Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Archive 10

Placement of oral arguments
There seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether reporting of briefs and oral arguments should go under "Background" or not. I can deal with it either way, but if we decide this material doesn't belong under "Background", I would strongly suggest the "Opinion of the Court" section should be renamed "Supreme Court", with subsections such as "Oral arguments", "Opinion of the Court", "Concurring opinions", "Dissent", etc. In other words, the briefs and oral arguments (IMO) are not literally part of the opinion of the Court (even if the majority essentially modeled their opinion after one or the other brief), so they should not be included as part of the "Opinion of the Court". — Rich wales 17:45, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support totally the renaming to "Supreme Court" as noted above. It'll take some clean up of older articles, but we're having to do that anyway.   GregJackP   Boomer!   18:21, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It would be harder to come up with a less clear section header than "Supreme Court". Supreme Court what? I appreciate the issue Rich has raised, but I don't think that's a good solution. I think any content on oral argument and briefing should go under "Supreme Court review". Opinions should go under something like "The Supreme Court's decision". Maybe both of those should be first-level headers. I've tended to favor placing the SC review info under prior court proceedings, as it is indeed background context for the decision itself, which should normally be the most important section in the article. postdlf (talk) 18:27, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Take a look at Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter or United States v. John (1978) for examples.  Both of these use headings of Background, Supreme Court, Subsequent development; with the Background and Supreme Court sections being subdivided to further clarify.  In the Background section, there is a subsection for Procedural history, showing what happened in the lower courts.  In the Supreme Court section, it is subdivided into Arguments, Opinion of the court (or, in cases of plurality opinions this could be Judgment of the court), Concurring opinion, and Dissent.  It is clear when you look at it in context with the other sections and subsections.  JMO.   GregJackP   Boomer!   18:38, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I'd say the current version of Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter doesn't look all right and I can understand the rationale for using "Supreme Court," but I don't think we should. At a minimum, I agree with postdlf that it needs some kind of additional wording, so it'd have to be something like "Before the Supreme Court." At that point, though, I think it makes sense to just use something else that's less awkward. The case has an article and is being discussed because it reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Having a "Supreme Court" header alone is a little awkward. Making it clearer with additional wording makes the header even more awkward, in my opinion.
 * There's a proposed model in the current version of our style guide. It places the oral arguments and other information in the "Background" section under a three-part "Background/Opinion of the Court/Subsequent development" model. It's unclear what your views are toward this model. If it's deficient, I'd like for us to figure out a better model or a series of better models, document them in our style guide, and then we can begin more major cleanup work on the current set of articles we have. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:58, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * My main problem with the current model is that I believe that it is unclear (of course, this is JMHO). If, as I'm sure we've all seen some SCOTUS articles have been done, we look at this as a case brief, we usually see something like "Facts", "Procedural History", "Issue(s)", "Reasoning", etc.  Obviously that is not what we need in Wikipedia.  I understand the idea of the current MOSLAW design, but it appears to me that to a lay reader, the arguments presented at SCOTUS should be presented in the same general section as the opinion(s), and that it makes it clearer to the reader.  It's not really background, it's an integral part of the action at SCOTUS, and directly leads to the opinion, especially if the argument section includes questions from the justices.  Background should consist of history, lower courts, up to granting of cert.  That's just my opinion of course.   GregJackP   Boomer!   06:13, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I think the best structure may depend to an extent on the length of the article and of the various sections. If the "background" section is lengthy&mdash;for example, if the case has an interesting procedural history in the lower courts that takes some time to explain&mdash;then it may not be desirable to fold disucssion of the Supreme Court briefing and oral argument into the "background" section. Similarly, sometimes the briefing and argument may be routine and just warrant a sentence or two of discussion, while other times the contents of the briefs or (more often) the argument warrant a couple of paragraphs. Although I understand the desire for greater uniformity on this set of articles, I'm not sure there's a "one size fits all" template that is optimal here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with all of this. postdlf (talk) 00:43, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with NYBrad - can we make both styles acceptable? Instead of a one-size fits all?   GregJackP   Boomer!   01:14, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure, just edit WP:SCOTUS/SG. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I've added an "Optional structure" section. Could y'all look at it and 1) fix anything that I screwed up, and 2) let me know what you think?   GregJackP   Boomer!   04:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for adding the optional structure. I found the two structures to be really duplicative, so I tried merging them (diff). Is this acceptable? --MZMcBride (talk) 05:10, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Much better than how I had it. Thanks,  GregJackP   Boomer!   05:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Talk page header
Hi. I forgot to mention earlier, I've moved this talk page's header to WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Header and re-worked it a bit (further collapsing the WikiProject banners and adding the large icons from WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases). I hope nobody minds. Comments, criticisms, &c. always welcome. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

FAC for United States v. Lara
United States v. Lara is a Featured Article candidate. Anyone wishing to comment may do so at the comment page. GregJackP  Boomer!   22:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

"in which the Court 'held'"?
During the recent FAC for Afroyim v. Rusk, [ one reviewer objected] to using words in the lead section which would require an average reader to click away from the article in order to understand the text. The specific objection at the time was to the word "distinguished" (which has a specialized legal use), and although I wasn't 100% convinced by the criticism, I responded by rephrasing a sentence in the lead so as to avoid this term.

At the same time, I also realized the same objection would probably apply to "held" — and accordingly, I reworded the opening sentence to say "in which the Court ruled" (instead of "in which the Court held"). I did use both "held" and "distinguished" later on in the article, of course, and I wikilinked the first use of each word, but I avoided using these (possibly non-obvious) words in the lead section.

