. Otherwise, contemporaneity, although a great way to organize all these cases we have, isn't a defining characteristic that justifies a see also section with links like these.

I feel bad bringing this up, as Cdogsimmons has done a lot of fantastic work on individual case articles and the volume lists as well. I don't mean to discourage that work. I think, out of respect for a solid contributor to the project, we should carefully consider the reasons for keeping and removing the see also links before going to the work of undoing so much of Cdogsimmons' work this summer. A strong consensus to remove before starting that process is ideal.--chaser - t 22:27, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Wow. I see some of your points. It's true that these links really are mostly for categorization by timeframe and there is already a category for law by year. I've just been putting them in, in part because I've found it much more convenient to negotiate and improve Supreme Court cases with direct links to the master list, because I can easily find court cases by citation. Improving the master list is one of my pet projects and I think it is pretty useful but it works better if it links both ways.
I don't know if I 100% agree that “contemporaneity” isn't a defining factor of these decisions though. It's amazing the difference the makeup of the court can make on its decisions and I think it's interesting to see the changing of the court's attitude over time. There are individual lists by Chief Justice that serve this purpose, but the court's opinions can shift with the changing of associate justices as well.
However, I think the stronger point is that these cases are organized by citation for a reason (to allow quick reference) and the major reason for having lists by volume is to know which cases you’re talking about. Just look at United States v. Louisiana where you have multiple cases of the same name in the same year. Having the reference to the volume list just makes this categorization much easier.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 22:29, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I'm working so slowly these days; I'm still thinking about this and will get back to it soon.--chaser - t 14:39, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
While I see your point, Chaser, and I do not personally think lists by volume would be very helpful to the average reader, it could be helpful to a law buff. Even if it is not very helpful, I don't see any real reason to remove it. If it is not helpful, the user will click on it, see a list of case names (mostly red) and not know what the hell it means, then they will click the Back button.
I do agree that lists by year and lists by Chief Justice are much more useful, but I don't see any harm in leaving the lists by volume there and, as such, see no reason to spend time and effort to remove a fellow contributors work. No harm, no foul. The effort is appreciated, Cdogsimmons. Skyler1534 (talk) 17:36, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, I'm more persuaded if not completely convinced, so I'll treat Skyler's comment as a tie-breaker. Thanks for both of your thoughtful responses.--chaser - t 15:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

notability?

I am intererested in working on SCOTUS cased. I am worried, however, that a case that I will work on will be nominated for an AFD. What is the standard of notability for SCOUTUS cases. Are all SCOTUS cases notable? --Brewcrewer 14:34, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Assuming they aren't inherently notable, I would assess it by our usual standard of significant coverage in independent reliable sources. That said, I've never worried about it. To my knowledge, no article about a Supreme Court case has ever been deleted for lack of notability.--chaser - t 03:18, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
While I am not sure of the Wikipedia standard for notability, every single opinion issued by the Court is, indeed, notable. The Court receives upwards of 7,000 requests yearly and only around 150 are actually granted cert per term. Only 80-90 receive actual written opinions. Every single sentence of every single opinion is examined by lawyers and judges for any hint of precedent under the doctrine of stare decisis and these are the highest rulings of the highest court in the U.S.A.
Simply put: Yes, every case is notable and every case matters. And if anyone attempts to delete a case article, I suggest directing them to my argument above. Skyler1534 19:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:PR, The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power

United States Supreme Court cases involving the First Amendment

Anybody want to help create and expand articles on United States Supreme Court cases involving the First Amendment? --Richard 00:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Possible Main page hook needs licking up

Tennard v. Dretke (2004) might pop up in DYK.Anybody can dig up the case citations and add an Infobox? Circeus 05:30, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I did the infobox, but not case citations (I no longer have access to Lexis). I think the US reporter volume and page number is enough, though.--chaser - t 20:09, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, it's a great improement. Circeus 15:34, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
You might want to keep an eye on Mattisse (talk · contribs)'s new pages in general. They include quite a few cases that could use checking (mainly stuff having to do with mental issues). Circeus 23:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
(Months later) I've added a few more citations. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect tag on article

