Talk:Supreme court/Archive 1

India
The information regarding the Supreme Court of India stating that the judgments of the Supreme Court are not binding on the State of Jammu and Kashmir is incorrect.

Indeed, J&K has for various historical reasons a special status vis-a-vis the other states of India. Article 370 of the Constitution of India carves out certain exceptions for J&K.

The Constitution of India is not fully applicable to the state of J&K. This is the effect of Article 370. The Constitution of India is applicable to the state of J&K with various modifications and exceptions. These are provided for in the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 1954. Also, Jammu and Kashmir, unlike the other Indian states, also has its own Constitution.

Article 141 of the Constitution of India states that the law declared by Supreme Court is to be binding on all Courts within the territory of India.

Although the Constitution of India is applicable to Jammu and Kashmir with numerous modifications, the Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 1954 makes Article 141 applicable to the state of J&K and hence law declared by Supreme Court is equally applicable to all courts of J&K including the High Court.

Apart from this, the Indian Penal Code containing substantive criminal law provisions is inapplicable to the state of J&K. The state of J&K has its own penal code called Ranbir Penal Code.

In view of the above, I shall be editing the "India" section. However, before doing so I feel it better to discuss and debate the issue. So, the editing can wait a while.

USA
Could someone please elaborate on the US federal supreme court? IE, how many justices are there, how are they elected/appointed and for how long, what kind of controversies are involved with competing political agendas, who are some of the more famous and/or controversial justices, and so on? User:Greensheep 23:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

whats is the title of the head of the US Supreme court?? -(unsigned)
 * Chief Justice of the United States -- Nunh-huh 23:32, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The words 'supreme court' shouldn't be capitalized unless referring to a specific supreme court; it also makes the page a lot harder to read with all the capitals sticking out everywhere. --Xwu 15:57, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

UK
Aren't the European courts higher than the House of Lords? I think that I remember hearing that someone tried to appeal a European court ruling to the House of Lords, but the latter declared they didn't have jurisdiction over the former. Thus effectively declaring themselves no longer the highest court? Thryduulf 13:53, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No, exactly the opposite of that. The Factortame Case involved a Spanish fisherman claiming his right to fish, who although not support in English law, was supported by EU law. The High Court tried to rule in favour of the fisherman, but its decision was reveresed as it did not have the power to make such a ruling. Eventually the case was referred to the ECJ in Luxembourg, whose ruling was that a national court could strike a national law that was incompatible with EU law. The House of Lords was granted the power to rule in favour of an EU law over a UK one. - Thus the House of Lords is the higher court. (Though not the highest. - Less we not forget the Privy Council or the soon to exist Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.) --Daxaius 17:50, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Louisiana is not in fact described under the civil jurisdictions section (as the section on the US states). Someone check diffs and/or add that?

Hong Kong
Can this be thrashed out here on the talk page rather through an edit war please? Tim! (talk) 11:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
 * One solution would be to remove the sections "common law" and "civil law", and the list the countries alphabetically: in this system Scotland, Quebec, and Hong Kong would not have their own level 2 headers, they would be listed under the parent country header, as is currently the case for England and Wales, Northern Ireland etc.
 * Another solution would be add a third section, "common law", "civil law", "other law/mixed systems". UK, PRC and Canada would all move to the latest section.
 * Satisfactory? Tim! (talk) 15:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Hong Kong is judicially independent with its own court of last resort (except for the right to intepret and amend its constitutional document). It's not like Québec, which is subordinate to the Canadian supreme court, and Scotland, except for criminal cases, the Law Lords (or later the supreme court in London). Ordinary subnational entities like Québec and Scotland should not be confused with those like Hong Kong. Furthermore, Gibraltar and other territories should not be listed under their corresponding sovereign states. &mdash; Instantnood 19:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I am fine with that so long that entries are listed according to sovereignty.--Huaiwei 00:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Huaiwei and Instantnood
Due to the obvious edit warring behavior here I am banning Huaiwei and Instantnood both from editing this page further. If someone who is a regular participant here wants to straighten out the mess that is now the Hong Kong section, that would be appreciated. --Wgfinley 04:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The case of Quebec
Why is Quebec listed? It's right in the article that it doesn't qualify as a supreme court. Peter Grey 04:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. I removed it and Scotland's. GreenJoe 15:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Georgia Supreme Court and Supreme Court of Georgia moves and renaming
I am posting this here in case anyone is interested. Below is a proposed move:


 * Supreme Court of Georgia → Supreme Court of Georgia (country) —(Discuss)— and then Georgia Supreme Court → Supreme Court of Georgia (U.S. state) —(Discuss)— After looking at the titles of the Supreme Court of Georgia (U.S. state) and the Supreme Court of Georgia (country) I think "Supreme Court of Georgia" should link to a disambiguation page. The Georgia Supreme Court is not the commonly used name for the Supreme Court of Georgia (U.S. state). The U.S. State of Georgia has double the population of the country of Georgia, and this is the English Wikipedia, making the Supreme Court of Georgia more commonly known for the court in the U.S. state of Georgia. I propose moving Supreme Court of Georgia to a disambiguation page with links directing people to either the Supreme Court of Georgia (U.S. state) or the Supreme Court of Georgia (country). This would satisfy both sides, and be a hell-of-a-lot less confusing for the casual reader. KnightLago 13:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Added disambiguation link for Supreme Court of the United States.
Normally the Supreme Court of the United States wouldn't deserve special treatment, but there are scores if not hundreds of articles that incorrectly point to Supreme Court instead of Supreme Court of the United States. When this is no longer an issue, remove the disambiguation tag. If anyone finds other countries with that problem, please create a disambiguation page. d a v i d w r 09f9(talk) 23:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It's always likely to be an issue . Isn't it good that these people have Wikipedia to inform them? Andrewa (talk) 18:52, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Israel section very critical without any references
The Israeli section is very different in tone from the other sections. I don't know their legal system, so there may be good reason for that, but we cite something instead of just giving our opinion in the article? VxP 22:29, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the article Court of Appeals
Please see my move proposal at Talk:Court of Appeals. --Mathew5000 19:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

…SUPREME COURT and it's Juristiction's

Promptness of a State Legislature in cession with it's Legislator in a Legislating matter may be in course of Allegations.In set a Term,.

Term from the Wikipedia talk page is in issue as Tort, to this day has recommendation of said term.

An Aligation was searched through the sight of wikipedia and recommendation that both Allegations and Term was found, the search containing these measure on the concourse of Supreme Court; Though before said supreme court was the terming Tort, in which representation bears it's course, such may be an allegation an allegation may still represent a mattered terming in affiliation on a conjunctional matter.David George DeLancey (talk) 20:12, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism in South Africa heading
I am a brand-new user so if I'm violating any protocols please repair. I saw a really odd piece of vandalism in the sub-category for South Africa. Instead of just the name of the country, the heading read "South Africa has black pepole" [sic]. I changed it back to just "South Africa" but I'm not sure if any further steps need to be taken. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saffi Anne (talk • contribs) 16:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

One topic or two
This article is currently about the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions, and lists the supreme court of Australia as the High Court of Australia. I am not a lawyer but that seems correct to me, except that Australia (as a federation) might be regarded as containing several or even many jurisdictions by our current definition, and not all of them allow appeal to the High Court.

However there's another meaning of Supreme Court, in that Australia contains nine Supreme Courts in nine of its States and Territories, for example the New South Wales Supreme Court. These courts are EACH known as the Supreme Court although in some cases there is appeal further up (typically either to an appellate division or to the High Court), and many cases go direct to the Supreme Court so it's actually a very ordinary court in many ways. Supreme Court capitalised currently redirects to supreme court so these should be covered by this article. And they're not.

Australia is not unique in this, several other former members of the British Empire retain similar Supreme Courts that are supreme in name only for some or all cases.