What do people think of this? I realize many/most of us are so familiar with US legal parlance that it almost might not make sense to us that anyone wouldn't understand words like these, but I do think the reviewer/objector in this case had a reasonable point. I may also have been less sensitive to this issue because I use the "navigation popups" gadget (and can therefore see the intro to another page by hovering over a link, without needing to click on it) — but of course this aid is not available to a casual reader who reads an article without being logged in. — Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 06:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I prefer the use of "held" over "ruled", but can live with either. The reviewer was correct IMO on "distinguished"--that term is a legal term of art, and while it should be in the article, it should not be in the lead.   GregJackP   Boomer!   16:03, 6 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I prefer "held" over "ruled" as well. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)


 * So, are you saying you feel "hold" (in legal parlance) is clear to the average reader? IMO, many non-law-knowledgeable readers will understand "hold" as meaning "believe", "feel", or "express a viewpoint" — not quite the same as making a definitive, binding legal decision.  Again, this term is unquestionably obvious to those in the know, but I'm unconvinced regarding our general readership.  —  Rich wales (no relation to Jimbo) 22:19, 6 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it is clear. I think that the average reader can pick it up from the context.  I asked several friends and family, none of whom are knowledgeable about law, and they all understood that "held" meant "ruled" or "decided" (except for one smarta**, who laughingly said that it was obvious that they picked it up in their hands). I don't have a problem with "ruled", it's just a preference for "held."  If it were an issue at a FAC, I certainly would not hesitate to change it.  I will note that a GOCE did not question the usage at all in his recent copyedit of United States v. Lara - but we'll see what the reviewers at FAC say.   GregJackP   Boomer!   23:39, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Including case citations in the article lead
Hi. During a discussion about ticker symbols in article leads, there was a comparison made to case citations in legal article leads. In short, there's a view that perhaps it would make sense to move the case citation out of the article lead and only mention it in in the infobox. So, for example, Roe v. Wade's lead would change from "Roe v. Wade,, is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion." to "Roe v. Wade is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion."

