Talk:2005 term per curiam opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States

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Comments: Finally, though I don't think this view will attract much support, I respectfully question doing these per curiam pages. Isn't a per curiam opinion nn by definition? I guess it is the Supreme Court.
 * the prior intro paragraph has better clarity than the current one (difference here), though the entire article could benefit from an RfC to make sure its readable for the non-lawyer. I had real trouble getting through this. In terms of your concern about explaining it, I'm not sure what you mean, so I'll address both possibilities. In explaining why all these cases don't have their own articles, I'd just rephrase what you said in the talk page: These are ones for which writing a full article would be unnecessary, because the opinions are relatively short and do not establish new law. As to the separation into two date ranges, I'd get rid of it. Since their per curiam opinions, I don't think it matters whether it was O'Connor or Alito ruling. Still, I'd like to hear more people's opinions on that.
 * the court membership section is initially confusing with the O'Connor and Alito's paranthetical date references in different places, though the seniority ranking obviously makes sense. Don't see a better way.
 * I switched lower court decisions to pluperfect tense to make it more clear. It confused me, and I'm into this stuff. Frankly, I'm not sure I didn't make it worse.
 * I reversed the order of secondary opinions in Lance v. Dennis b/c I think it reads better to put the dissent first (even if it's second in Lexis/Westlaw). The concurrence responds to the dissent.

BTW, this is a fantastic job with formatting the page. It's FA-level formatting, IMHO. --Chaser (T) 19:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't call per curiam opinions non-notable; these are still substantive opinions which are cited to as precedent, in contrast to, say, a per curiam decision denying cert. (which are not designated as opinions, are unexplained and rarely provoke dissent, and number in the thousands per term). They are simply less substantial on average, which is why I thought the bulk treatment was called for here (thanks for the formatting compliments, btw)&mdash;a topic that cannot stand alone may still be discussed as part of another, and as a whole, these cases are worth documenting.  It seems like the Roberts court is using the per curiam device properly on the whole, but it's also worth pointing out that per curiams may sometimes be divisive and involve less developed law than Rehnquist tried to assert&mdash;see Per curiam opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, 2004 term, which includes some 5-4 decisions (!), and at least one that should probably get its own article (the case on the Vienna Convention right to seek consular advice) in addition to being listed for the term.  Some prior terms also include per curiam cases that had held full argument...so I'm still at a bit of a loss as to how to properly conceptualize all of these together.
 * Re: the date division, the decisions are "from the Court," but the composition of the Court still matters, because the justices still had to participate in the decision. Postdlf 19:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Re notability, I'm now convinced. I agree that per curiam opinions that provoke significant dissent should have their own pages. I still think the date division doesn't make sense. Putting each group of cases in a second section chops up the article, indicating a division that is barely significant. Also, we'll usually not go 12 years w/ the same court, so putting them into separate sections based on changed membership on 1/3 or so of the per curiam pages will get confusing. It looks inconsistent, and one thing the project strives for is consistency amongst the pages. Not many people seem to be editing, so I tried something, and feel free to revert if you don't like it. --Chaser (T) 20:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not committed to the date division, so that's fine; the annotated membership at the top is evident anyway. I moved all the cases up one header because I think I like to see the lines across at the top of each section (and "case opinions" seemed unnecessary).  Postdlf 20:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see, now the sectioning matches the other one. Cool. --Chaser (T) 21:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)