Template talk:Infobox US Supreme Court case/Archive 4

Oral argument cleanup
The following params ask for the following format:


 * OralArgument:
 * OralReargument:
 * OpinionAnnouncement:

Emphasis mine, with the only difference being the first ends in argument, second reargument, and third opinion.

Oyez has changed the URL format now, to, i.e. /cases/YYYY/DOCKET-NUMBER. Which means A) we can auto-generate these URLs using other data in the template, and B) imo we probably should do that, and at minimum request IDs and not full URLs, in case the URL structure changes (as it did here). Proposing these params to be deprecated in favour of that.

If a docket number exists for the case (and given using Docket), I believe an Oyez link should also exist, and we can auto-generate it using the docket # and auto-show the links. Perhaps add no to optionally hide the links on a per-article basis (if there's a reason). Functionally the same, but easier and cleaner to maintain and use.

ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:31, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm excited Oyez changed its url format to something sane. I'm not sure we can do away with Oyez-specific params yet since we need to know what year they classify cases under, and how it handles in-progress cases. For example, maybe this october a case that had oral arguments will be 2020/19-Docket, but the decision is published in 2021. Which year will it be under, and if they put it under 2020 (as I would bet), will they change it if the decision is published in 2021? In general I like the idea though, just need to know how stable the links are. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:39, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , good point! Seems like some of the dates are adjusted for SCOTUS terms. I'm not confident on the pattern here, but I'm guessing there is one. Also not sure on your question, which is how they change.
 * Examples:
 * https://www.oyez.org/cases/2019/18-217: Granted Mar 2019 (year 2018), argued Oct 2019 (year 2019), decided Feb 2020 (year 2019)
 * https://www.oyez.org/cases/2019/17-1268: Granted Jun 2019, Argued Feb 2020 (year 2019), no decided date given (but was decided May 2020 it seems)
 * https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/19-5410: Granted Mar 2020 (court year 2019, categorised under 2020)
 * https://www.oyez.org/cases/2019/19-373: Granted Nov 2019, dismissed Jan 2020 (court year 2019)
 * web.archive.org isn't particularly useful in determining how they change. They have archives for some new-style links, but clicking the link shows a 404 error, so I can't be sure if that's due to some kind of robots block, or an archiving mess. Also not sure when they implemented this new URL format. Perhaps looking at cases we can figure the pattern out, but if that fails I suppose it's not inappropriate to send the site's operators an email asking? I can't find it documented anywhere. As a sidenote, they do have an API, but that also isn't documented.
 * There are cases where the granted date is different from the argued/decided court term, but is it possible to have a case argued in the 2019 court term and not decided till the 2020 term? Based off this I think they're always argued and decided in the same court year? All opinions of the Court are, typically, handed down by the last day of the Court's term (the day in late June/early July when the Court recesses for the summer). With the exception of this deadline, there are no rules concerning when decisions must be released. If so, I suppose the question of argue or decision year is massively simplified (Oyez probably just categorises by grant year, and then recategorises by the argue year once argued probably, which would be the same as the decision court year), but there remains the issue of if it's relocated off its grant year. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:11, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm looking into the public API; it's weird. I think it's our best bet if we want to deprecate these parameters. At least from the API responses I've looked at, I think you're right that they're organized by term. — Wug·a·po·des​ 20:53, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * So I think there's two questions here:
 * Since they're originally classified under grant date (and we don't ask for granted date right now), how do we do this part? (we do have some pre-argued articles, eg California v. Texas). It's useful info to store anyway, I guess. Two ideas:
 * Have editors start manually adding the granted date. Only needs to be done for currently pending cases (there's only about 20?), since for the rest we'd be relying on argued date anyway. Thereafter, we just shove the current year into the template docs example, and so new articles would have it prefilled for convenience (allowing change if needed).
