User talk:UnDegree

Questioning minor 1st paragraph edits?
Re: John Roberts, John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sandra Day O'Connor This is a small matter. I don't understand the reasons for Sjrplscjnky's recent minor edits of articles about each of the Justices of the Supreme Court. After some time, there has been no response to inquiries posted on this editor's talk page nor has there been feedback from similar postings on the talk pages of each of the nine articles about a sitting Justice and the one about retired Justice O'Connor. Rather than simply reverting this "improvement," I thought it best to solicit comment from others who might be interested. I found your name amongst others at Talk:Supreme Court of the United States.

I'm persuaded that Sjrplscjnky's strategy of introducing academic honors in the first paragraph is unhelpful in this narrow set of articles -- that is, in Wikipedia articles about Justices of the Supreme Court. I think my reasoning might well extend as well to others on the Federal bench. In each instance, I would question adding this information only in the first paragraph -- not elsewhere in the article.

In support of my view that this edit should be reverted, please consider re-visiting articles written about the following pairs of jurists.
 * A1. Benjamin Cardozo
 * A2. Learned Hand
 * B1. John Marshall Harlan
 * B2. John Marshall Harlan II

The question becomes: Would the current version of the Wikipedia article about any one of them -- or either pair -- be improved by academic credentials in the introductory paragraph? I think not.

Perhaps it helps to repeat a wry argument Kathleen Sullivan of Stanford Law makes when she suggests that some on the Harvard Law faculty do wonder how Antonin Scalia avoided learning what others have managed to grasp about the processes of judging? I would hope this anecdote gently illustrates the point.

Less humorous, but an even stronger argument is the one Clarence Thomas makes when he mentions wanting to return his law degree to Yale.

As you can see, I'm questioning relatively trivial edit; but I hope you agree that this otherwise plausible "improvement" should be removed from introductory paragraphs of ten articles. If not, why not?

Would you care to offer a comment or observation? --Ooperhoofd (talk) 20:16, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:Hornbook -- a new WP:Law task force for the J.D. curriculum
Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 20:41, 31 July 2009 (UTC)