So, either we need to distinguish between supreme court (this article) and Supreme Court (those other ones) and have two articles, or we should broaden the scope of this article to include these others. Andrewa (talk) 01:52, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Illustrations / Photos
Hi, how about adding some photos to this article? It shouldn't be an illustration orgy and limited to a few pics per section. But the Supreme Court Buildings often are among the most impressive what a nation can offer. So I think it'd definitely add something visually and encyclopedically here. What's your POV here? :) Cheers, Horst-schlaemma (talk) 13:52, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * My opinion is to keep this article informative and leave pictures relatively out. The reason for this is that just one picture for each country will create a plethora of pictures. Pictures of courthouses should be shown in a separate article or if shown in this article, a table would be best. If we are only showing pictures from a few countries, it would be biased towards those countries. 12.227.66.34 (talk) 23:54, 12 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we can have a photo montage of several different supreme courts? --  Rockstone  [Send me a message!]  21:17, 19 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I like this idea. Anything to help keep things condensed. 12.227.66.34 (talk) 21:48, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Alright, if I find some time, I'll make a montage and we'll see how it looks. I'm thinking something like: "from left, clockwise: the Federal Administrative Court of Germany, one of Germany's supreme courts; the Supreme Court of the United States;the Supreme Court of India;the Supreme Court of Canada, etc, etc, etc..." -- Rockstone  [Send me a message!]  19:19, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to redirect this article to List of supreme courts by country
This article says extremely little of any real value other than:


 * A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions.

I'd suggest it should be merged/redirected to List of supreme courts by country. — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 21:37, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Supreme Court of NSW
I live in New South Wales, and if I wikilink to supreme court or Supreme Court I get to the same article, and it doesn't currently even mention the Supreme Court of New South Wales, not even by any of the hatnotes, not even indirectly.

As this is the court most often cropping up in our local newspapers (and that by a long way, one of its divisions tries all major criminal cases, for example), that's a shocking omission IMO, and I'm not quite sure how to fix it.

Supreme Court is perhaps a misnomer in this instance, as further appeals are very common in one of its divisions and in theory possible in all of them. But that's what it's called hereabouts, and within NSW it is in a sense supreme, as after you go through all of its applicable divisions you then go outside of NSW... but to a supreme court that is not a Supreme Court in name but a High Court instead.

A bit confusing, but our goal here is to use English not fix it. And in any case I doubt we can fix the terminology used by the Australian legal system any more than we can fix doctors handwriting.

But we can and should help readers to navigate it. Thoughts as to how? Andrewa (talk) 16:35, 31 August 2016 (UTC)


 * This article, though, is not about institutions named' "Supreme Court"; is is about supreme courts, i.e., courts that are actually supreme within the scope of their jurisdiction. Because the Supreme Court of New South Wales is not actually "supreme", it's not covered in this article.


 * New York's "Supreme Court" is somewhat along the same lines: it's only "supreme" in comparison to things like the New York justice courts; most jurisdictions would call this "Superior court" or something similar. (Although to be more detailed, the NY Supreme Court also includes an "appellate division", which is what most states would call an "Court of Appeals". But New York's actual lower-case "supreme court" is called the New York Court of Appeals. So, again somewhat at odds with the usual nomenclature, the New York Supreme Court is lower than the New York Court of Appeals.)


 * New York's Supreme Court is not mentioned in the article other than as an example of the potentially misleading nomenclature. At present the article has three examples, which is probably one too many; I wouldn't suggest adding more.


 * So I think the short answer is that, because the Supreme Court of New South Wales is not actually supreme, it should not link to supreme court at all, unless it really means to link to an article generally describing the highest court in the jurisdiction.


 * One alternate solution I could think of is to make Supreme Court (both words capitalized) — or better yet, Supreme Court (disambiguation), because the primary topic would be supreme court — into a disambiguation page, which would essentially say that "Supreme Court" generally refers to the supreme court of a particular jurisdiction; and then a number of additional line items for the non-supreme Supreme Courts: New York Supreme Court; Supreme Court of England and Wales ; Supreme Courts of several Canadian provinces/territories; and, of course, Supreme Court of New South Wales; and any other non-supreme Supreme Courts. TJRC (talk) 23:06, 2 September 2016 (UTC)