Talk:United States magistrate judge

Attribution
Material on this page was broken out of Magistrate. Complete edit history can be found there. bd2412 T 20:15, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

State-court magistrates
I came to the article trying to discover whether the term "magistrate" was used in specific states in the U.S., probably the South. There was indeed an internal link at the beginning of the article which seemed right -- but it was broken, and there was no relevant material in the article. Looking at the history, I found that the large section with its sub-sections had simply been removed, with no effort made to mend the link, and no indication as to whether or not it had been copied to another article (and, if so, to which). The only explanation was in the edit summary (nothing on this page), saying: "State courts: complete separate from federal magistrates". Well, of course they are -- but first, the article title doesn't specify Federal Magistrates, so both kinds of court are relevant to it so long as magistrates occur in both (as they do), and secondly,the article makes clear that the two kinds of court, and the functions of magistrates in them, are different. There seems no good reason, therefore, to remove information that a user like me might well be seeking. The deletion seemed to be the triumph of some sort of ideological position over usefulness. 87.112.244.29 (talk) 09:53, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
 * A United States magistrate judge is a specific kind of federal judge. State court magistrate judges are an unrelated topic, which I have now moved to State court magistrate judge. bd2412  T 17:34, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Source of power
What the article calls the "Federal Magistrates Act of 1968" is actually just the "Federal Magistrates Act". Pub. L. 90–578, §1, Oct. 17, 1968, 82 Stat. 1107. These short-titles without a clunky year attached are so rare, how about let's enjoy the treat and call it by its correct name. 73.90.210.248 (talk) 02:27, 13 February 2019 (UTC)