Why is this article tagged with the project banner? BNSF Railway Just a mistake? --Tinned Elk 03:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I would think so. I've removed it and moved the miscellaneous state banners to a template that just lists the projects. Those had gotten a bit ridiculous.--chaser - t 04:24, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
I kept looking for the litigation! Ha!--Tinned Elk 01:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Lawrence v. Texas

If the project is going to cite Lawrence v. Texas as an example of a good, or even great, article, then I think that the problems in the article need to be addressed. People on the talk page there have pointed out that several sections have no external citations. Numerous templates have been added making the article look bad. Having read the article I have to agree that at least some of the statements are not obviously supported and should be. Is anyone else interested in taking this on? This is really not my area!--Tinned Elk 03:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Template:SCOTUS-Infobox

The following message was left on my Talk Page by User:MZMcBride...

You moved this template without discussion with the relevant WikiProject (WP:SCOTUS) and without any talk page discussion. While I'm a strong proponent of WP:BOLD, what you did was plainly rude. The name SCOTUSCase has been around longer than you have, and frankly, the new title is horrible. Please revert your move of the template and the template talk page; if you'd like to discuss a possible move of the template, you can do so on the template's talk page or on WikiProject SCOTUS's talk page. --MZMcBride 02:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
My response...
OK, mea culpa, I plead guilty to having been bold and having acted unilaterally without discussion and even perhaps to having been rude. That said, it seemed like the right thing to do since I had created a template for creating an article on a SCOTUS case (Template:SCOTUS-Case) which used a template to create the infobox (Template:SCOTUS-Infobox née Template:SCOTUSCase). It just seemed obvious to me that a template which created an infobox should say so in its name and that a template which created an article about a case should say that in its name.
Besides, I admit that I was operating under the rule that it is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.
MZMcBride clearly disagrees with what I have done. I notice that User:Chaser and User:Tinned Elk have documented the new names without much squawking so I gather this has not been quite as controversial as MZMcBride makes it out to be. Nonetheless, I invite your comment on the changes that I made.
--Richard 07:53, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I think the reason MZM is upset is because the last time we changed the name (see the template's talk archive for that straw-poll) he went through many articles and switched it over so that there would be no template redirect [1]. I'm not familiar with the reasoning behind doing that (performance issues, Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance notwithstanding?). They redirect fine. The obvious consideration is which title is easier to remember, but I don't see any particular advantage either way in that regard. MZM, is there some other reason you don't want to move the template?--chaser - t 08:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I was more upset that there wasn't any notice about the move or any prior discussion. Regarding performance issues, a lot of my work wasn't updating the template not to redirect, it was updating articles to use a template at all (see [2]). As I said above, I have no problem with boldness (or template redirects for that matter), but the new title is horrible. The convention for infoboxes is Template:Infobox <noun> (see Template:Infobox Country, Template:Infobox Book, Template:Infobox Film, etc.). So instead of talking about the move, the template is probably going to be moved again.
This seemed to be a change for the sake of a change; it really didn't add any conformity or any other benefits, it just introduced a new template redirect and a bad template title. --MZMcBride 19:12, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
"Template:Infobox SCOTUS case" then? We can fix double redirects once we decide whether and where to move it.--chaser - t 19:19, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Works for me. --MZMcBride 21:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Gee, Chaser, you couldn't wait to see if it worked for me as well before moving the template? As it turns out, I'm fine with the new name but how is moving it without waiting for my input that much more considerate than my original bold move? I'm not upset, I just wanted to point out the hypocrisy of this boldness being OK while my boldness wasn't.
As for MZMcBride, if you had suggested moving the template to Template:Infobox SCOTUS Case in your original message, I would have just acceded to your request in a flash. I agree that's a better name and, if it follows a standard naming convention, so much the better. However, I did not react well to your demand that I move things back because you thought the new name was terrible. Obviously, I thought the old name was worse or I wouldn't have moved it in the first place.
--Richard 06:41, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I didn't take issue with your move, Richard, but your point is well taken. Since I said "once we decide", I should have waited for your input. Sorry.--chaser - t 08:00, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

