Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Archive 6

Case assessments
I've just finished going through all the Start class articles and reassessing them. I've change quite a few to C class articles and a few to B class. I'll probably continue with the stubs, a few of which I've notice should be promoted. My real question is why there are so many B class articles and so few Good and A class articles. Maybe we can go through the B class articles and find a few candidates for promotion and make a team effort to push a few over the top. I think the largest problem is the absence of citations in many articles. That means going through the cases and finding the citations, which I know can be tedious, but which is really necessary. Suggestions?--Cdogsimmons (talk) 04:44, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been going through some of these cases. The biggest, most glaring issue I see right now is a complete lack of standardization. Headers are different everywhere. Introductions are different everywhere. There's no consistency anywhere. I'd be interested in helping formulate (and then execute!) a standardized layout. (I realize this isn't really related to your post.) Any thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 09:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm all for standardization. I just think it's a shame that there is only one case article that is ranked as a "featured article" and no "A" class articles. Considering that there are over 250 articles ranked as "B" class, I don't think it should be that hard to focus on a few that are close with a group effort. It just means deciding which cases to focus on. Obviously we all have our own interests in the law. Mine happens to be the First Amendment so I'd love to see Brandenburg v. Ohio, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, and New York Times Co. v. United States be promoted. However, other very important articles might be closer to a "Good article" level like Bush v. Gore or Dred Scott v. Sandford. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cdogsimmons (talk • contribs)
 * Well, you seem to be focusing on the big picture while I'm focusing on the smaller one. :-) But the two actually work well together. Getting an article featured would likely create a layout that can be emulated for all of the other articles.... --MZMcBride (talk) 19:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess we should look at our only featured article then, Roe v. Wade, and see why it endured as a featured article, while the others failed.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 19:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd like to gut the subject-space page a bit. Specifically, the outline versus the alternate outline need to be replaced with a unified form for SCOTUS cases. At the moment I'm mostly curious if anybody cares or if I should just be bold. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Dispute on SCOTUS case
Just to let you know that there is a dispute on this SCOTUS case, Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc. (see talk page). Third opinions welcomed... Cheers, --Edcolins (talk) 21:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * tl;dr? --MZMcBride (talk) 16:23, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. &mdash; Delievered by §hepBot  ( Disable )  on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

DYK Hook problems
I've been trying to get an article I did some work on, Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, into the Did You Know section on the main page but the hook that I created is too long. The discussion is at Template_talk:Did_you_know. I don't know how to shorten it any further while still adequately representing the holding of the case. Any suggestions people might have would be appreciated.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 00:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts
This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the  parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:47, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

A question on USR
I find that the cases listed as being in United States Reports are all formatted as Supreme Court cases (Infobox, templates, the heading of the navigation template for USR says they are all Supreme Court cases, etc.), despite the fact that many of the early cases (Including all of Volume 1) have nothing to do with the Supreme Court, and some are even from before the United States existed! Is this intentional? EG. does the fact that a court cases is in USR cause it to be grandfathered in as a Supreme Court case? Thanx, 76.117.247.55 (talk) 20:53, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You're talking about lists articles such as List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 1, which list the contents of the United States Reports. You're right that the earliest volumes contained other materials besides SCOTUS cases.  Of course that doesn't make those other reported decisions SCOTUS decisions just because of where they are reported.  You raise a valid concern about accuracy; the standardized form of these list articles focuses on SCOTUS because that's why they were created, to list all SCOTUS cases.  So what's the best solution?  Rename all to List of opinions published in volume X of the United States Reports?  "Opinions" is preferable to "cases," btw, because we are only bothering to list opinions; we're not merely listing all cases that are decided without opinions (such as the many thousands of denials of certiorari, which do get listed in the U.S. Reports).  Postdlf (talk) 21:41, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Just a note to say that if a new naming scheme is chosen, please have a script do it. It's pure silliness to have a human move 545+ pages (especially when a script can do it in seconds). :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:14, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I've added a note to WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/to do about this. I noticed that some of them have useful holdings given in the infobox even though they aren't SCOTUS; maybe spinning off a template from Template:SCOTUSCase for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania would be appropriate. (As it stands, having the infobox say SCOTUS is a direct factual error, that should be corrected.) --Closeapple (talk) 18:04, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation
Upon rolling the dice at Special:Random, I ended up at List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 194. I note that the two entries that aren't redlinks both actually point to the wrong article, and should be redlinks; Gibson v. United States is about a similarly-named case from 1946, and The United States points, well, to where you would expect it to point. I was going to change the links back to redlinks with better titles, when I realized that this (duplicate case names) probably happens all the time (especially the The United States title, I bet), and you folks probably already have a disambiguation system, and I might as well not try to reinvent the wheel.

So, for Supreme Court cases like this, if two case share a title, do you disambiguate with the year of the decision? The citation number? Since the current Gibson v. United States is the only one with an article, it would be silly to move it to Gibson v. United States (1946), right? At least until the other Gibson case gets an article?