 * Use a bot to scrape the API, adding the granted date to either (a) articles directly (if exist) or (b) Wikidata and fetch from there.
 * Your initial concern: Once the case gets argued, if the argument+decision is in the next court year, does Oyez change the year? This I'm not sure on. I'd think yes, looking at these (which have granted dates from the 2018 term, but are under 2019), but this might've just been an initial convert from the old URL format.
 * ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:47, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Update: I've spoken to someone at Oyez who has kindly given very thorough information on their URL structure. I should be able to implement this change with that. Will update once done, or if I run into issues. That said, we're probably also going to have to consider this. On deeper thought, none of the three separate Oyez params we have currently should actually link to the overview page. They should link to oral arguments, opinion announcements and re-argument announcements, per the current description of those params. But since Oyez changed their URL format all these have really been broken for quite some time, since most URLs point to the old link which now redirects to the generic case. We're going to have to decide what to do with the Oyez URLs, do we want to fix them all to go to the specific links (eg to ), or do we want to deprecate them and just link to the Oyez overview?
 * My view: we have Caselaw source for general Oyez links, so we need to fix these into the specific Oyez argument/reargument/decision announcement links. Which means, we're either gonna need a template/module with a big data dump kept up to date with a mapping from docket #s to Oyez URLs, or use a bot and update all the URLs. One or the other. (ping ) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata
Some of the information we manually require is already on Wikidata (or can be added). Any reason we shouldn't just use that? For example, ParallelCitations seems to be a list that we can fetch from WD instead, and keep the info centralised, make it available to wikis in other languages, and keep it represented in a proper list rather than using the semi-colon. For example, in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld we have value. At Q476339 we already have all these references bar "19 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 452" (which we can add). Can just add it as a fallback, if no value is specified manually. Thoughts? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:28, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi ProcrastinatingReader. Yes, I'd love to see a proof-of-concept for this, at least!! We have Template:Infobox SCOTUS case/sandbox if you want a test space. In general, there are some concerns from Wikipedians about Wikidata's reliability, the need to visit and use a separate site, and Wikidata's ability to sufficiently monitor and keep information correct. However, I personally don't really share those concerns and I think it would be awesome if we could better centralize wiki metadata. (In addition to this infobox, we have lots of case indices and SCOTUS justices indices that could also potentially be dynamically generated. There's a ton of room for potential improvement to Wikipedia through increased Wikidata integration.) --MZMcBride (talk) 06:08, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , I cooked up a quick demo in the sandbox. See example usage at User:ProcrastinatingReader/sandbox2 (the "Citations" label). Compare to the live version at Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The hyperlinks to U.S. reports etc are missing, but we can tidy that up with a string replace (i.e. if string contains "U.S. ###", then replace with " U.S. ") (this is just a quick demo). The notable issue here is that to get it to work I had to set "require references" to false, because Q476339 doesn't currently cite any references for these citations. "Require references" basically means any Wikidata values without a reference attached won't be shown. Then again, we don't have any refs for the cites on enwiki either, so I'm not sure how much that matters. It's kinda self-referencing, to some degree. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:18, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of using it as a fallback. This kind of stuff is probably best handled by WikiData, but given how editorial control of the citations would be outside this wiki, we should retain some ability to override it when needed. I'm not particularly concerned about having to turn off the require refs parameter; the citations are self verifying. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:43, 22 July 2020 (UTC)