(deindenting) No problem, Chaser. I just wanted to point out the irony. In general, I think boldness is good and I like the final result so no harm, no foul. Now, let's get on with building an encyclopedia. There's much work to be done on those SCOTUS cases. --Richard 08:21, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

While trying to avoid the dead horse, I asked you to move the template back because I saw the action as inappropriate and I didn't want to edit war. I have the "move" tab and many others, and I could have easily rolled-back every thing you did, and even protected the template afterward; I felt the most appropriate way to deal with the situation was the revert the sudden move and then discuss a new name (which is exactly what I said in my original post). It's neither here nor there now; hopefully, I'll have some more time for WP:SCOTUS in the coming weeks. Tighter integration with Wikisource would be fantastic.... Cheers. --MZMcBride 20:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
I like the WP:BRD model. Not everything has to be discussed first as long as you are willing to be reverted and everyone is willing to discuss the proposed change. I hated the old name, you hated my new name, a little discussion got us to a better name. There's also a difference between saying "your article title is terrible" vs. "I don't like your article title because x, y and z". One is just a slam without rationale, the other is an invitation to discussion. --Richard 21:05, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
P.S. It would have been inappropriate for you to protect the template. You do realize that, don't you? --Richard 21:06, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Of course, which is why I didn't protect it. --MZMcBride 05:40, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello all. I wanted to weigh in on this discussion since I have been around (though not very active for a while) since the beginning of this project and I know this because I was the one who started it over 3 years ago.

Richard: While I understand what you are saying about it being easier to change and then discuss rather than the reverse, this project was started with the intention of creating uniformity among the case articles. Changing things that affect the project as a whole (as opposed to changing a single article) should be discussed prior to action being taken as it is more consistent with uniformity; the stated goal of the project. I do; however, appreciate your candor and your assistance with the project.
MZMcBride: I understand that with the length of time that you have been working on the project you are rightfully territorial, but keep in mind that with every comment made regarding this project, we do not want to scare off any potential assistance. It is a large project, we have relatively few helpers and you did jump on Richard a bit hard. Skyler1534 (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I did pounce a little bit, and for that I apologize. Skyler: Good to see you active again. Are you back? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I can't guarantee my activity level, but yes, I am back for now. I am always happy to see that this project is still alive, well and in capable hands. I did find something a little troubling, though, and that is that we now have a suggested outline and an alternate outline on the project page and numerous articles don't follow either. The stated purpose of this project is uniformity. I absolutely love the infoboxes. They are a great touch. But now I think it is time that we get the main contents in line as well.
I expect to be proposing, within the next week or so, a set outline that will be similar to that of the Legal Information Institute of Cornell. I will propose my outline and then all active members of this project will vote between mine and the two outlines on the project page. We will have one set outline and then I expect to spend a lot of time getting current case articles into order.
In the meantime, I am attempting to get a read on which members are still actively involved in this project so I know what we have to work with. I will also be keeping an eye out for someone to nominate to oversee the project in my absense. If you have an opinion, let me know. Skyler1534 (talk) 02:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Case naming conventions?

Are there any conventions for naming SCOTUS cases? Specifically, I am wondering about the name at Talk:The Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States and whether the lead article "The" should be omitted. Comments welcome there. Snocrates 23:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Technically speaking, the name of the case was Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints et al. v. United States. Court cases rarely retain the word "the" in the beginning unless it is truly necessary. However, and more importantly, it is also unorthodox to name an article after a "secondary case".
This case was decided along with two other cases, the first-listed being Mormon Church v. United States. If future decisions were to reference the opinion written, they would refer to it as Mormon Church v. U.S., not Latter-Day Saints v. U.S.. When writing an article regarding a case it is often best to use the case names and citations as they would be used in legal texts. This reduces confusion to the lay reader. As such, the title of the article should be Mormon Church v. United States with Latter-Day Saints v. United States redirecting to the article rather than the reverse as it is now. Skyler1534 (talk) 01:07, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Two articles on one SCOTUS decision?