My instinct would be to change the link for the 1904 case to Gibson v. United States (1904), and the The United States ruling to The United States (1904 Supreme Court case), and leave the current Gibson v. United States where it is. Should I follow that instinct, or is there a system? Or (seeing as how they're all redlinks anyway) is this early enough in your project that I shouldn't waste my time with this stuff, and you all will get to it eventually, in a more systematic way? --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Disambiguation is usually used when two articles want to share a name, but can't. Obviously links are a problem, too, but these lists probably get more traffic from Special:random than anything else. That said, if you want to fix them, by date seems to be the standard. But there are over 500, so developing some sort of bot to determine whether there's more than one incoming link to each name would be the way to go (excluding already existing articles, perhaps?). MZMcBride would be the one to ask about that, but I'm not sure he'll think it's worth it for every list. I don't.--chaser - t 02:39, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, we've known about that issue since the lists were created. Someone even went through at some point and added notes to the talk page for some of the lists. (Why they didn't just fix them is a bit bizarre to me....) And others have spot-corrected some of them. It might be possible to go through each and correct them, though I'm not particularly inclined. The convention for conflicting titles is to add the year at the end. That's fairly standardized as far as I'm aware. What really needs to be done is to go through each list, add decision dates and verify case names and such. But with 30,000 cases, it's a bit of a chore, to say the least. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:45, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the replies. I'll go ahead and fix the two I found, just because (now that I know about them) it would annoy me if I just left them there. But I'll defer to this project, and to a future bot, to think about and fix the rest more systematically. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:19, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Case citation links
There is a thread regarding our (and others') longstanding convention to link case citations in the first few words of our articles to the article on case citations. Please contribute your thoughts as to whether such links should be removed here.--chaser (talk) 14:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I actually started that practice. The idea was that non-lawyers might find case citation forms to be somewhat aliens, so we should give them some guidance as to their meaning. Perhaps, as we add articles on the Federal Reporter volumes, we should just link to those instead. bd2412  T 15:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's what I'd prefer as well, I've posted a comment in favor at the above talk page. Postdlf (talk) 15:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * /me waves. Good to see everyone. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 16:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation
This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 06:39, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Allison Engine v. United States ex rel. Sanders
President Obama today signed a bill (the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act) which, among other things, amends the False Claims Act to reverse the Court's ruling last year in Allison. It would be timely if someone could come up with an article about this case. (Near as I can tell, none of the Court's False Claims Act cases have been written up; Allison is merely the most recent. There's another one on the docket this year.)  121a0012 (talk) 02:47, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I started the Allison article, although I don't know if I'll have time to do any more work on it than that. 121a0012 (talk) 05:14, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

United States v. Santos
The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 also reverses the limitation on clarifies the definition of proceeds in the money-laundering statute pronounced considered in United States v. Santos. I think that makes four times so far this Congress in which the Roberts court's statutory construction has been reversed disputed by Congress. In any event, if someone could write that article, I'd be most grateful. There's a Congressional Research Service report about the issue at (PDF). 121a0012 (talk) 05:38, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Slight corrections 121a0012 (talk) 05:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability of SCOTUS decisions
Are all SCOTUS decisions inherently notable? This question came up at Articles for deletion/Douglas v. City of Jeannette and I originally argued for the notabiity of all SCOTUS decisions. However, on reflection, I realized that I've seen some SCOTUS decisions that don't seem to be worth much of a Wikipedia article (basically ones that say "Eh, appeals court is wrong, go back and look at it again" but don't really have any effect on constitutional law). --Richard (talk) 05:46, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I made a proposal on this question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law. I think that the inclusion of the same case in two or more textbooks indicates that it is sufficiently notable to merit inclusion in the encyclopedia. Also a case that generates a law review article which is predominately about that case, or which is referenced in a half-dozen articles by different authors, should be deemed notable. Of course, appellate cases that receive substantial coverage in news media are likely notable as well. I have propose the following point system:
 * A case will need ten points to be deemed sufficiently notable to merit inclusion.
 * Reproduction in a casebook is worth five points.
 * Mention as a note case in a casebook is worth two points.
 * Being the main subject of a law review article is worth five points.
 * Being referenced in a law review is worth two points.
 * Being the subject of a substantial news story is worth five points.
 * Being mentioned in a national news story is worth two points.
 * Being cited as authority by the Supreme Court in an unrelated case is worth one point (this may need some fine-tuning depending on how it is mentioned).
 * Cheers! bd2412  T 06:05, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The foregoing seems to me to be more trouble than it's worth. Suppose we have an article about Jones v. Smith that says, essentially, "In this decision the Supreme Court said, 'Eh, appeals court is wrong, go back and look at it again.'"  I don't see the problem.  Some readers will be glad to know that no new ground was broken, so if they've seen a reference to the case, they can ignore.  Others may find it valuable to know that, as of that date at least, the Court ducked the chance to tackle the issue.  Wikipedia as a whole doesn't benefit if editors spend time trying to decide whether the article qualifies (whether or not they use BD2412's scale).  We're better off just keeping a terse article like that one and spending our time improving other articles. JamesMLane t c 21:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * BD2412: what decisions of the Supreme Court aren't mentioned in some national news story? (Indeed, several national news stories for each one.)  More generally, recent SCOTUS decisions are likely to pass WP:V easily in nearly every case, so I would suggest any specific notability guideline needs to be tailored more towards the the likelihood that a case can support a reasonably informative (non-stub) article over the long term.  I suspect (although I wouldn't go so far as Mr. Lane) that any case the current court finds certworthy ought to be considered notable on that basis alone, given how small a fraction of cert petitions is granted these days.  So, is there an objective standard to identify which (if any) of these cases are unlikely to sustain a complete article?  I'm having trouble coming up with one, particularly with so few death-penalty habeas cases now making it to the full court.  That's probably where I would look, though: criminal cases in which the court affirms the judgment below without enunciating any new test or principle of law.  (Surely there must be some!)  Maybe some obscure statutory-interpretation cases, where the issues considered by the court are of such narrow interest as to make it difficult or impossible to explain in plain English.  Cases where the court fails decide the legal question on which cert was granted because one of the parties lacks standing.  121a0012 (talk) 01:25, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you overestimate the popularity of SCOTUS cases. A handful of cases on hot-button issues get substantial coverage, but many cases on fine points of ERISA or bankruptcy or the like spark no such national interest. Moreover, remember that the Supreme Court did not always have certiorari jurisdiction. Up until the 1920s, appeals were taken to the Supremes as of right, and need not even have had any particular importance to anyone but the litigants. bd2412  T 01:52, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe that today, you can find national publications that specifically cover the sorts of issues you mention (nearly every other obscure corner of the law is someone's specialty these days) and probably would write about those sorts of decisions. (And that's not even getting into the stuff law firms publish for the benefit of their clients.)  I don't think any Supreme Court decision of the modern era is likely to fail WP:V.  As for the jurisdiction question, I think it's quite clear that different guidelines need to be formulated for older cases, taking into account both subsequent developments and the mandatory nature of the court's jurisdiction.  121a0012 (talk) 02:59, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. I don't know. I feel like the notability is often in the eye of the beholder. Plus, using this scale could under-represent cases that have been overturned which are no longer used in present day casebooks but which still have historical import. I also think having a bright line rule that all SCOTUS cases are per se notable removes questions regarding whether they deserve articles. I would say that there at least should probably be a decision, in other words, no articles about denial of certs by the court. I will also say that Douglas v. City of Jeannette is a significant as an early 1st Amendment case and should obviously never have been nominated for deletion due to its precedential value. The complaints about vagueness could easily have been fixed with only minor effort. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 03:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