Any thoughts on this? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:24, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Bad idea. There have been numerous Court opinions with the same name, and the citation is the only way to distinguish those. More broadly, the case name of "Roe v. Wade", for example, identifies the litigation at the SCOTUS stage as a whole. The citation is what pins it down to the actual opinion, which is really the subject of the article and what distinguishes notable SCOTUS cases from nonnotable ones. All of that easily makes ticker symbols a bad comparison, as the stock history and listing of the company is not the main subject of the article. But if there are people pushing for the same treatment just to satisfy some foolish kind of formal consistency, removing the case citation from the lead of SCOTUS articles is harmful to the topic, including the ticker symbol is not, so leaving them both in is the better choice. postdlf (talk) 16:49, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree, though I'll pedantically note that the case citation is not a unique identifier. It is in the vast, vast majority of cases, but I guess for very old cases, some of them shared the same page in the same volume. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:25, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * How many cases before the Supreme Court within a given year have the same name? For the non-legal reader, the case number is meaningless (again like ticker symbols), and if there needs to be a distinguishing feature, then the year can be used (eg. "Roe v. Wade is a 1973 SCOTUS case that...").  The case number and court record link should still be in the infobox, and for other cases that are in play in the discussion of the article, their court numbers can be inline cites.  But the same logic for removing ticker symbols from company articles does apply here - its information that is not needed within the summary of the article. --M ASEM  (t) 17:29, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * You really want those ticker symbols removed, don't you? "not needed" is a rather substance-free way to insist on removing something, particularly after many reasons have been given as to why it is useful. For the non-scientific reader, species scientific names and chemical formulas may also be meaningless. Not a good standard for inclusion vs. non-inclusion. Nor is it good practice to argue for the removal of one thing because you think it helps an argument for the removal of something else. postdlf (talk) 17:53, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Only in the first line of prose on a page that is being read where our average reader (a high-school educated person) is not necessarily going to understand what the abbreviations mean. Latin names of species is a common scheme, and chemical formula are a common scheme that high school students do learn about; ticker symbols and casebook references are not.  Once you are out of the lead, its use is fine but the lead is meant to be the summary, and should avoid introducing specialist information. --M ASEM  (t) 01:11, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't have strong feelings on this, but it seems like a reasonable idea. The case citations aren't helpful for the average reader, and for the specialist they're no more helpful in the lead than in the infobox or elsewhere in the article body.  I would keep the decision date in the first sentence in some form, since it is broadly useful for context.
 * In response to postdlf, I don't think anybody's looking for the sort of formal consistency you're talking about. It's true that this was first raised as [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Ticker_symbols_in_article_leads&diff=522343927&oldid=522339555 an OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument], but it seems worth considering in its own right. —Emufarmers(T/C) 02:11, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think the increased use of infoboxes means it is no longer necessary to include potentially obtrusive details in the first sentence of the lead. Most article leads would appear cleaner with first sentences like those that appear on the main page for today's featured article and other details relegated to the infobox. On the other hand, citation information is key to anyone wanting to cite the case, which would include a lot of lawyers and law students. I'd reckon that citing the case is more likely to be any given reader's goal than looking up a company's stock info. Plus, the citation info is briefer than some information that appears in other leads (e.g., pronunciation of foreign names like Lech Wałęsa). I think disambiguation is a red herring. For one thing, the year is usually enough, and if there's more than one case with the same party names, the year is usually part of the article name. For another, if you've already arrived at such an article, you've probably gotten there via a proper link or a disambiguation page.--Chaser (talk) 00:43, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep I have often gone to case articles and found it very helpful to have a link to the horse's mouth to find out about a case instead of what the article says. Both the citation and the external link are essential. I would suggest that all of these suggestions are appropriate for but not for  Apteva (talk) 01:09, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep I agree 100% that the cite and the external link immediately after the name of the case in the lead are highly functional and consistent with WP:Build the web, especially for the many users who access Wikipedia through one of its stripped-down forks (that exclude infoboxes). There is not an academic law journal where the first mention of a case is not followed immediately by its citation, and not an online law journal that lacks an external link to the case itself (if available online, as all the SCOTUS cases are) in the same place.  Unfortunately there are already many, many examples where the ussc template (with the external link) has been replaced in the lead sentence by the scite template (without the external link), apparently without prior discussion. UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:45, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I would also point out that this talk page has far too narrow a scope to be the appropriate venue for this conversation. The proposer seems to think that U.S. Supreme Court cases are the only cases that have Wikipedia articles. I have added pointers to this conversation to pages with appropriately broader scope and audience. UnitedStatesian (talk) 10:41, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I have mixed feelings about this suggestion. On the one hand, it's true that the citations are useful for lawyers and law students and most of them don't have an external link in the text of the lead, which I would find objectionable.  They are helpful to the extent they differentiate between cases that spawn multiple wikipedia articles with (nearly) identical names, although I couldn't actually find any evidence of that in my admittedly quite cursory search.
 * But the citations are also a bit misleading or confusing, because we have lots of articles that discuss lower court opinions in addition to whatever decision the actual citation references. In other words, while the Wikipedia article is really about the entire case, the citation in the lead implies that only the final opinion is going to be discussed.  For instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newdow_v._United_States_Congress discusses much more than the Supreme Court opinion that's listed as the citation.  It talks about the entire case including two or three Ninth Circuit opinions.  Similarly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_v._Hollingsworth discusses numerous underlying cases separate from the 9th Circuit opinion.  It says that Perry "is a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on February 7, 2012" but that's not actually the scope of the article, really.  I think the citation itself is what causes this misapprehension as to scope.   AgnosticAphid  talk 22:25, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "Difficult cases make bad law." You chose a couple of the few examples in which the case would have been notable even if the Supreme Court never heard it, and in such cases the lower court opinion may end up being of broader reach and greater impact than the SCOTUS decision; many of these cases should probably have multiple articles to cover the separately notable stages and opinions just as we'd split a lengthy biography or history article, with one parent article for the litigation as a whole from start to finish. That's not the case for most SCOTUS opinions, where the real subject and emphasis will be on the opinion itself as a document and its effect, with the factual background and lower court proceedings only important as context for that opinion. postdlf (talk) 22:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:EL reads 'External links should not normally be used in the body of an article.[1] Instead, include appropriate external links in an "External links" section at the end of the article, and in the appropriate location within an infobox, if applicable.' The note reads 'Exceptions are rare. Links to Wiktionary and Wikisource can sometimes be useful. Other exceptions include use of templates like, which produces charts on the Toolserver, and , which is only used when non-free and non-fair use media cannot be uploaded to Wikipedia.' Ticker symbols don't meet these criteria when used in the article's body. I will also note that many cases have these links in the EL section and per WP:ELRC, 'Sites that have been used as sources in the creation of an article should be cited in the article, and linked as references, either in-line or in a references section. Links to these source sites are not "external links" for the purposes of this guideline, and should not normally be duplicated in an external links section.'

