Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Chief Justices by age


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge to List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Opinions are all over the place, but I think the common thread through most comments is that we should have this information, but a stand-alone list isn't the best way to do it.

It sounds like there may be some technical issues to be solved with merging this and making the resulting list sortable by age, so we'll need somebody with a little more than average technical skills to set up the table. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:04, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

List of United States Chief Justices by age

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Similar again to Articles for deletion/List of Chief Justices of Australia by age and Articles for deletion/List of Chief Justices of Canada by age but for the US now. Again, I see zero connection between age and being the Chief Justice. This is not related to length of term or the like (although these are lifetime appintments so they are related) but it is in actuality a list of old people who happened to have been Chief Justice. Maybe length of term could be relevant but given that there are just 17 people involved here, there's only so many ways to sort these seventeen names and this one seems trivial to me since as the others, unlike term which is based on both when they were appointed and how long they lived, they is solely based on their longevity which while interesting, is not particularly relevant about them. Ricky81682 (talk) 22:21, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete this can be easily seen in other lists. Trivial intersection of data not encyclopedic. Legacypac (talk) 22:23, 11 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep: it gives interesting information in a format not duplicated in other lists. Jonathunder (talk) 22:28, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Ricky81682 (talk) 01:57, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Ricky81682 (talk) 02:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * If the info is at all useful it should be merged into the nice table at Chief_Justice_of_the_United_States which could benefit from birth and death dates. The calculated age at death column is of little value. Legacypac (talk) 22:35, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Propose: What about just having one list of Chief Justices, and use a sortable table, so they can be sorted in any way. Gamebuster19901 (Talk | Contributions) 01:47, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete - A list of supreme court justices by age is not particularly significant; on the other hand, a list of supreme court justices by the length of their tenures on the court would be extremely noteworthy, and indeed notable per Wikipedia's notability guidelines, because U.S. Supreme Court appointments are so-called "lifetime appointments" with no mandatory retirement age. Long-term influence of a justice is often tied to the length of tenure on the court, and is often discussed that way in legal, political science and history journals and books, as well as the mainstream American media.  The best suggestion I've seen on this page is that of Gamebuster19901 immediately above: the main List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States should be sortable by length of tenure; indeed, I believe it was intended to be structured that way -- but the sortable column for "active service" does not work properly and needs to be coded and the data entered in a simple manner such that it is sortable within the wikitable.  If someone wants to add another sortable column for the ages of the justices at the time of their deaths, I would not object to that, either.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:59, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * For one example of how this might be done, see List of Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:14, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep: I think the intention behind this list is constructive and the list useful since Chief Justices serve life terms. There is always ongoing speculation about how many Chief Justices may be replaced shortly, which obviously has significant impact on the court. The list's value is clearly historical since current judges' ages are listed here: Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States. But this list has value as it relates to the history of the court's members, and it's encyclopedic value rests in the life appointment nature of SCOTUS--i.e., there is always discussion about whether a nominee is too young or too old, how long they likely will serve, etc. Orthodox2014 (talk) 16:21, 18 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Support Gamebuster19901's proposal, which is "just having one list of Chief Justices, and use a sortable table, so they can be sorted in any way". Therefore, merge/redirect to Chief Justice of the United States. Cunard (talk) 23:03, 18 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.