All SCOTUS opinions should be considered notable, not all SCOTUS "cases," as "case" refers to a whole litigation from start to finish. Most of the thousands of cases that reach (or reach for) the Supreme Court every year are resolved by unelaborated, summary decisions: denied or dismissed certiorari petitions, GVRs...those are only of informational value as aggregate statistics. It's the bench opinions that we're interested in and that our articles are about. Postdlf (talk) 02:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you. That was the point that I was trying to make but didn't have the legalese to express. --Richard (talk) 03:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I would still contend that pre-certiorari era opinions are not inherently notable, since many were simply appeals as of right, and were swiftly disposed of. I'd give more leeway to post-certiorari era opinions (presuming we are eliminating denials of cert and "dismissed as improvidently granted" cases), but I still would not call any of them automatically notable. Easily demonstrable as notable perhaps (and given the wide range of specialty journals, I think you'll find that almost all recent opinions would end up being included under my proposed scale). bd2412  T 04:28, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Denials of cert. aren't handled through opinions, just summary orders. Dismissals of cert. are listed among the bench opinions, but those have no substantive content, so they're easy to distinguish.  The lists of opinions by justice for each term (e.g., 2008 term United States Supreme Court opinions of Antonin Scalia) can handle the opinions relating to orders, to list and briefly summarize, so there's no basis for giving those separate articles.  Postdlf (talk) 15:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: Make a decision regarding notability of these cases and then bring it to the whole community for consensus. Also, I know it is beyond the scope of this project, but what about cases from high courts in other countries? Drawn Some (talk) 08:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd use the same point system - for all cases, from all courts, at all levels, from all countries. bd2412  T 08:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

How easy is it for people without free Lexis or Westlaw accounts to access law review articles? I'd rather we took an eventualist stance on SCOTUS bench opinions (setting aside the pre-certiorari issue for the moment)&mdash;we shouldn't have to demonstrate up front that the opinion has been commented on in law review articles because 1) we can presume it will be and 2) we have easy and immediate access to the opinion itself the day it is handed down, but far fewer of us can access the law reviews. Another consideration is that when an opinion is cited to, described, explained, etc., in a subsequent opinion, that subsequent opinion is arguably a secondary source for that earlier opinion. Postdlf (talk) 15:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not too hung up on the secondary source issue, at least for modern cases. Today, all the Supreme Court opinions issued are accompanied by an official syllabus, which is itself a secondary source for the opinion.  Even for earlier SCOTUS cases without an official syllabus (or for cases from other jurisdictions that do not include official syllabi), the unofficial syllabi and headnotes as included in West publications and Lexis retrievals are secondary. TJRC (talk) 16:09, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * all actual decided cases there are  notable; the current and recent ones are each of them as important both in terms of law and history as anything else that goes on in the country.  They are always commented on in future years--the very purpose of the SC (or any such court) is not just to make a final decision on the specific cases as to make precedents that can be referred to. The trivial matters don't come there, at least in modern times. I think it would extend back to the beginning--although the very early commercial cases may be intrinsically unimportant in terms of the interests involved, they were the basis of US law. The less important cases in earlier years may get shorter articles, but they should nonetheless get articles. It will be easier to include them all, than to decide which to include. Remember that the standard of notability in WP is deliberately much less than historic. Not all these cases are of historic importance to general history. But that's a different stanfdards. We wouldn';t include them in an elementary textbook, but this is a comprehensive encyclopedia.
 * denial of cert I agree is not notable at the same level, & similarly . I am not sure I would extend the same principle to the final decisions of all the State courts of final jurisdiction and the Circuit courts of Appeals, at least not immediately. i think we might eventually want to. DGG (talk) 03:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Copyright status of SCOTUS decisions
Another question that came up at Articles for deletion/Douglas v. City of Jeannette. Are SCOTUS decisions in the public domain? I assume they are because they are effectively products of the U.S. government. However, Findlaw.com puts a copyright notice on the web page of each SCOTUS decision that they make available online. Does the copyright notice apply to the text of the SCOTUS decision or only to the other elements on the web page? --Richard (talk) 05:49, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Definitely and utterly in the public domain. There is a doctrine which states that all reported decisions, whether by state or federal courts, are PD based on the right of the citizen to know what the law is. Federal court decisions are, of course, also PD as U.S. government work product. Findlaw can only copyright its peculiar presentation and add-ons (although even this is suspect). bd2412  T 05:55, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Copyright status of Duke Law. :)
Hi. Kansas v. Colorado was tagged for copyright concerns on May 28th and came due for closure at WP:CP today. A contributor that I would presume to be well experienced removed the tag, but since he didn't explain why in his edit summary or (that I've seen) elsewhere, I'm uncertain of the reason. Since it relates to a Supreme Court case, I presume the material may be PD. I've tried to verify that the text represents a PD summary of the case, but so far I've only been able to find it at Duke Law. (Its foundational edit indicates "Added article. Direct copy from http://www.law.duke.edu/publiclaw/supremecourtonline/certgrants/2004/kanvcol.html.") I don't see a licensing release at Duke Law or indication there that the summary was copied from a PD source. I've restored the copyvio tag, just until I could verify that the material is usable. I've asked the contributor, but since s/he doesn't seem to edit routinely, though to request feedback here, too, in case it could expedite matters. If the material is PD, the article doesn't need to be blanked unnecessarily. Help determining the status of this text would be much appreciated so I can mark the ticket accordingly. Thanks. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like a copyvio to me. I have removed the offending text. --Richard (talk) 15:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll mark this one done. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Headers in case articles
We've never firmly established any type of firm guideline for headers in a case article. I'm proposing something like this:
 * Background information (perhaps instead just "Procedural history" or just "Background")
 * Issues presented (optional, is there better wording for this?)
 * Court's decision (might be too ambiguous, thoughts?)
 * X's dissent (if applicable)
 * Y's dissent (if applicable)
 * Subsequent history (if applicable)
 * See also (optional)
 * References (optional)
 * External links