The manual of style is quite clear. All these tickers should be either done away or made into inline citations....William 17:57, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * So change the MOS. Or just recognize that just as it says, "Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions." Which is even better, actually. Trying to add everything into the MOS is not possible, nor should it be a goal. Apteva (talk) 05:23, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Slavish application of the MOS seems mis-applied in this context. The Court's opinions are not merely references. They are generally the prime topic of the article. Roe v. Wade is the exception in that there's a lot of context (mostly from after the decision). A lot of our articles are focused just on the Court's decision. Judicial opinions are sui generis.--Chaser (talk) 21:47, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep, these citations are the case's unique identifier and therefore of great importance to professional (legal) readers.  Sandstein   18:02, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. Per postdlf. These citations are important to distinguish similarly-named cases. Lord Roem (talk) 19:27, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. As a beginning law student, I glossed over case citations without having any understanding of their importance. As a practitioner, I am keenly aware of the propensity for different cases to have the same name, and for the same case to generate many different opinions at different levels, some relating to picayune matters far removed from the substantive importance of the case itself. We must consider the community of interest, the users most likely to be obtaining the benefit of looking at cases on Wikipedia. This community is more likely to include law students and lawyers than the community looking at biological genus articles, or complex math articles. bd2412  T 16:13, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. I don't see them as any different from ticker symbols, airport codes, birth and death dates or any other field-relevant parenthetical we include in article ledes. A lay reader can and will glide over them; a legally savvy reader will expect them. Daniel Case (talk) 02:38, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. "Judicial opinions are sui generis." Well said, Chaser.  If you needed to click the wikilink in order to understand the meaning of the phrase, then please pause a moment before throwing yourself to the floor in supplication before the mighty WP:MOS simply "because it says so".  As an editor, one must always keep their primary audience in mind – having said that, I can say with confidence that the "primary audience", or "average reader", if you will, for articles of Wikiproject SCOTUS is an extremely different consumer than those of, say, WikiProject Pokémon.  Where there is an "industry standard" that expects a certain style, that style must take precedence over a generic style guideline.  To do anything else is to risk alienating your audience.  In biology, MOS dictates that that the common vernacular names of species appear in sentence case unless they include proper nouns. Yet those of birds, dragonflies, butterflies and moths (but not other insects) capitalize every word in the name, and I have no problem with that. Why? Because the respective experts in those fields maintain that the "industry standard" dictates a form that goes against MOS – those who adamantly argue that Wikipedia's MOS be the "authoritative voice" to dictate otherwise should assign themselves a little less self-importance.   Groll &tau;ech  ( talk ) 04:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep per postdlf's reasoned arguments. Verkhovensky (talk) 17:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Notability
Is there general agreement that any U.S. Supreme Court decision is inherently notable and worthy of an article? I ask because there are some cases that I'm familiar with and about which I could draft an article from scratch fairly easily&mdash;but they aren't necessariy the Court's best known or most important decisions. (Two that I've been looking at are Connecticut National Bank v. Germain and Things Remembered v. Petrarca, both of which deal with obscure points of bankruptcy procedure, although Germain was interesting in the evolution of the Justices' thinking on use of legislative history for statutory construction). Is this considered useful? Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:27, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I assume you mean Supreme Court opinions, and not merely decisions? Yes, every (modern) SCOTUS opinion is considered notable because they will always pass GNG, a consequence of it being the highest national court and the fact that their cases are almost entirely heard on discretionary review, which means they purposefully select cases that have unresolved legal issues or are otherwise of great import, and they only hand down around 80 such opinions per year. Every AFD on the matter has confirmed this. For opinions prior to 1925, however, you might have to determine it case by case, because there was no such procedural mechanism in place ensuring that they only ruled on significant cases; see Procedures of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judiciary Act of 1925 for context. Sometimes if I want to start a SCOTUS opinion article but don't have the time or the interest to do more than a bare bones summary, I've listed several RS in a "further reading" section, so that way anyone can see that GNG is easily satisfied even though those sources have not yet been used to develop the article. postdlf (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It might be nice to summarize (in a glossary, perhaps) the difference between "case," "opinion," and "decision." Perhaps as a subpage of WP:SCOTUS/R?
 * I'd also like us (this WikiProject) to write a page somewhere explaining the inherent notability of SCOTUS cases. I think it would be helpful to have as a general tool. I previously noted this idea at WP:SCOTUS/P. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, any help in expanding the coverage of U.S. Supreme Court cases is greatly appreciated. :-) I've found that linking to the case names (Connecticut National Bank v. Germain [] and Things Remembered v. Petrarca []) prompts more action (Wikipedians hate the color red). I agree with postdlf that there is inherent notability to any modern opinion of the Court. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Based on this input I will draft a few of these articles when I have a little more time.
 * By "decision" I did mean "opinion." Technically, the term "decision" is not well-defined in Supreme Court parlance. Any official pronouncement of the Court is either an "opinion" or an "order." I agree that opinions (at least modern ones, but probably any) are at least reasonably notable; orders (especially "cert. denied" or pre-1988 unexplained "judgment affirmed"), not necessarily so. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:39, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I hate to nitpick, but an "Opinion of the Court" is when it is a majority opinion (i.e., 9-0, 5-4, etc.). It is a "Judgment of the Court" when it is a plurality decision (i.e. 3 join the opinion, with 2 concurrences, etc.).  Anything else is an order.   GregJackP   Boomer!   22:11, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Technically correct re: "opinion of the Court", but I don't think it's necessarily relevant to the distinction we're making here because any SCOTUS decision in which there was a plurality opinion is going to be notable just as ones with a majority opinion. Are you concerned that someone might argue that they aren't notable just because there was no "opinion of the Court", if we shorthand the distinction with "opinions" as a subset of all SCOTUS decisions or judgments? Do you have a suggestion as to another way to phrase it that would naturally include plurality decisions? postdlf (talk) 18:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should distinguish the types of opinions in the articles and either type is notable. I was probably being overly snarky.  For the purposes of the lay reader, it makes no difference as they won't key to the difference in wording, and anyone involved in the law isn't going to get case information from Wiki (not that the distinction would make much difference there, either).  I probably shouldn't edit after single malts...  GregJackP   Boomer!   00:48, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) GregJackP is correct that there is only an Opinion of the Court when a majority (rather than plurality) of Justices agree. Otherwise a Justice announces the mere "Judgment of the Court"&mdash;but the "Judgment" is not actually a separate document. The actual heading would be something like "Justice Brennan announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which Justice Marshall and Justice Stevens joined."
 * As a matter of hypertechnicality, once cert. is granted in a case (or probable jurisdiction is noted in a case that reaches the Court by appeal), any final disposition of the case will be called an "opinion." Even if it turns out to be a short as "The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted" or "The petitioner having died on X date, the case is dismissed", it will be labelled "per curiam" and published in the Opinions rather than the Orders section of the United States Reports (and, just as importantly, on the Court's website).
 * "Orders" are issued in cases that haven't yet made their way onto the docket (e.g. "cert. denied"), in pending cases (short of final judgment), and at the rehearing stage.
 * And then there are "Opinions relating to orders" and In-chambers opinions, but we'll leave those for another time....... Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Ex Parte Bain
I noticed this redlinked, the issue was that it was widely linked as Ex parte Bain, and there wasn't an appropriate redirect. It was easily fixed, but: Most of our 'Ex parte' case names seem to use a lowercase p, am I right to think that I should move the primary article title to Ex parte Bain, or is there instead some less obvious reason (perhaps some era where common usage was different) we should stick with Ex Parte Bain? Of course I'd leave a redirect either way. --j⚛e deckertalk 21:20, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * It should be Ex parte Bain. Lower case.  The case is actually styled "Ex parte Bain, Jr."  GregJackP   Boomer!   00:40, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Confirming that "Ex parte" rather than "Ex Parte" is the standard usage. (Same for In re.) As a point of information, under the Supreme Court's current rules, the Ex parte form of casename is no longer used. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:46, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Groovy. I've dropped the cap from the title, and adjusted the full infobox case name to include the "Jr."    Thanks!  --j⚛e deckertalk 05:06, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