 * This discussion is illuminative of general views about Wikidata. I'm also not in favor of exporting any content, functions, or editorial control there. postdlf (talk) 14:31, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 8 October 2020
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September and is therefore no longer on the court. Can Template:Infobox SCOTUS case/courts be updated to reflect this please? Iffy★Chat -- 12:32, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ The fix is in the /courts subtemplate. Working correctly at Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. for example, against one the last decisions of the last term Bostock v. Clayton County. --M asem  (t) 13:48, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

New type of docket number not currently support by this template
In the case of Texas v. Penn., et al., its docket number is 22O155 (letter O). When I tried to update the link it displays "Expression error: Unrecognized word "o") and the link doesn't work at all Thongtinvn (talk) 02:48, 10 December 2020 (UTC)


 * So reading online, for cases when SCOTUS is of the original jurisdiction (as in TX v PA), then they do not use the YY-#### format but this format. I'm not sure yet what the "22" standard for but "O" is for "original jurisdiction", and given that "22O1" corresponds to a case first filed in 1922, that's where I'd guess that the 22 is coming from. (see ). So yes, these are valid docket numbers. So we may need to have a separate docket field for cases where SCOTUS is the original jurisdiction.  --M asem  (t) 05:30, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * To follow up, the programming logic appears to be something to add to Template:SCOTUS URL Docket to account for the case where the entry string is not a "YY-####" format. Fortunately, for all those that I can see, they appear to be at "https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/(docket number).html" (in contrast to the standard dockets which had a switch of format in 2016 and required a secondary template). So the template above just needs to be codified to recognize if there is no dash in the docket number and spit out the above URL. --M asem  (t) 15:56, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * And now this should be handled nicely in the template. (I've added it to TX v. PA already).
 * As a side number, I note that the court appears to have restructures older cases. There are now cases pre-2016 that are only available in the newer format, but I can't find the cutoff point to update the numbers in Template:SCOTUS URL Docket New for that. --M asem (t) 16:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Unanimous majority opinions with recusals
For cases that were decided unanimously with recusals (8-0 or 7-0), should all justices who joined the majority opinion be listed, or should it just say unanimous? See Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. as an example of the former practice, and Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, Inc. as an example of the latter. I think it should be consistent throughout, so I wanted to know if others had thoughts. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 20:30, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Unanimous means the whole Court's membership. So if there was a recusal it should list the justices who joined to avoid confusion. postdlf (talk) 17:21, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Acknowledged, and that makes sense to me. I'll change the few pages that don't comply with that standard currently. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 14:32, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I though there might have been cases of recusal where the decision was stated in the slip as "unanimous" but I haven't found such a case, they all express the recusal specifically, so this is sound advice. --M asem (t) 20:37, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Automatically categorizing per-curiam opinions
Setting the PerCuriam field now automatically places pages in Category:United States Supreme Court per curiam opinions. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases for rationale. DMacks (talk) 01:41, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 12 August 2021
Currently, Template:Infobox US Supreme Court case/courts has the Stone Court running from July 3, 1941 through April 21, 1946, and the subsequent period of Chief-Justice vacancy (until the start of the Vinson Court) running from April 22, 1946 through June 23, 1946. However, Harlan F. Stone's last day on the Court was April 22, not April 21; this is especially important because Girouard v. United States was decided on April 22, 1946, and, with the template in its current form, Chief Justice Stone, who wrote the dissenting opinion in Girouard, and who delivered it on that day, is not included in Girouard's "Court Membership" section, with the Chief Justiceship being shown as "vacant".

TL;DR: The court-membership section for Girouard omits the Chief Justice who wrote and delivered the dissenting opinion in said case, because this template lists the day before he delivered it as his last day on the job.

Can Template:Infobox US Supreme Court case/courts be tweaked to change the last day of the Stone Court from April 21, 1946, to April 22, 1946, and the first day of the post-Stone Chief-Justice vacancy from April 22 to April 23 (the Supreme Court's first full day without Stone as Chief Justice) of that year? Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty &#124; Averted crashes 00:45, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I can vouch for the fact that this is correct: Stone was indeed alive when he delivered his Girouard dissent, which was his "final judicial utterance". Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:04, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ with Girouard now appearing correct --M asem (t) 04:33, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Automating Categories
Similar to the addition made with Category:United States Supreme Court cases, would it be possible to automate the category "Year in United States case law" based on the value in the "DecideYear" parameter in the template? The only complication I foresee is no category would have to be added for pending cases. Also, would it be possible to automate Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court, etc. based on the same system used in "data20" in the existing template? I am not an expert on template editing so I appreciate feedback. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 22:39, 26 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I should add that for alphabetization's sake, the order of these three categories would likely be "Year in United States case law", "United States Supreme Court cases", and "United States Supreme Court cases of the X Court". – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 22:47, 26 June 2021 (UTC)