Any opinions on this would be welcome. I'm (hopefully) going to start the standardization process™ soon, so I don't want to implement anything that's problematic or objectionable. Feel free to modify the list above or make your own below. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I've always preferred "Background of the case". The "issues presented" is probably going to be just a restatement of the issues for which cert. was granted, which makes for bad article prose (usually a long, lawyerly, convoluted sentence). At best it's going to be redundant to the summary in the "background of the case" (which should have already made clear the legal issues in the case), and/or redundant to the "holdings" section of the infobox, so I'd prefer if the "issues presented" section were omitted. "Subsequent history" should instead be "subsequent developments," for what happened factually after the Supreme Court's decision, and "subsequent jurisprudence," for caselaw developments in that area of law and/or facts. "Subsequent history" is used in the infobox to refer only to further procedural steps in the case (i.e., on remand), so re-using it for a different purpose in the article prose would be confusing. Postdlf (talk) 20:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like some others to weigh in. I started randomly sampling the current case articles. They're a mess. Once we iron out the structure, I'll start going through them. Should be a fun summer project. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:53, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't forget the concurrences! I do prefer to have an "issue" section for the benefit of law students looking for IRAC (or FIRACT) in our articles. We'd like to be useful for law students, which will make law students more useful to us! I'd like to see the above schema at work on a live article. Cheers! bd2412  T 20:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Given the complexity of some of these rulings, I'm beginning to think it may be best to shift from X's dissent or Y's concurrence to something like "Concurring opinions" and "Dissenting opinions." As for an issues section, I can see an argument either way. I think a separate section for what is usually one or two sentences is a bit silly. Perhaps it would be better to simply put it at the beginning of the "Opinion of the Court" section? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:33, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * As a subsection? I like that. Titling it "legal issues presented" and keeping it brief would keep it useful to IRAC followers but set it off as legal information perhaps not of interest to the general public. Alternatively, it could be stuffed into the infobox. Otherwise, I'm happy with the consensus forming above.--chaser (talk) 23:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently we're already useful to law students. Some of my classmates were chatting about how they used our articles to understand the con law cases we read last semester. Must be all the capable lawyers we have writing around here! :-) --chaser (talk) 23:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Chaser updated the subject-space page to reflect current best practices for article outlines. It looks good to me; I made a few minor tweaks and we should be finished with this piece soon. Next up, standardizing all 1600 case articles. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposed cleanup to the prose in the outline
This proposal is related but distinct: I would like to condense the prose style at WikiProject_U.S._Supreme_Court_cases. With two exceptions, my proposals are stylistic not substantive.

Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 04:32, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) the text in the   box reflects what I normally paste into articles, and DIFFERS from the headers in the original outline, which still appear below it.  This is just because I didn't know what else to put there (our current "outline" really isn't structured like an outline)
 * 2) I propose removing "Shorter articles don't need an outline." Rather, our outline should be pasted into every new article, to remind contributors how to structure their contributions.  (I am aware that Make_omissions_explicit was rejected, but this is not exactly an example of that.)

Article outline
{{hidden
 * style = border:1px dashed black; width: 50%;
 * headerstyle = background: #ccccff; font-size: 110%;
 * header = template text in nowiki format (for copy-pasting into an article)
 * content =

In Case Name, ### U.S. ### (YYYY), the United States Supreme Court held that ...

Scholarly comment/controversy concering District of Columbia v. Heller
Simple question: should there be a "(scholarly) comment" section (or whatever we might name it) for this decision, like there is for almost any article on important decisions? Absolutely, in my mind. However, certain people seem to disagree. --bender235 (talk) 12:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems to have resolved itself. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

first question: What's our policy on turning case citations into "redirect" pages to cases?
I noticed that 410 U.S. 113 redirects to Roe v. Wade. I'm wondering, 1) can I do this for any caselaw article I come across, and 2) is there a way to automate the creation of these Redirect pages? Agradman (talk) 20:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)


 * 1) Yes. As a matter of fact, it's part of the phases of the project. That stuff needs to be updated, but creating those redirects is something useful we should continue to do because it lets people familiar with legal citations look up cases on Wikipedia the same way they might on Lexis, etc. 2) That would be a good bot request.--chaser (talk) 23:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm. A few things come to mind. You'd have to figure out what format to follow. "410 US 113" versus "410 U.S. 113" versus "410 us 113" (all lowercase is common in search queries). I'd imagine you'd only want to create redirect for the first two examples. The other issue is matching the case citations with their wiki articles. The best option would probably be going through each and parsing the infobox parameters. Those seem most consistent. If this is something desired, it should be trivial for me to write a bot. I'll be following the discussion here. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:48, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

second question: what's our policy on 410 U.S. 113 versus
Is the latter format preferred? If so, is there a way to automate the conversion of the former format into the latter? Agradman (talk) 20:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Our tradition has been to use the former at the beginning of the case's article and to use the latter in the bulk of article text as an inline citation (I prefer do cite only where we don't have a wikipedia article about the case, but that may just be me. This is the only place I know where links of the former type have been discussed, but I can't discern any consensus about that other than to discuss more before removing them.--chaser (talk) 23:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Personally, I hate the current code that ussc uses. There's no standardized way to cite pages right now. It's on my to-do list when I standardize headers (see a few sections up). --MZMcBride (talk) 23:49, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

is is possible to calculate (and automatically update) the percentage of USSC articles that have been created?
Whenever I look at Lists_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases_by_volume, I wonder what percentage of those cases we've made our way through. It would be pretty cool to watch that number grow on our homepage. Is it possible? Agradman cries when yelled at/makes occasional mistakes 04:18, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sort of. You'd take the number of non-redirects in the article space in Category:United States Supreme Court cases and divide it into the full number of cases (about 32,000-ish). You'd have to get an exact figure from the U.S. Supreme Court's website (manually). Roughly it's about 1,600/32,000, I believe. That's 5%. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

add a "cases cited" section at WikiProject_U.S._Supreme_Court_cases
What are your thoughts about encouraging cases articles to include a "cases cited" section. It might just be a bulleted list, or it might be a table with columns such as: "Case cited" -- "treatment (positive/negative)" -- "...regarding the proposition that:"

These fields will only get filled slowly, but as they do get filled in, they will come to perform some of the "Shepardize" functions, because you can find future citing cases using the "what links here" special page. Alternatively, we can add an additional section, "treatment in subsequent caselaw" (although I don't think that's quite as important).