GA candidate with retired lead editor
Hi folks, I am reviewing United States v. Jackalow which was submitted for WP:GA back in August and has been languishing since. I am mostly satisfied that the article meets most of the GA criteria other than a few places where the prose is unclear and a bit clunky, and some other formatting issues, and some incomplete footnote citations. However, the lead editor appears to have semi-retired in September and hasn't edited much since. Two posts to the editor's talk page have not gotten a response. So the folks at GA talk recommended that I post here to see if someone would like to come in and look at the article, perhaps addressing the issues in the GA review? It seems close enough to GA that I don't want to fail it without taking a real shot at fixing the relatively minor problems it has, but I can't quite pass it yet, either. Any help welcomed there, thanks. Montanabw (talk) 00:59, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Changes to citation parameters of Template:Infobox SCOTUS case
Hi. Template:Infobox SCOTUS case currently uses two template parameters for citations: "Citation" and "CitationNew". The idea behind "CitationNew" was to have a way to include citations for newer cases that didn't yet have a U.S. Reports page. This system kind of sucks, so here's what I'm proposing:


 * "Citation" is aliased to "ParallelCitations", with both template parameters continuing to work;
 * "CitationNew" is killed off completely; and
 * additional logic is added to Template:Infobox SCOTUS case to not auto-link if the volume is greater than 540 (as Justia and OpenJurist and other sites simply don't have working links for the newer volumes).

Does this sound reasonable? "Citation" <--> "ParallelCitations" is mostly a move to improve clarity, as I often see the U.S. Reports citation duplicated in the "Citation" field, when it only needs to be provided via the "USVol" and "USPage" template parameters. Newer cases will use "___" (three underscores) for the "USPage" parameter until it can be properly filled in.

I'm hoping to move fairly quickly on these changes, so if you disagree or have comments or criticisms or other thoughts to share, please do so! --MZMcBride (talk) 01:12, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Sounds good.--Chaser (talk) 02:02, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Cool. I updated the sandbox code (Template:Infobox SCOTUS case/sandbox), added a few test cases (Template:Infobox SCOTUS case/testcases), and wrote a report of cases that are currently using the "CitationNew" parameter (WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Reports/G). The side-by-side comparison at Template:Infobox SCOTUS case/testcases looks good to me (I tested with USVol=541 and with USPage=___). --MZMcBride (talk) 03:26, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I think that "CitationNew" is an unintuitive name for a template field that seems to just be parallel citations. I wonder whether there is really a need for separate fields for the US reports and the rest of the citations, though?  Is there a way to combine them into one field while keeping the US reports citation on a separate line?  It seems like people tend to be inclined to stick the US reports cite into both fields which obviously wouldn't happen if there was only one field.  But I'm no template expert by any means.  AgnosticAphid  talk 16:06, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree. That's why I'm proposing killing off "CitationNew" entirely (which most users seem to think is a newer version of the "Citation" parameter, rather than a template parameter designed for more recent cases) and renaming "Citation" to "ParallelCitations". There is a need for separate fields for the U.S. Reports citation as we re-use those variables (for example, for the "more" link to List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 50) and wikitext templates have very limited string parsing capabilities. If the citations were all within the same template parameter (e.g., Citations=123 U.S. 456; 123 S. Ct. 456), we wouldn't be able to do anything with the individual pieces within that string right now. We'd be stuck with the entire blob of citations. I agree that it's not a completely ideal scenario and I've seen the U.S. Reports citation incorrectly duplicated, but I think that once we clean up the existing articles and switch from "Citation" to "ParallelCitations", the rate of this error will dramatically decrease. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:13, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Makes sense. Thanks for explaining that!   AgnosticAphid  talk 16:24, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * No problem. I'm glad I could help. These changes are now live. I'm gonna try to knock out the entries at WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Reports/G today. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:29, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Alert! Duplication of Guantanamo cases?
Hi, I just came across Al Odah v. United States, an article on a case that was consolidated under Boumediene v. Bush (2008), which is the lead case by which the US Supreme Court ruling is known, as I understand it. The Al Odah article does not use the USSC infobox, nor the standard format. I did some editing on it, but wanted to bring the issue here - it seemed to me that there should not be a separate article under that name, or that it should more directly refer to Boumediene. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to keep these reconciled as two articles. Boumediene v. Bush is really important, and it would be unfortunate if there is too much confusion about this.Parkwells (talk) 01:33, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * My opinion is that if it was consolidated with Boumediene, only that case should show the SCOTUS information, with Al Odah incorporated into the history. If we keep the Al Odah article, it needs to be reduced to the Circuit Court opinion and then linked to the SCOTUS case.  I would tend to turn the Al Odah article into a redirect.  Of course, this is JMO.   GregJackP   Boomer!   02:07, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with Greg above. I believe that's our current practice with these pages, like the healthcare case where there's one page for the single SCOTUS decision, though it was two or three consolidated cases. -- Lord Roem ~ (talk) 03:56, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that's what I thought, too. After all, Brown v. Board of Education consolidated some cases.Parkwells (talk) 17:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it should be possible to have an article about the lower-court proceedings in Al Odah before the cases were consolidated. But the article doesn't seem to really discuss those proceedings; it's focused on the SCOTUS proceedings which it seems like people would be much more likely to try to find under the Boumediene name.  So I think the best thing to do would be to put the Al Odah SCOTUS proceedings and related information in the Boumediene article and severely truncate or delete the Al Odah article until someone gets around to writing something substantial about the lower court proceedings in that case.  YMMV.  AgnosticAphid  talk 02:42, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Be wary of Oyez.org's dates
Hi. Oyez.org is generally a fairly good site/cite, but currently there's some kind of glitch that's screwing up the dates listed in the sidebar for a lot of justices' entries. For example, Samuel Alito's term started January 31, 2006. His Oyez.org biography even says so in the body text, but in the sidebar it's listed as January 30 (twice). The same is true for many other justices that I've checked (e.g., Ruth Bader Ginsburg is listed as August 9, 1993 currently, when her term clearly started on August 10, 1993).

