Talk:District attorney

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. --68.16.185.42 (talk) 17:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Signed 68.16.185.42's comment for him/her. --DanMat6288 (talk) 01:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that there is no need to have content about state attorneys general, U.S. attorneys, or prosecutors outside of the U.S. in this article, since nobody refers to those people as "district attorneys." Local prosecutors in the U.S. who are not formally known as district attorneys are sometimes informally referred to that way, so it is worthwhile to mention them in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.161.252.66 (talk) 13:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Need to clarify the differences between and separate functions of a D.A. and a U.S. Attorney
I think this is a difficult and important distinction and the article as is only seems to confuse the issue rather than clarify it. Please fix! Thanks! Softlavender (talk) 06:15, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

District attorney or District Attorney
Surely the words 'District Attorney' constitute a legal title? In which case they are a compound proper noun, and both words should be written with capital letters. If 'attorney' is just a common noun here, and 'district' is the adjective which qualifies it (ie an attorney of the 'district' type) then the current title is correct; however, I do not thik tht this is the case. This article is actually about people who bear the job title 'District Attorney', and therefore (as a compound proper noun) both words should be capitalised. -- Timothy Titus Talk To TT  10:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, according to [WP:job titles], all of these titles should be in lowercase except when they appear before someone's name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.161.252.66 (talk) 13:32, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

District Attorney an elected Office
If District Attorenys are elected, how could the bush administration replace so many? Nunamiut (talk) 19:15, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe those were federal attorneys the Bush administration had replaced (not district attorneys).
 * Not all states elect their prosecutors either, some are appointed by the state Governor(?) MelioraCogito (talk) 01:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
 * US Attorneys are federal prosecutors who are appointed by and can be dismissed by the President. That is who Bush and other presidents have replaced. It's a good example of the confusion cited in a lot of comments here. District attorney is the term used for state prosecutors in most, but not all, states and is a general term used to refer to state prosecutors even in states that don't use the title DA, like it or not. All DAs are state prosecutors, but all state prosecutors are not DAs Venqax (talk) 19:54, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Do WP:Primary and WP:V require deletion of this article?
This article uses only primary sources, and so violates WP:Primary and WP:V. According to WP:Primary,
 * Material based purely on primary sources should be avoided.

According to WP:V:
 * Base articles largely on reliable secondary sources. While primary sources are appropriate in some cases, relying on them can be problematic.

I do not believe that District attorney should be nominated for deletion because it violates these policies. Rather, this article is a useful example to show that these policies require revision. Brews ohare (talk) 19:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Elected or appointed?
Would like to see a table of all states showing which ones elect / appoint state prosecutors. MelioraCogito (talk) 01:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I think this article needs some improvements like that. We should definitely have a table showing if they are elected or appointed and maybe include the state's name for it as well. Collinanderson (talk) 05:24, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

State or county, etc,
I question the Wikipedia practice of listing DAs and equivalents as county offials on county Wikipedia sites, along with sheriffs, commissioners, court clerks, etc. In most cases, while their district may be coterminous with a county, DAs are nonetheless state officials, not county ones. Comparably, judges, magistrates, etc. They should not be listed as county-level officers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Venqax (talk • contribs) 20:08, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Partisan political processes
The recent edit needs some substantiation if it is to remain. Can you add a citation (or two) please. Lukewarmbeer (talk) 23:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)