I really like this idea, so please let me know if you have any reservations about it. I'm always looking for ways to undermine the Wexis duopoly... Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 15:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Kudos for being ambitious, but unfortunately that would not be workable. First, such a binary classification is too simplistic.  Lexis and Westlaw's professional analysis of case treatment breaks down into such layers as "overruled," "questioned," "distinguished," "cited," "followed"...  Too many shades of gray.  More important, the online reporters retain hired professionals to perform that task.  It would require original analysis by a Wikipedia contributor to so determine the opinion's treatment of the case cited, because the opinions themselves do not typically contain unequivocal assessments.


 * Even if we were to just list the cases cited, without applying any kind of editorial label, this still is not a good idea. The volume of cases cited within the average opinion is simply too large, and many of these will just be string cites of cases standing for the same proposition.  Cases that are actually important to the Court's opinion and analysis should be explained in the article text describing the opinion itself.


 * Many opinion articles do contain a section describing that opinion's treatment in later cases; this is sometimes under the header "subsequent jurisprudence." Postdlf (talk) 15:49, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, true points. --Agradman

Is there talk about Wikipedia replacing Wexis as the place for research by lawyers, clerks, etc?
Can someone direct me to any ongoing discussions (on Wikipedia, or off-site) about the long-term prospects of Wikipedia replacing Wexis (or relegating its role to a source for non-public documents)? I could see this happening over a decade or so, if (e.g.) bar associations permitted lawyers to complete some of their "pro bono" hours by editing Wikipedia, or if we could get students in "legal research" classes to summarize their research into Wikipedia (if the profession trusts us to run its journals, they should trust us to run their encyclopedia). To avoid original analysis, we might have to create a companion site.

On a related note, I'm creating a "student-written hornbook" wiki using Google Sites, with the stated purpose to serve as a catalyst for students to incorporate their learning into Wikipedia. The site is up, but I don't want to syndicate the link until it's been well-trodden by my classmates. However, if you'd like to see the site (whether to mooch, or to contribute), contact me via talk page or email ... I would really appreciate feedback from more-experienced Wikipedians, especially people who have expertise with TWiki or MediaWiki (since I'd prefer that to Google Sites). Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 01:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not aware of any such discussion. I think law students could contribute information about what the law is to Wikipedia, since that information is analogous to an informative memo. Obviously persuasive memos for changing the law or critical commentary would have to go to a companion site, but I fear we'd just get second-rate work that didn't make it to law journals.--chaser (talk) 18:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There's always Wikisource (or perhaps even Wikiversity), I guess. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:38, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I rephrased my question -- I didn't mean the place where legal research is published, but rather the place where lawyers come to do caselaw research when writing their briefs/memos etc (rather than Wexis). I think Wikipedia could perform this role once it contained (bottom-up) briefs of important cases plus (top-down) hornbook-style articles on areas of law, both containing thorough citations to off-site primary sources. (Obviously, all caselaw will be digitized any day now; you'd only need a subscription service to access non-public sources, like hornbooks & journal articles, that were cited on wikipedia). And I think it could happen within a few years if we generate enough enthusiasm among students and practicing lawyers. That's why I think there should be lobbying of professional associations that prescribe pro-bono work (e.g. bar associations/some law schools) to permit a small number of those hours to be achieved by editing Wikipedia.
 * More generally, I think that while Wikipedia is finally winning the struggle for legitimacy among the general public, among lawyers it is still at the beginning of that struggle -- but that this is only a temporary hurdle, which arises from the higher standards that our community holds for precise citation. Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 19:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. We've got a lot of that piecemeal right now, it just needs to be better organized to be the equivalent of a hornbook. bd2412  T 19:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Here, I've set up Outline of evidence law in the United States, which should serve as the beginning of a table of contents for a potential future "online hornbook" of the type of which you speak. bd2412  T 19:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * AGradman, have you spoken to anyone at your law school (Columbia?) about open-source legal texts?--chaser (talk) 19:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * WOW -- bd2412, I can't believe you just threw that together today.  I'm linking to that on my homepage. [PS give me some time to research the appropriate barnstar ...]
 * I have a classmate who's done something similar for casebooks -- see, e.g., User:JD_Caselaw/Basic_Federal_Income_Taxation_(Andrews). (I'm not aware of any Wikipedia policies being violated, though if it does, I would have her move it off-site.)
 * chaser, I haven't had these conversations yet, but I do plan to have them in the fall, since one of my responsibilities in student government is to run the student-edited hornbook site. I espeically plan to sit down with professors Tim Wu and Eben Moglen -- the former is working to put together a "free casebook," and the latter runs the Software Freedom Law Center.Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 20:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Both Outline of evidence law in the United States and User:JD_Caselaw/Basic_Federal_Income_Taxation_(Andrews) seem like very good projects, but I suggest that they would be better more appropriate on either Wikiversity or Wikibooks. TJRC (talk) 20:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Please comment
I wrote a specific proposal relating to this at the law portal; I'm very excited about it and I'd appreciate your comment (at that page). Thanks. Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 18:23, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Northwest_Austin_Municipal_Utility_District_No._1_v._Holder
Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 03:23, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If your colleagues are looking for a summary of the case that got handed down today, send them to our updated article! :)
 * Does our project undertake to write articles on new Supreme Court cases ASAP? I like the idea, as it will get lawyers (and journalists) into the mindset of taking Wikipedia's law content seriously.
 * (Because it's a new case and still lacks a citation in a reporter, I'm experimenting with a new method for using "hidden" boxes to refer to the text. Do you think we can adapt/modify this method to other cases?)
 * Wikipedia never uses show/hide boxes in the middle of articles. Content is either part of the prose properly or shouldn't be included at all. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:49, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I expected a negative reaction... I've heard this said elsewhere. Sighhh.  (Could you leave it up for a few days, though, so others can express an opinion?  As you might have guessed, I'm putting this on my growing list of proposed changes.) Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 01:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm not sure if I'm using the right page for this, but I put the proposal here .  Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 01:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council
Hi, I just "finished" Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (still in a sandbox), I've never worked on a Supreme Court case article before, can someone take a peek at it before I move it over? Most specifically the infobox, I am not sure if I got the formatting of the opinions right. Thanks. --kelapstick (talk) 19:03, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I did some minor cleanup. Looks good. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 00:47, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Safford_Unified_School_District_v._Redding
feedback/contributions etc., plz