Please be cautious of any information you pull from Oyez.org currently. If anyone has any contacts over there, please implore them to correct their system. Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:16, 22 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for noting this. I'm the tech lead for Oyez. We've fixed the issue with justice dates. Thanks. Mgruhn (talk) 21:37, 22 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Sweet, thanks! :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 06:50, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Case citation redirects
Hi. I've been chugging away at WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Reports/D, creating case citation redirects (after verifying that they're accurate, a few are not).

The redirects I'm currently creating are in the form of 5 U.S. 137. I'm wondering if anyone has views about the form 5 US 137. A few cases already have redirects in "undotted" form, but I'm still trying to figure out if it really makes sense to support both forms for links, searching, etc. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * When I remember to do it, I use both dotted and undotted. Some won't add the periods, and since lexis and westlaw take it either way, I just thought it was the way to do it.   GregJackP   Boomer!   04:36, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * What about 5 U. S. 137? Or 5 US 137? Or 2 L. Ed. 60? Or 2 L.Ed. 60? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I've never used the L. Ed. citations, and I don't know anyone that does. Of course, I've only been practicing for 18 months. I'd say the 5 US 137 is helpful if it can be done by bot, overkill by hand. But if someone's willing to do the handiwork, more power to them.--Chaser (talk) 22:05, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

WP U.S. Supreme Court Cases in the Signpost
The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court Cases for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to SCOTUS cases and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 13:09, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

It looks like WikiProject SCOTUS will be featured in the upcoming issue: Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-11/WikiProject report. Thanks to both BD2412 and agradman for volunteering to answer these questions. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 00:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate - FA nomination
Freedom for the Thought That We Hate is currently a candidate for consideration of Featured Article quality status. The discussion page is at Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1.
 * Freedom for the Thought That We Hate

Thank you for your time, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 04:39, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

GA nomination for Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association
I've nominated Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association for GA status, and I'd appreciate an informed reviewer. Please have a look and maybe write a review. Thanks, BDD (talk) 18:27, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Ex parte Crow Dog is on the main page!
Cool. Someone should give GregJackP a barnstar or something.--Chaser (talk) 06:28, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Kudos to all involved. A truly enjoyable read. Woodshed (talk) 09:05, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Menominee Tribe v. United States FAC
Menominee Tribe v. United States is currently undergoing a Featured Article Candidate review at Featured article candidates/Menominee Tribe v. United States/archive3. I would invite anyone interested in going by, looking at the article, and if inclined, adding your comments. Regards. GregJackP  Boomer!   15:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe Peer Review
This article has been submitted for a peer review in preparation for a run at Featured Article. Any assistance would be appreciated. GregJackP  Boomer!   04:08, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl FAC
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is currently undergoing a Featured Article Candidate review at Featured article candidates/Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl/archive1. I would invite anyone interested in going by, looking at the article, and if inclined, adding your comments. Regards. GregJackP  Boomer!   19:46, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

United States v. Microsoft Corp.
While not a SCOTUS case, project members may be interested. A second request to move this article from United States v. Microsoft Corp. has been opened. A previous move request was closed 45 days ago with the move to the current title. Interested editors may weigh in at Talk:United States v. Microsoft Corp.. Regards, GregJackP   Boomer!   06:50, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Multiple decisions
[moved from Template talk:Infobox SCOTUS case#Multiple decisions]

