Talk:Bank Markazi v. Peterson

Citations to the slip opinion
At the moment, this article uses Template:Rp to cite pages in the Court's slip opinion. The pages listed in this article's citations are to the page numbers of the PDF document, rather than the pagination in the slip opinion. Unless I hear objections from other editors, I am going to go ahead and change the citations to direct readers to the pagination in the slip opinion. This will also allow us to follow Bluebook conventions when citing to the convention (as recommended by MOS:LAW), and it will allow us to cite to the correct page in the dissenting opinion (where the pagination restarts at page 1). Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 02:57, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The reason for using the PDF page numbers is to differentiate the syllabus, majority opinion, and dissent (each section begins with 1). Could you wait a few days? I have until Wed. 5/4 to expand this article enough for DYK. Changing the citations would completely confuse me. The reason for using Template:Rp is that 1) I am not familiar with using short citations and 2) I don't know the proper Bluebook conventions for all the other types of citations. Since there are so many citations, I have decided to use the Citation Style 1 templates (the cite web, cite news, etc. templates above the box for editing as well as Template:Cite case). MOS:LAW says "it is recommended that editors use the referencing style for the jurisdiction that heard that case or for which that legal subject applies." Note the word "recommended" not "required". Per MOS:CITEVAR (emphasis mine):

"Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change. As with spelling differences, it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved. If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. If you are the first contributor to add citations to an article, you may choose whichever style you think best for the article."


 * I created the page and have been the main contributor (see page history). The current citation style is sufficient for MOS purposes. If you'd like to change all citations to Bluebook style, please wait until I am finished adding content to the article (I am trying to get it to GA status &, as mentioned, have until Wednesday to add about 6k of prose so that it can be nominated for DYK). AHeneen (talk) 00:15, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That's totally fine with me; I won't make any changes until the content is settled, and I won't make any changes to the citation format unless there is a clear consensus to do so. In fact, we don't need to use Bluebook-style citations at all. I simply wanted to make sure that the pages cited in this article's footnotes match the pagination in the slip opinion, which will be different from the pagination in the United States Reports (cited as 578 U.S. ___) or the Supreme Court Reporter (cited as ___ S.Ct. ___). For that reason, I still think it is important to at least differentiate between citations to the majority and citations to the dissent in your citations so that readers won't be confused by the change in pagination that occurs at the start of the dissenting opinion. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 01:01, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok. This is actually a departure from my usual practice, which is to use the page numbers on the content rather than the PDF page. Of course, such a practice wouldn't work here because of the different page numbers between syllabus, majority opinion, & dissenting opinion. When writing the majority opinion section and while writing the dissent section (currently working on that), I have added the page of the opinion as hidden text, eg. . That will make it easier to adjust the citation page numbers. I think I used the actual (not PDF) page numbers in the Background section. For right now, I just want to add enough content to be able to nominate for DYK. After that, I'll fix the page numbers. AHeneen (talk) 01:41, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That all sounds good to me. Thanks again for your contributions to SCOTUS articles; we definitely need more editors in this area. Please let me know if I can be of help in any way. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 01:44, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Page numbers have been fixed. I divided the slip op reference into two separate references (majority opinion and dissenting opinion) and changed the page number used to the page number of the respective opinion. A couple inline citations to the syllabus (which justices joined which opinion) have been replaced with references to the SCOTUS docket. AHeneen (talk) 01:18, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

A few brief editorial suggestions
Thank you for your continued efforts to improve and expand this article! I know that you anticipate nominating this for GA status, so I'd like to offer a few brief editorial suggestions: Let me know if any of the above comments are unclear. Thanks again for your hard work! Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 18:59, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * In some locations, you refer to "22 U.S.C. §8772" as "§8772," and in others, you call it "section 8772." I don't know if there are any WP:MOS guidelines for statutes, but the Bluebook says that you should call statutes "section 1234" (with a lowercase "s") in the text of a sentence and "§ 8772" (with a space between the section symbol and the number) in citations. I don't think it really matters what you choose, as long as it is consistent throughout the article.
 * In some locations, you use "U.S." (with periods) to refer to the United States, and in some locations, you use "US" (periods). Again, I think you should be consistent.
 * If you ultimately format case citations according to Bluebook conventions, make sure the citations after block quotations are formatted correctly. The proper full citation to the slip opinion (in Bluebook style) is: Bank Markazi v. Peterson, No. 14-770, 578 U.S. ___, slip op. at [inset page number or page range] (2016).
 * If you are finished adding content, you should change the page citations for the slip opinion from the pagination of the PDF to the pagination of the slip opinion.


 * Thanks for the feedback and for the DYK review. I should find time to clean up the article sometime in the next few days. I think I was using "Section 8772" as a proper noun (thus capitalized), then switched to using "§8772" except when it was at the beginning of a sentence. The slip opinion uses "§8772" throughout. Anyways, of course, the terms should be consistent throughout the article. Additionally, I think that the lead should be trimmed down a bit. AHeneen (talk) 13:45, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I decided on using the symbol rather than lowercase "section" mainly because it is annoying to see the lowercase 's' as part of a proper noun (regardless of what the Bluebook prescribes). However, the Bluebook (see ) and most major style guides (eg., ) provide that symbols should never start a sentence. So there is now one subheading called "Section 8772" and a handful of sentences that begin "Section 8772", but everywhere else in the article "§ 8772" (with a non-breaking space) is used. AHeneen (talk) 22:10, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

My vague tag
The wording
 * ...the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather its European intermediary...

means that
 * the account, rather than being an asset of the bank, was itself some kind of European intermediary.