PS I've spent a lot of time this week on federal preemption and Sherman_Antitrust_Act and Noerr-Pennington_doctrine, and I created Sherman_Antitrust_Act_(federal_preemption) and Parker_immunity_doctrine -- I've added lots of material but I'm afraid its poorly organized, as I haven't yet taken Antitrust. Feedback/contributions would be greatly appreciated, thanks. Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 05:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Use spaces, not underscores, in internal links. 121a0012 (talk) 05:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 16:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The ten most searched cases
Lexis-Nexis has a public page listing what it calls the "ten most searched cases":. I think these would be a good place to concentrate some effort ... Agradman appreciates civility/makes occasional mistakes 16:40, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

CRS reports
Here's a partial list of CRS reports from Wikileaks with " v. " in the title. (chaser, I think that the CRS documents on Wikileaks are the original PDFs -- but I don't know much about Wikileaks.)

I've also co-created a template to display these in. All talk pages containing the template are automatically listed at Category:Articles which could have free content incorporated from elsewhere.

My long-term project is to make sure the CRS reports appear on their corresponding talk pages (at which point I strike them out at User:Agradman/crs). Any assistance would be appreciated. Agradman talk/contribs 03:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Can we cite leaked documents? How do we know they're reliable if they haven't been published? Wikileaks seems to leave this determination up to their own community.--chaser (talk) 05:22, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * See CRS Reports at UNT Libraries. 121a0012 (talk) 14:55, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Morse v. Frederick - Good article review
If any one is interested, Morse v. Frederick is currently undergoing a Good article review. Feel free to contribute to the article in any way possible to bring it up to Good status. Much appreciated! -- Another Believer ( Talk ) 18:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:Ussc upgrade
I just wanted to make sure you guys were aware that last week-ish, User:Foofighter20x upgraded the Template:Ussc template, so that now when you specify the pincite, it will take you directly to the page in the case. (only justia and findlaw support this feature). Example: produces. Agradman talk/contribs 23:58, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Remember (talk) 14:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

please spread the word -- starting a new club
I'm planning to start a "student wikipedia-hornbook editors" club at my law school this fall. Even if you're not personally interested in participating, I'd like to ask for help in connecting with other law wikipedians who might be -- i.e., who would be willing to start chapters of this club at their own law schools. With our free access to Lexis & Westlaw, we're in a unique position to be doing this work -- and the more schools we get involved, the easier it will be for each. Thanks. Agradman talk/contribs 20:01, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Roe v. Wade
wondering if you could look at my two proposals at the bottom of Talk:Roe v Wade. I've proposed a major overhaul of the lead, because (much to my horror) it's been wrong about the law; I've also proposed a new section, ==Synopsis==, which has not been looked upon kindly by the first administrator who stumbled across it. Thanks. Agradman talk/contribs 20:13, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I haven't yet looked at your proposals...but my initial thought is that the introductory paragraphs of an article are supposed to be the topic's "synopsis," so I don't know what use there would be for a separate "synopsis" section. Postdlf (talk) 20:22, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, that's right -- it's actually titled "structure" :)  and it is dedicated to explaining the flow of the text.  I'm clearly tired. Agradman talk/contribs 23:56, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Have we considered making this wikiproject a "task force" of WP:Law?
Hi team,

This weekend I attended the the NYC Wiki-Conference 2009, and was asking for some guidance on how to pursue the WikiProjects I've been talking about ("1L Curriculum" and "JD upperclass curriculum.")

However, the consensus was to start projects like these as a "task force" of an existing Wikiproject (in this instance, WP:LAW). They refered me to WikiProject_Council/Guide/Task_forces, and indicated that the advantage of using task forces is that 1) you don't spread your talent too thinly - everyone shares a talk page; and 2) the "bureaucratic"/"administrative" tasks are centralized, freeing up more resources to do the actual writing of articles.

So I just made a post at the Wikiproject council, asking for advice on how to start this task force. And one of the comments was,
 * (Frankly, I'm not sure why SCOTUS isn't a task force of LAW to begin with, but that's just me.) Kirill [talk] [pf] 03:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