There is a case, Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board, that had a subsequent Supreme Court decision. Should it get a separate article? Or should it be treated as the same case that was re-argued or what? Int21h (talk) 20:50, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I would think handled in the same article until there's enough content to split it out into Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board (1956) and Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board (1961). I'm trying to think of a good example. The Anna Nicole Smith case doesn't count since the two cases had different names (Marshall v. Marshall and Stern v. Marshall). Mackensen (talk) 20:57, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * One problem with splitting the article would be that, at the moment, I am not sure each section could, or should, stand on its own. The reference I have ("May it Please the Court", 1993) cites the 1956 case as the landmark case, but only for leading to the second (1960) and other decisions as decisions that defanged the snake so to speak. Int21h (talk) 23:17, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, felt this discussion was more properly suited for here, so I moved it. Hope you don't mind. There are a number of anomalies (or outliers or whatever you want to call them) like this. I've been tripping across them in the generation of SCOTUS-related reports. I personally like when it's a clean one-to-one relationship between a case citation and a Wikipedia case article, but mostly as it makes these reports easier to generate. ;-) The reality is that it's always a judgment call based on the history of the case, its coverage, and how much research people are willing/able to do. Lame answer, I realize, but that seems to be current consensus in this area. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)


 * No, I do not mind (my mother can attest to that.) I saw these "reports" not too long ago, but I do not know what they are for... Are they just consensus building exercises/aids?


 * As to the situation at hand, I think it may turn on the question: are the articles and infoboxes about cases, events, or decisions? Cases are often composed of multiple decisions, from multiple courts and often separate, sovereign jurisdictions. An event may spawn multiple cases that can be viewed as separate, with a rather weak nexus being the event or series of events in question, or even just a party to the case. What the focus is often turns on what those professors, practitioners, armchair attorneys, and the mass media have chosen focus on, as these "conversations" are often what brings the matter to the attention of the populace, and what spawns our sources, the lifeblood of Wikipedia. Int21h (talk) 00:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Template changes
This is to document a couple of things that have changed recently: Note: Both of these were done because users (including me) familiar with the correct usage have stumbled over them as they were editing, not (just) because they did not comply with WP:DASH. —&#91;  Alan M 1  (talk) &#93;— 22:24, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I noticed that the external links to term opinions (slip opinions, Per Curiams, etc.) for articles like List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 567 were pointing to this page, which always is the latest term (in this case 2012, not 2011). Other such links were mis-capitalized, mis-spelled, etc.So, I created SCOTUS term for US volume which takes a single parameter – the US Reports volume number – and "returns" the two-digit year of the relevant SCOTUS term. This is then used by SCOTUSLinks to produce the correct link (e.g. ) for volumes 540–569 (years 2003–2012, for which the term opinions are available). I then removed the incorrect links from the individual List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume vvv articles (which transclude SCOTUSLinks to produce their External links sections).As new volumes and years occur, they will need to be coded in SCOTUSLinks and SCOTUS term for US volume. (Is there a list of such articles and templates to be updated each year somewhere?)
 * Some of the templates correctly used an endash as a separator and some used a hyphen. For consistency, I moved the hyphen-separated templates to endash-separated names (with redirects automatically created from the hyphenated names), and edited any references to them to correctly use endashes (avoiding the redirects, mostly from transclusions into the individual justices' articles).As documented at, Infobox SCOTUS case and Infobox SCOTUS case/courts now accept either endash- or hyphen-separated year ranges, and the doc has been modified to suggest the endash instead of the hyphen. Because they are used by thousands of articles, it's not practical to abandon the existing hyphenated usage, and the replacement was determined to add very little processing time to the pages. The talk page section identifies some additional areas that may need tidying up.

Ussc template and Justia links
As reported over 2 years ago, the widely-used external link template to Justia (by default) for SCOTUS cases since 2003 doesn't work.

For US Reports volumes through 539, the link is based on volume and page number, and works correctly (e.g. ). However, for volumes 540 and up (October term 2003, forward), it results in a Page not Found error because these later cases now require a link based on the volume and docket number (not page) (e.g. ).

Note the original report drew the line at volume 544, and was explained as those volumes having not yet been bound (even though they were over 6 years old?), but this seems unlikely to change if it hasn't yet for cases as much as 9 years old.

So, it seems Ussc needs to either point somewhere else by default (do the other law sites work correctly with vol/page#?) or we need a template to convert vol/page to vol/docket for known cases starting @ vol 540 and to call it from Ussc for those cases. I suggest another template because this mapping might be useful elsewhere (like to put docket numbers in articles that don't currently have them). Does this sound like the correct solution? It does seem that Ussc still needs to support the vol/page citation style if that's what's still being used in the legal world. —&#91;  Alan M 1  (talk) &#93;— 02:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


 * What would be the effect of redirecting that template to a different site?--Chaser (talk) 21:21, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Original jurisdiction cases
On a related matter, in investigating this, I stumbled on the case Virginia v. Maryland,, which is apparently an original jurisdiction case, with just a plain number – 129 – instead of a yy-nnnn docket number. —&#91;  Alan M 1  (talk) &#93;— 02:42, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The case number (129) does not appear in our article (but probably should, as it's likely to be required to create the link to Justia), nor is there any mention that it is original jurisdiction, which seems significant.
 * Ussc needs to handle these OJ cases, too. It's not clear what the link format is, since I can't find the case using Justia's search for various combinations of the case name, year, volume, number, etc..
 * Infobox SCOTUS case's doc says there is an yes param, but there is no further description of this param, nor is it used in its code.The only other relevant mention of "Original" in the template is in code that adds a header "Original Jurisdiction" if the Outcome param is present. Outcome is not documented at all.
 * The "OriginalJurisdiction" template parameter apparently got lost in this edit. Not sure why. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Lower Court Cases
Does this project ever do lower court cases at all? If not, is there a similar project that does? I ask because most of the court cases I've found on Wikipedia have been Supreme Court cases, and so far, I've found it easiest to just use a Supreme Court case as a template for an article I want to write on a lower court case. I'm just wondering what the right way to go about things is here... Cooljeanius (talk) (contribs) 20:45, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for Citation field
[moved from Template talk:Infobox SCOTUS case#Proposal for Citation field]

I think we should modify the citation field. Assuming "VVV" is the volume of the US reporter and "PPP" is the page number, right now we have something like:

Currently, VVV is not linked to anything, U.S. is linked to United States Reports, PPP is an external link to the opinion, and (more) is linked to the List of Cases in VVV volume.