As that is cryptic, it seems likely that the editor intended to say that the account was indeed an asset, but also an account
 * belonging to whomever was the Euro intermediary of the bank in question

rather than to the bank. Someone with an interest in the topic rather than the wording will be a better editor than i, to check whether my guess is right, so i have tagged it as "Vague" rather than making it read
 * ...the account was an asset not of the bank, but rather of its European intermediary...

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jerzy (talk • contribs) 02:33, 15 May 2016‎


 * The sentence read "Bank Markazi raised several defenses against the execution against the account, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act." (italics appear in article). The word "of" is the critical word for the case, as the following sentence explains (emphasis added):

"In 2010, the plaintiffs initiated their lawsuit against Bank Markazi, Clearstream, Banca UBAE, and Citibank, jointly, seeking to execute against the Citibank account their judgements for damages against Iran, based on §201(a) of the TRIA, which provides that when "a person has obtained a judgement against a terrorist party ... the blocked assets of that terrorist party (including the blocked assets of any agency or instrumentality of that terrorist party) shall be subject to execution or attachment.""


 * In my opinion, it is important to keep the phrase "asset of" intact because it mirrors the applicable law. The sentence in question can be fixed easily by adding "an asset of" in offset clause: "the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary". AHeneen (talk) 03:12, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you both for remedying my unsig & quick response. I will study this in next 24, as it sounds even more complex than i had guessed! --Jerzy•t 05:35, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The situation being described is complex, and the complexity is reflected by the complexity of all three versions we've discussed! I'll have to study how my solution and your new one differ, but it's likely you've met all my concerns & i'll say nothing further as a result. Many tnx. --Jerzy•t 06:23, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Sources for improving article
This is mainly a note to myself to collect sources that can be used to improve this article.

Legal community coverage of the decision:
 * 
 * 
 * SCOTUSblog opinion analysis

Vaguely-related cases:
 * Islamic Republic of Iran v. McKesson Corporation - Issue: (1) Whether the Treaty of Amity between the United States and Iran also provides a cause of action to sue the foreign sovereign in the courts of the company’s “home” country, so that respondent McKesson may sue Iran in the United States and an Iranian company may sue the United States in Iran
 * Bank Melli Iran NY Rep. Office v. Weinstein
 * Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran

Other issues that the bank had raised against the constitutionality of §8772 are discussed in the cert petition on pp. 115a-121a (pp. 162-168 of the PDF file).

--AHeneen (talk) 16:02, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

the use of the term "terrorism"
"In the article the term "Terrorism" or "terrorist act" is used to describe the event.

The definition of "terrorism" is clear, (The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives" (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85).)

The event that the article is about is the act of bombing a milliary installation were the target is milliary personnel, the term "terrorism" is not being used accurately here.

Either the term terrorism must change or the sources for the article that uses the term must be considered bias or unreliable.

I have not seen such contradiction withing the same article on any subject other than when it is about Iran. Only in these instances it is considered ok to write that the target was milliary personnel and milliary installation and then calling it terrorism. This would not be allowed for example if the article was about a drone strike that US have carried out on a wedding ceremony were a single terrorist also is attending.

This is due to the fact that western media do not use the term terrorism to describe events similar to the example i used for different reasons. In this case all Iranian news media sources has been marked as unreliable thus no other point of view can be used as source in any article related to Iran. Gosale (talk) 06:07, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Explanations in see also section
These explanations are unsourced and possibly violate NPOV. They may also be original research as far as I know. There are no inline citations to verify if they are correct. Especially in light of the controversial and legal nature of these articles, it might be best to leave no explanation and leave the wikilinks bare. Laval (talk) 04:28, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Also, this article -- In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 -- doesn't even mention Iran or the allegations being brought against Iran. That article is terrible and needs work, but the explanation here is IMHO problematic and not helpful to the reader. Laval (talk) 04:41, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

ICJ section badly outdated
The article currently says the following, indicating that Iran is deciding whether to file suit at the ICJ:
 * "Iran announced that they would file suit against the United States in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for reparations if the U.S. courts begin to "plunder" assets from the Citibank account to give to the winning plaintiffs.[6] However, the ICJ may not be able to hear the case. The U.S. withdrew its general recognition of the ICJ's jurisdiction in response to the ICJ's ruling in Nicaragua v. United States, but a 1955 friendship treaty between Iran and the U.S. gives the ICJ jurisdiction to rule on disputes arising from provisions of the treaty.[6][65] A working group has been established in the Iranian Cabinet to investigate the ruling and determine ways of reestablishing Iran's rights to the account.[66]"

However, Iran made that decision and did file suit, lodging its Application with the ICJ on June 14, 2016. Since then there have been a number of developments in the case. See Certain Iranian Assets. I have a conflict so should not edit on this topic, but I think it is fair and objective for me to point out that the paragraph I quoted above is badly outdated and should be replaced with a new, current one about the ICJ case. 169.252.4.22 (talk) 19:53, 8 April 2021 (UTC)