What are your thoughts? Would you guys be willing to make "US Supreme Court Cases" a task force of WP:LAW? Agradman talk/contribs 15:53, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * WikiProject SCOTUS is a daughter project of WikiProject Law. Is there any importance to the "task force versus wikiproject" distinction whatsoever? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:51, 27 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The only importance I know of is in the minds of some individual editors. It would be noted that, whatever their formal names, all the directly Christianity-related projects use the same banner and are, in that way, functional task forces of the main project, whatever their names. Personally, I think it works best if the task forces are formally designated as such, but in some cases, particularly with projects which are already rather well established, there may be an initial aversion to changing the name. I think the best thing to do would be to formally propose a merger of the two groups, and see what the resulting comments are before making the decision. John Carter (talk) 22:28, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) This is a good question.  At the hyperlink I provided above, WikiProject Council suggests that the better way to organize the parent-child relationship is the "task force" model, but I can't explain why.  However, I've asked the question on the talk pages of some major Wikiprojects that make extensive use of this model (i.e., WP:Military History, 35 task forces // WP:India, 55 workgroups), and invited them to visit and describe their experiences.  Agradman talk/contribs 22:31, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I posted this over at MILHIST, but I am placing a curtesy copy here as well so that others can see it. By definition a task force differs from a project in two big ways: first, a task force is focused on a more specific area of the general project (for example, our WWII task force focuses on all aspects of military history pertaining to WWII) which makes a TF's scope more narrow, and task forces are usually dependent on their parent project for infrastructure support (assessment ranks, perr reviews, A-class reviews in our project's case, etc). In this case, the major distinction is that the SCOTUS task force would be a more narrowly focused aspect of WP:LAW and would have to rely on WP:LAW for peer reviews, outreach support, MoS issues (specific to the Law community), assessments, and other higher matters dealt with at the project level. TomStar81 (Talk &bull; Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 00:02, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * There's no particularly important meaning in the different designation ("WikiProject" versus "task force") in and of itself, although the latter terminology does make things a bit easier to understand when it's used consistently. The real difference between a fully independent WikiProject and a task force (or a WikiProject that functions as a task force, such as the ones John Carter mentions) is that a task force uses the parent project's technical and procedural infrastructure (internal templates, review processes, open task listings, bots, and so forth) rather than maintaining its own.  This allows the task force to focus more on direct article writing, with the responsibility for maintaining the internal structures being centralized in the parent project, and the workload for doing so being reduced by eliminating redundancy between the parent project's task forces.
 * Taskforces differ from independent Wikiprojects by reusing much of the infrastructure of the parent project. They get to use the departments like Assessment, Collaboration, Peer review, Automation (bot operators) etc. that are readily available at the parent project. They also help avoid talk page clutter by using a single banner (the parent one). Regards, Ganeshk  ( talk ) 01:48, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This is not a distinction of great importance in this case, I think—this project doesn't, as far as I can tell, maintain a large amount of internal structure in any case—but, considering that there's already discussion of creating another task force under the Law WikiProject, I think it might be worth moving some, if not all, of the other child projects into the same model. The Law WikiProject could then develop a task force infrastructure (similar to the one used by, say, military history) and have it immediately benefit the entire area, rather than only a single task force. Kirill [talk] [pf] 00:23, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * To do list maintenance
 * I just added dates to the items on our to-do list. One item is from 2009; 5 items are from 2008; 9 items are from 2007; and 12 items are from 2006.
 * To me, this is an instance of inadequate maintenance (either we've neglected to remove the completed items, or we've neglected to complete the items -- I don't know which). I'm not saying this to insult the committed and dedicated contributors to this Wikiproject -- I'm just pointing out that we might be well-served to host our to-do list at WP:LAW, where we can benefit from the larger community of people to help us with these maintenance tasks.
 * I suspect that the people at this project, like me, enjoy writing and editing articles more than they enjoy doing maintenance tasks. So this feels like a win-win proposal.  Agradman talk/contribs 15:17, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

RE MZMcBride: although WP:LAW claims that we are a "child project," we don't show a WP:LAW banner on our talk page; our project page only mentions WP:LAW in that we're included in the category. Essentially, we're two separate Wikiprojects. For example, we've developed our own standards for structuring/citing/templating articles, separately from all the other law wikiprojects. By contrast, under the "task force" model, WP:LAW would have a "styleguide" task force, and its responsibility would be to develop standards for all the WP:LAW task forces. That way, we don't find that Circuit Court opinions diverge from Supreme Court opinions; and British users will not get tripped up with American standards. (for example, before Ironholds was familiar with American standards, he changed "X v. Y" to "X v Y", because there wasn't a single task force for agreeing upon citation formats.) Agradman talk/contribs 20:48, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

request for comments: where do we stand on ussc and scite?
I have been researching the discussions regarding scite and ussc that occurred prior to my involvement at this WikiProject. My understanding is that:


 * 1. we've reached consensus that however we do citations, it should be done via template, not manually (to avoid the need for "bots" to intervene when our policies change, or when newbies get it wrong)
 * 2. most editors prefer for the wikilink to point to United States Reports, not case citation.
 * 3. many editors do this via scite rather than ussc, because ussc indiscriminately generates an offsite hyperlink, which is inappropriate especially in the lead.

Based on these (mis?)impressions, I have some thoughts:
 * Regarding 2, Have we considered making "430 U.S. 113" link to List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 430? This is analogous to what is done at WP:USC using USC.  For the benefit of the layperson, we can add more info from United States Reports via bot + transclusion.
 * Regarding 3, My feelings towards scite vs. ussc are as follows:
 * I think our Wikiproject should strive for consensus around a single, and simple, citation format.
 * This is because our principal priority should be to "scale" our WikiProject so that its methods can be learned by as many law-student-editors as possible. My job on student government next year is to recruit law students around the country to this Wikiproject, and I don't expect to have trouble rousing up the interest; we must prepare for the flood ...
 * This single template should support the ability to create off-site links, even if it's not implemented everywhere (i.e., it should be used only in the body text (not the lead) of articles).
 * Last month, at my request, ussc was rewritten so that produces  -- i.e., the text "654, 675" now hyperlinks directly to the pincite.  Naturally, in two weeks this feature hasn't yet caught on; but I think it will be critical in the long run, if we're to provide meaningful competition against, e.g., the Lexis "headnotes" which annotate the text.  (For my first awkward attempt to demonstrate how this would work, please see the "Structure" section)


 * Taking these ideas together, I propose the following --
 * by default, should not generate an off-site hyperlink.  Instead, the only link should be from "487 U.S.", pointing to List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 487.
 * To generate a hyperlink from ussc, you will have to specify the pin. e.g., to produce, you must type
 * While I believe strongly in "free as in freedom", I cast a reluctant vote in favor of restricting the offsite options to justia only, because pinciting is available only at justia and findlaw, and findlaw seems to be deprecated by consensus. (true?)