 * First, let me suggest that we remove (more), and simply make VVV link to List of Cases in VVV volume. I think this is more natural: its not exactly clear what (more) will take you to when you click on it.  I've clicked on it a couple times expecting to see the parallel cites.  If your looking for the contents or a description of Volume VVV, you're more likely to click on VVV.


 * Second, let me suggest that we fill the space cleared by erasing (more) with a collapsible list "[show]":
 * {| class="wikitable" width=200px

VVV U.S. PPP

another citation and another and another and sometimes another; and sometimes even more obscure ones'''
 * }


 * This second move allows us to do two things: (1) it hides some information that may be useful, but really isn't too important and makes important info harder to find. For instance, (on my browser at least) if you go to National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, you can immediately see without scrolling that the case can be cited to "53 Employee Benefits Cas. (BNA) 1513" and "23 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 480" . . . but you can't see the holding or how the court voted.  (2) it will give us additional space to put breaks in between the citations to make them more readable.  Right now, they often run on and jumble together, leaving a confusing mess of letters and numbers which are particularly indecipherable to non-lawyer readers.


 * Frankly, I think it would be best to find a collapsible list that uses [more] instead of [show], but I'm not sure if it exists.

I'd like to know what people think before I embark on the excruciating process of learning template syntax sufficiently to make changes.Erudy (talk) 01:24, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi.
 * There are a few competing issues you're presenting, which makes discussion of them kind of difficult. I'm going to try to split this out a bit more cleanly.
 * Should we have a "(more)" link next to citations?
 * This was originally added as a compromise because "List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume XXX" was being added to every "See also" section, as I recall.
 * Should we make "VVV" (of "VVV U.S. PPP") link to "List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume XXX"?
 * How many parallel citations should we include with an article?
 * Not everyone agrees with including every possible parallel citation. There's discussion of this in the archives of this talk page.
 * Should citations be listed so prominently (i.e., so high up) in the infobox)?
 * Should parallel citations be collapsed by default, using some JavaScript?
 * If we can find a consensus on these points, I'd be happy to help you change the infobox code. There's a test page at Template:Infobox SCOTUS case/sandbox that should be used as a staging ground for proposed changes, of course. It may make sense to re-order the infobox sections or change around how we present the data to users. This is all certainly possible. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:43, 4 March 2013 (UTC)


 * No, not when it functions only as it does now, being a non intuitive link to the table of contents of VVV. Yes, if it is the collapsible list as I propose.
 * Yes, I think this is a no-brainer, especially when we already have "U.S." as a link, and "PPP" as a link.
 * If we hide the parallel cites, we can have plenty (and, being less space constrained, we can give each its own line, which will further increase clarity). If we can't/don't hide them, I would advocate maybe only two.
 * The actual placing of the citation field up or down on the infobox is I think a separate issue from my proposal, although I can see why you include it. If the citation is placed further down, it makes my concerns less pressing.  On the other hand, for lawyer types this is key information (like me, they may just be looking for a cite to plug into Westlaw/Lexis), and I'm guessing that the audience for a the vast majority of these articles is lawyers or people with legal knowledge.  I think it should stay at its current place, but with my proposal implemented (which will also make my concerns less pressing :)
 * Yes. It would be really awesome if we could have some sort of smart Javascript that "senses" when more than two cites are listed, and then automatically creates the drop down.  Some cases might not have more than two cites, in which case clicking "[More]" or "[Show]" would result in you seeing just one more cite...that's a bit of a waste.
 * That's my take on these issues. Thanks MZMcBride, you rock on doing the coding for this template.Erudy (talk) 18:29, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm happy to help. This is now mostly done at Template:Infobox SCOTUS case/testcases. There are two issues to resolve, as I see it: Let me know what you think. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:29, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Do we want the [more] link to float to the right as it does now?
 * 2) * If not, it'll likely take a bit of finagling to get the [more] link directly next to the primary citation.
 * 3) Do we want individual parallel citations to each be on their own line?
 * 4) * If so, should the individual parallel citations use bullets? The concern is that individual parallel citations (e.g., "2012-2 U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) P50,423" will be too long to fit on one line.
 * 5) * Can we assume that no individual parallel citation will use ";" inside of it? Otherwise, I'm not sure how to delimit individual parallel citations.

Related screenshot:. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I think that the location of the [more] link is fine either way...floating to the right or directly next to the original cite.
 * I think the individual cites should be on their own line for clarity. I can't think of any cites that would include a semicolon, I think that is a pretty safe way to machine divide them.  I do understand the concern about especially long cites running into a second line.  A bullet is probably better than nothing, although there is maybe a little bit of visual clutter.  Another solution might be an indent on the second line (see crude mockup below).  But I don't know if that's technically feasible and if it would really be better.

"Indent Option" "Bullet Option"


 * Erudy (talk) 15:33, 24 April 2013 (UTC)