See here. Would people please chime in so these articles can be merged? Thanks.Ferrylodge (talk) 01:49, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Legal Disclaimers

I've noticed several instances in which lawyerly wikipedians have added disclaimers to legal ariticles specifying that the article does not represent legal advice. I'm sure wikipedia must have a general policy about non-reliance on its articles, but I wonder if each legally oriented page should have something specificly denoting that it is not legal advice. Perhaps something in the form of a template? Let me know what you think.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 17:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

It's discouraged by Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles. If I remember correctly, we used to have such a disclaimer for some legal articles, but it got deleted for the reasons in the linked guideline.--chaser - t 17:59, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Legal disclaimer. It's linked from the Wikipedia:General disclaimer, a link that appears at the bottom of every page. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

John Roberts --> John G. Roberts

Can't say I agreed with this title move, but whatev. There are still hundreds of links pointing to the now-disambiguation page rather than the Chief Justice's bio. I've fixed a few, still a long way to go if anyone has the time... Postdlf (talk) 16:19, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

District of Columbia v. Heller

Anybody willing to convert this to {{infobox SCOTUS case}}? I'm really not sure where to begin with. Circeus (talk) 17:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I've started reorganizing the article generally to conform to SCOTUS case article format; the article is now about a SCOTUS case, rather than about the DC Circuit decision. I'm concerned that those changes might not stick considering some of the reversions I've seen recently, so it would be good to have a greater presence of SCOTUS project members. Postdlf (talk) 23:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm just wondering..

Maybe there could be a category like "Notable Unanimous U.S. Supreme Court cases"?


--Heero Kirashami (talk) 05:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

For a number of reasons, I don't see that being useful. What were your thoughts? Postdlf (talk) 20:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

New York v. Connecticut

Does anyone know why this article would be showing up in Category:Flagged U.S. Supreme Court articles? I can't figure out how or why. Postdlf (talk) 20:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The blank ArgueDate and ArgueYear parameters were the issue. I've removed them. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:55, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

"Cable Indecency Decision"

Please help me kill this abomination. Where is the best place to redirect it? Postdlf (talk) 06:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of killing the page entirely. Any objections? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:55, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
None, I was just fretting over how best to kill it, as I was feeling kind of Potter Stewart about why it needs to die. I just can't articulate it properly. Postdlf (talk) 14:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Supreme Court cases and sourcing issues

There's a debate taking place on WP:ORN (see section "Clarifying Summarizing vs. Original Research" and start reading where it says "I've seen some situations recently") about the manner in which statements about decisions of the Supreme Court should (or shouldn't) be sourced. The other editor and I had hoped to attract some outside perspectives on this issue (as an alternative to going back and forth on the article talk pages or simply descending into an edit war), but so far no one other than the two of us has chimed in.

The specific articles involved in this altercation so far are Plyler v. Doe, U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, and also the "anchor baby" article (which, not surprisingly, cites some Supreme Court cases).

I think both I and the other editor involved in this disagreement would be grateful for any additional light that others might be able to shed on this whole mess — and I think this discussion may also help people understand how (in general) to present Supreme Court decisions in Wikipedia. Richwales (talk) 04:31, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

New article to be reworked

Georgia, F. & A. R. Co. v. Blish Milling Co. is a relatively new article which seems to be mostly a text dump. I think we can rehabilitate it though. --Eastlaw (talk) 02:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Template breaks

I just came across the template {{SCOTUSterm2006-present}} in the article 2007 term opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States. The content of the template seems to break at 1/3. Is it supposed to do this? AecisBrievenbus 16:55, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

It only seems to be "broken" on the template page, not in the actual article. This is almost a result of it not having the parameters filled in on the template page. That is, nothing to worry about. : - ) Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:49, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
The template shows
Notable cases from the Roberts Court | Complete
table of 2007 opinions | 2007 term per curiam
opinions
Opinions by justice: Chief Justice Roberts |
Associate Justices Stevens | Scalia
Kennedy | Souter | Thomas | Ginsburg | Breyer |
Alito
on one third of the width of the template. That sure is broken to me. I think I know where it comes from though. The template was broken here as well. This was edited by Malyctenar (talk · contribs), who also removed the parameter cells. Because of this, the edit was reverted, but the correct code doesn't appear to have been restored. AecisBrievenbus 21:50, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Work with Law WikiProject