Thoughts? Agradman talk/contribs 16:10, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't like the idea of linking only pieces of the citation. It looks goofy and sloppy. Either the entire unit should be linked ("44 U.S. 402") or none of it should be, in my view. I don't particularly care where it links to&mdash;nobody ever clicks them anyway. You also don't address how to deal with scite, or why it's bad to keep them separate. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:55, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with linking the entire unit. Actually, that makes more sense.  Good point.  On further reflection, I strongly prefer linking only the first part (e.g. 44 U.S. 402, not 44 U.S. 402). This is because 1) we're going to be linking to the Reporter now (44 U.S.), so the link should point from 44 U.S.!! Also, how would external pincite hyperlinking be compatible with your format? (I respect the desire not to make something "look goofy and sloppy," but I think the logistical concerns outweigh it.)
 * While I don't personally care where it links to, I raise the issue because this archived discussion indicates that other editors do. Apparently, these people felt that if case citations were going to link to anything, they should link to something descriptive -- for the benefit of laypersons, and also to improve Search Engine Optimization.  At the end of the conversation, user:Chaser and user:Postdlf both preferred "to link to the article on the specific case reporter" (i.e. they came up with this idea), but there was a dissent from user:Scientus and the conversation grinded to a halt. (MZMcBride, I can't opine whether "nobody ever clicks on them anyway"; but if you're mentioning this to suggest that you're OK with this change, I'm glad to hear that.)
 * Regarding scite: Sorry, my post was confusing.  I had scite in mind when I said that "our Wikiproject should strive for consensus around a single, and simple, citation format," noting that "our principal priority should be to "scale" our WikiProject so that its methods can be learned by as many law-student-editors as possible."   If we have some editors never using scite, and some users never using ussc, then I think that is a sign that we've had a failure of communication. I am advocating that we reprogram ussc to consensus, and then either 1) have a bot substitute ussc wherever there is a scite, or 2) rewrite the scite code to be identical to be this consensus version ussc.  MZMcBride, it sounds like you're partial to scite.  What sort of changes would you like to see in ussc for you to be comfortable using it?  Agradman talk/contribs 22:00, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

scite is simple and works well for leads. I'm not sure a general purpose solution for all SCOTUS-related citations everywhere is a good thing. It's possible that you would want the citation in the lead to be "plain" while you would the citation in the external links section to be more complex. When you have half the citation in dark blue, the other half in light blue, and other strange linking, it starts to look sloppy (like we just figured out how to create links). Think about it this way, removing the &lt;span class="plainlinks"> (like we should for external lniks) it looks like this: 430 U.S. 44 (1934)  (And if we're linking off-site, the external links arrow should really be there.)

To me, that looks terrible. I was initially hesitant to remove the links from the leads (I actually had the bot stopped), but the more I see it, a plain version for the lead seems best. United v. John, 483 U.S. 49 (1998), ... looks pretty clean to me. I don't know, maybe that's just me. I'd be interested to hear what others think. I think "scite" is easier to remember (and is more pronounceable), but that's just more opinion. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:41, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of having pin cites to the actual cases when a specific section is referenced or quoted but not to a general description of the case (in which case the link should go to an article about the case). I think having links to the reporter volume make some sense, but what people will really want when they are reading a description of a case is a link to the pincite, not a link to the reporter in which the case that was referenced was published.  I am neutral on how the pincite citation format should look except that if the link is external we need the external link arrow. Remember (talk) 13:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Agraman asked me to clarify my statement above so here are my points:


 * I agree that by default, the template should not generate an external hyperlink to the text of the case; the external link should only appear when a specific section is referenced or quoted.
 * I think having links to the reporter volume make some sense, but what people will really want when they are reading a description of a case is a link to the pincite, not a link to the reporter in which the case that was referenced was published. Alternatively, the link should go to an article about the case.
 * I am neutral on how the pincite citation format should look except that if the link is external we need the external link arrow. Remember (talk) 20:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Remember about the reporter volumes, but I'd go even further. Just linking to some offsite copy of the case is the cleanest way of doing this: 487 U.S. 654 instead of linking to the volume, since the volume won't be useful for most people. As to deprecation of pincites, if we're unable to do the handy pincites in the future, we could always redo the template output to produce 487 U.S. 654, p. 675. Regarding scite, if we're keeping it for the initial lead citation, we should rename it "leadcite" to clear up confusion about where to use it.--chaser (talk)

Recent proposed changes to the outline
I've noticed some changes were proposed to the outline by Wikidea, who is (I believe) a British Wikipedia editor. Although the changes go against the grain of the "consensus" that was reached on these pages regarding the proper outline for Supreme Court articles, I think it's unfortunate that we've created standards for "Supreme Court case articles", rather than standards for Common Law cases in general. There should be a standard for all common law cases.

For this reason, I've proposed that WP:LAW should have a "styleguide" task force whose responsibility is to set standards (RE citation, outlining, etc.) for all the legal related sub-WikiProjects and articles. Now would be a good time to revive this idea. Thoughts? Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 06:10, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Support, and would welcome the chance to play a part in such a team and get WP:MOSLAW somewhat useful. Ironholds (talk) 17:34, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States
I'd like to try to get Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States up to FA status. Any additional eyes would be appreciated! I've also listed this article for peer review at Peer review/Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States/archive1. Cheers! bd2412 T 10:06, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law/notability
Hey everyone, I'm sorry we neglected to invite you to this discussion, we're thinking of unrolling a notability guideline for WP:LAW. See in particular the thread regarding summary orders since it's highly relevant to our work. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 01:51, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the entry under Other Lists for Jehovah's Witnesses
Does this link have any bearing upon the content of the page as a whole? If so, what are they? If it does not, then it needs to be integrated into the cases project and stricken from this page. If it is there out of humor, then it is of poor taste and needs to be removed altogether.

And for the record, I'm not affiliated with them, just a believer in the Constitution and what is written in it. Nighthawke75 23:18, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Key image in Near v. Minnesota listed for deletion
See. I'm still at a loss to figure out why. Postdlf (talk) 03:15, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization of Justice
Can someone authoritatively clarify the proper capitalization of "justice", standing alone. "Associate Justice" and "Chief Justice" seem to be unambiguously correct with full capitalization, but is it "justice" or "Justice" when the word stands alone, encompassing both? This article had lowercase in the title until I just moved it (as to many others), but they tend to capitalize the word in the text. If I was wrong, the linked article should be moved back.--chaser (away) - talk 20:15, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Renaming of U.S. constitution case law categories
Please participate at Categories for discussion/Log/2009 October 27. postdlf (talk) 05:26, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Google publishing legal opinions
Check it out. Remember (talk) 21:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal
has proposed a possible merge of articles North Carolina v. Alford (1970 Supreme Court of the United States case), with the form of guilty plea it spawned, Alford plea. Discussion is at Talk:North_Carolina_v._Alford. Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 14:53, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Please also see Content_noticeboard. Cirt (talk) 05:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Categories for discussion/Log/2009 December 23
Your participation is welcome. postdlf (talk) 09:58, 23 December 2009 (UTC)