 * User:Extraordinary Writ also proposed placing into year-specific subcats of Category:United States case law by year. I've invited them to join here so we can figure it all out at least in pseudocode here. If I understand correctly:
 * if has DecideYear
 * then Category:DecideYear in United States case law
 * else do nothing
 * JocularJellyfish, would your "complication" be solved by the "else do nothing", since a pending case would have no DecideYear parameter?
 * if has DecideDate and DecideYear, look up Chief Justice
 * then place in Category:United States Supreme Court cases of the CJ Court
 * else do nothing (likewise if no CJ known)
 * JocularJellyfish, your last comment is merely about the order in which the categories should be listed? DMacks (talk) 23:46, 26 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is exactly what I was considering. And regarding my last comment, that's correct. I was just thinking about alphabetization of categories. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 01:59, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Any update on this? – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 01:35, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Bot-folks noted that it's against categorization guidelines to have a template set article-space/user-land cats. Apparently this has consensus support (and I agree there are some valid concerns about it). I disagree that they outweigh the value it could bring; oh well. DMacks (talk) 18:32, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Adding "statement" parameter
Justice Souter had an opinion styled "statement" in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, as did Justice Ginsburg in Thompson v. Hebdon. Would it be possible to add that parameter to the template? It would likely have to be ordered after dissents, as seen in the Lucas syllabus. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 17:44, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It is not hard to add "Statement" (and in case "Statement2" through "Statement5" like the others) but I do wonder if there have been any "joins" to any of these statements at all? It would make sense to anticipate for that (if not already existing) --M asem (t) 18:02, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I am unsure about the answer to that question, but it might be prudent to add the join parameters as well, just to be safe. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 22:31, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, without doing major changes (that I could see) I've just did Statement/JoinStatement and Statement2/JoinStatement2 at a test version at User:Masem/test/infobox scotus (with a test implementation at User:Masem/test/infoscot (fake entries to make sure they work). If we need more than 2 it can be expanded but I doubt this would be the case. Double check before I move the code into the live template proper. --M asem (t) 22:46, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It looks good to me. – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 22:15, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Any update on this? – JocularJellyfish TalkContribs 01:35, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * It is now implemented (both your cases above show it in place) and docs updated for that. --M asem (t) 12:52, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Unknown parameter
Whenever I create a page with this infobox in Visual Editor, I get the following warning: "Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox US Supreme Court case with unknown parameter "SCOTUS"". The SCOTUS parameter is discussed in the documentation, so I'm not sure why it would be "unknown". This hasn't caused any actual problems (since it disappears as soon as I save the page), but I thought it might be worth asking about. Cheers, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:13, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * There is no SCOTUS parameter, which is why you are receiving that warning. It goes away when you save the page because it is only a preview warning. Primefac (talk) 11:20, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Primefac. I now see that this parameter was removed a while back. I've updated the TemplateData accordingly, which should stop the VE from asking about it in the first place. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:03, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Premature end to Breyer's term
It is premature to end Breyer's term on the Court as of April 27, 2022 and to start Jackson's as of this date. Please revert the edits until the transition actually takes place. Thank you. Drdpw (talk) 04:08, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * , you should probably be discussing this at Talk:Stephen Breyer, not here, because this is just a template talk and is not directly associated any article in particular. Primefac (talk) 11:14, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I think Drpdw is referring to these edits to Template:Infobox US Supreme Court case/courts, which indeed ought to be reverted since Breyer is still on the Court. This is the usual procedure (for instance, Souter's and Stevens's terms are listed as lasting until the end of June), and adding Jackson now will create problems for the rest of the term's decisions because the list of participating justices is based on, not  . Extraordinary Writ (talk) 17:02, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, my apologies, I haven't edited this template enough to remember the subpage content. Primefac (talk) 17:05, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
 * , would you mind self-reverting these edits? They cause problems for cases like Shurtleff v. City of Boston, where Breyer wrote the majority opinion but still isn't listed in the infobox's "court membership" section. Best regards, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 20:31, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * My bad, it has been reverted. --M asem (t) 00:31, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Byron White June 28, 1993
Byron White’s last term should be changed to include June 28, because he was still sitting on that day (though he was retiring that day). As it is now, Shaw v. Reno shows that he was no longer among the members of the Court, though he issued a dissent there. SilverLocust (talk) 15:54, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * SilverLocust is correct. I've added the edit-request template so this can be fixed—on Template:Infobox US Supreme Court case/courts, June 27, 1993 needs to be changed to "June 28, 1993", and June 28, 1993 needs to be changed to "June 29, 1993". Thanks in advance. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Shaw v. Reno appears correct now. --M asem (t) 22:22, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Should “Laws Applied” exclude a statute being challenged?
If there is a case regarding, e.g., whether the “No Free Speech Act” violates the First Amendment, should the “No Free Speech Act” be included as one of the “Laws Applied” in the Infobox?

This discussion comes about from a made by  on Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, removing the Texas Heartbeat Act (S.B. 8) from the “Laws Applied” section. I brought this up on Masem’s talk page (see there for further discussion), but we continue to disagree on the issue, so I am raising it here to see if others have a view.

It seems to me that there are a multitude of cases of pre-enforcement challenges to statutes where the Infobox currently includes the challenged statute as a one of the “Laws Applied.” E.g., McConnell v. FEC, Dobbs v. Jackson, Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Including these in the Infobox can be helpful for quickly locating the challenged law. And in many cases, including in WWH, the decision actually involves construing the challenged statute to determine if there is standing, overbreadth, etc. Nevertheless, in Masem’s view, “The law in question should not be included.” If that is correct, then those pages (and many more) would need to be changed. SilverLocust (talk) 20:55, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 12 April 2023
Please prepend: Thank you, { {ping&#124;ClydeFranklin }} (t/c) 02:58, 13 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Created a /doc page for this protected template, which automatically applies .  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;,  ed.  put'er there 08:42, 13 April 2023 (UTC)