I think this template should allow for WP:WikiProject Law to be vested inside it. Every single article here would probably fall under the larger one. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

"This template"? Color me confused. : - ) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Reporter Explosion

I have done relatively extensive work on the articles regarding the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, and Article One of the U.S. Constitution. In doing my work, I have attempted to add extensive referencing and additional explication of the way the Court has interpreted these texts through its case-by-case jurisprudence. I try to link to these cases in the footnotes, and I've noticed something with the articles about Supreme Court cases: our infoboxes are off the charts in terms of the number of reporters that are listed. Casey and Lopez, for example, cite to 7 different reporters each; Nixon v. U.S. and U.S. Term Limits have an impressive 8 reporters listed. I consider myself a fairly "with-it" person when it comes to this topic, and I have no idea what the "Daily Journal DAR" even is. I don't know a single person that gets the "Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S" or the "Cal. Daily Op. Service" or "A.F.T.R. (P-H)." No doubt someone does; perhaps even someone contributing to this project. But a significant problem the legal community has (one that has been well-document by Brian Garner) is its fetish for citations. There is reason to believe we keep them around because it makes legal writing arcane and mysterious to non-lawyers. You may or may not agree with Mr. Garner, but his materials are extremely popular right now in legal writing departments right now, and I am not familiar with a great deal of anti-Garner scholarship, at least on this matter. As a result, if we're going to break with the (in my view, salutary) trend of reducing the bizarre over-use of citations, we should at least do so in a deliberate and considered matter.

I say this because our infoboxes are far from that. It seems relatively apparent to me that many of them were prepared by a law student with a free account that happened to prefer Lexis (although I admit I may be wrong on this); they all contain the citation to the Lexis database serial number for cases, along with those 3rd-party services that Lexis has some sort of relationship with such that a citation in that publication's format will bring up the case on Lexis. This haphazard approach is suboptimal and only compounds the problem. Casting a broader net raises its own problems; what sorts of sources are sufficient to be listed in our infoboxes? Should we track down the Westlaw citations too, and any additional services that Westlaw has a contract with? How about rising computer systems, like Loislaw?

I propose that we work out a uniform approach to this, both in terms of being unbiased and not favoring Lexis over Westlaw, but also in terms of cleaning up the articles to make them more approachable, instead of having a component that's a tangle of numbers that only shout out "confusing! not meant for non-lawyers! do not question my authority!" My standard would be:

1. United States Reports (obviously)

2. Supreme Court Reporter

3. United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition

It is common practice in the legal community to cite to these 3 sources; many jurisdictions (including my own) require parallel cites to all 3. They have achieved a degree of uniformity in the community, in terms of when they are invoked, that the "Daily Journal DAR" never will. I am willing to concede at the outset that there is a legitimate argument to be made in favor of, and so I will add it to the list now:

4. United States Law Week

Other than these 4, however, we don't need the rest of it. MrArticleOne (talk) 06:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. This has actually come up before, here. Perhaps read that discussion and then post your thoughts? Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
It looks to me like this was largely written off because the proponent was obnoxious in trying to change the articles before reaching consensus, and because it was an anonymous poster. I am not sure that posting to a discussion from a year ago will get noticed by anybody. I think it's worthwhile to have that discussion again because my (very quick) review of it suggests to me that the established members of this Wikiproject didn't care to address the merits of the argument due to their distrust of the proponent. MrArticleOne (talk) 16:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Plurality v Majority

Several pages including National League of Cities v. Usery wrongly call the plurality opinion a "majority opinion." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.58.209.22 (talk) 20:29, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, this seems to indicate that it is in fact a standard majority opinion, with a final outcome of 5 - 4. It seems Blackmun was missing from the list of those who joined the majority opinion, so I've added him and made a few other minor changes. For future reference, if a case does have a plurality decision, simply replace |Majority= with |Plurality=. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
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