Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases

Ballin

Could someone please review Wikipedia:Article Incubator/United States v. Ballin? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 03:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Use of Justia.com

I appreciate everyone who is trying to fill the fix the flood of redlinks in all of the List of Supreme Court cases, volume X articles. I've noticed, however, that a number of them are directly copied and pasted from Justia.com. Is this okay to do? Verkhovensky (talk) 06:15, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Could you provide some diffs so we can see exactly what you're talking about? postdlf (talk) 13:50, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Not totally sure if this is what Verkhovensky was referring to, but I've seen a couple of instances recently where someone had added Justia.com links in place of valid wikilinks to existing pages. (See, e.g., this edit, which includes some changes of this sort.) This seems completely inappropriate (and I reverted the edit which I just gave as an example). Richwales (talk) 17:10, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

What I was referring to were the articles about the cases in List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 113. Many of the case articles are copied and pasted from the Justia.com case summaries. A few examples are:

• Pullman Palace Car Co. v. Speck
• Findlay v. McAllister
• Central Railroad & Banking Co. of Ga. v. Pettus
• Northern Liberty Market Co. v. Kelly
• Tucker v. Masser
• Anderson County Comm'rs v. Beal
• Avegno v. Schmidt

These are just a few of the more egregious examples, but almost every single article in the volume in cribbed directly from Justia.com. Verkhovensky (talk) 18:03, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Just looking at the first few, the text seems just to be taken from portions of the Court's original opinion. Which is an issue of poor article writing, but nothing more. Those that have no content beyond opinion text could justifiably be speedy deleted. And if you can identify any that have original content taken from Justia (not just copies of the public domain SCOTUS opinions), however, those would likely be copyvios.

Also, there's no reason to favor Justia as a source of Court opinions over other websites. We have a template for giving multiple sources at Template:caselaw source, so any instance in which you find only Justia as a link should be replaced with that template and sources from Findlaw, enfacto, etc. (see it in use at Texas v. Johnson, for example). postdlf (talk) 02:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I think Postdlf makes excellent points. I agree that a lot of the text is cribbed from the court opinions themselves, but it appears to me (and I could be mistaken) that a lot of the text is also taken from the Justia.com summary of the case, and not the actual text of the opinion. Verkhovensky (talk) 02:38, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Is it justia's summary, or is it the Court's official summary (called a "syllabus" and written by the Clerk's Office)? The articles that I've written have certainly leaned heavily on the syllabi, particularly for their summaries of the case history and factual record. 121a0012 (talk) 04:40, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I suppose it's possible that the summaries are actually the syllabi, though a lot of them seem a bit too long for that. But then again that could just mean that Justia summaries are actually combinations of the written opinions and syllabi. I suppose this might require some more thorough investigation. Verkhovensky (talk) 04:58, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Following up on 121a0012's sage suggestion I looked at the syllabi of the cases in question. It does indeed appear that Justia uses a combination of the syllabi and excerpts from the written opinions for their summaries. It looks like the mystery has been solved. Thanks to all for your help! Verkhovensky (talk) 05:17, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Supreme Court web site change

Given the announcement that the Supreme Court is changing it web site, I recently began mass-editing URLs from supremecourtus.gov to supremecourt.gov. Well, it sounds like the change might be more complicated than I originally thought. postdlf found some links that have been moved, but it sounds like that might have happened before the new web site went online. But as the result of changing the URLs, some links that redirected to the new web site ended up getting a 404. postdlf is working on dealing with those issues in the "lists by term and justice", but there are many pages that does not cover.

Based on the press release, it sounds like the supremecourtus.gov domain will be removed as of July 1, 2010, which sounds strange to me, since I would expect that they would simply point it to the new servers. But nonetheless, there are still a large number of references to supremecourtus.gov on Wikipedia, which may break on July 1. Converting to the new domain name seems to make sense, but I want to make sure that we have the least amount of disruption. So my question is, what is the appropriate action to take from here?

-- JPMcGrath (talk) 22:40, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

No comments? Does anyone see any reason not to resume changing supremecourtus.gov to supremecourt.gov? -- JPMcGrath (talk) 08:09, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, err, don't change links if the old ones work and the new ones break. It sounds like one of those "we'll burn that bridge when we get there" situations. I can't imagine that the U.S. Supreme Court would intentionally break all old links, but if they do at some point in the future, the links can be adjusted once they're actually broken. Preemptive URL guessing seems like a bad idea that's prone to breaking more than it fixes. --MZMcBride (talk) 12:23, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing really preemptive about it - the new web site is up and the old one is going away. I have been checking, and I have not found any that are broken at supremecourt.gov that were not already broken. Many of them are broken, in that they now redirect to http://www.supremecourt.gov/ rather than retrieve the intended file. I am looking into whether I can write some scripts to check them all. If I can do that, I can mark the dead ones with and fix the ones that still work at the new domain -- JPMcGrath (talk) 14:07, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Outside of the contents of Category:Lists of United States Supreme Court opinions by term and Category:Lists of United States Supreme Court opinions by justice, all of which I have already taken care of, what articles have SCOTUS links? Are these just links to the pdfs of slip opinions in scattered individual case articles? postdlf (talk) 15:27, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Special:LinkSearch/supremecourt.gov. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:32, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

It shouldn't be too hard to write a script that checks if the link is a 404. I looked at Special:LinkSearch a bit and it seems that neither supremecourt.gov or supremecourtus.gov are used very much. Both had less than 500 links, from what I saw. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:33, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Every day, I learn how to do something new on here... There are 939 uses of www.supremecourtus.gov on Wikipedia. There are 236 uses of supremecourtus.gov. So that's quite a lot of links to fix.

Just http://supremecourt.gov does not work, so any change will have to use the form http://www.supremecourt.gov. I've also discovered that some categories of pages have not otherwise kept the same URL with the domain name change: all of the opinion lists by term, such as slip opinions, in-chambers, opinions related to orders. So the content originally at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08slipopinion.html, for example, is now at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinions.aspx?Term=08. By contrast, the URLs for pdfs of opinions, such as http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1216.pdf, seem to be the same at the new domain name.

So I think the next step should be to review the link results above, and test for each category of links (bound volume lists, dockets, oral argument transcripts, etc.) to see which ones can be fixed with just a domain name change and which ones need to be completely changed. postdlf (talk) 15:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I wrote a template that automatically included the relevant case links based on the volume it was being used on: {{SCOTUSLinks}}. It'd probably be a lot smarter to replace the current "External links" sections with the template. It looks like quite a few pages are already using the template. If someone has AWB and some extra time, standardization would be nice. It would mean being able to make one edit to a template rather than 545+ edits every time a link changes.... --MZMcBride (talk) 16:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I will take a look at it tonight -- JPMcGrath (talk) 16:49, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I just updated the reference to the "Dates of Supreme Court Decisions and Arguments" PDF link in the {{SCOTUSLinks}} template. It works fine in List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 13, so I guess I did that right. There is still one more supremecourtus.gov link in there, but I did not change it because I did not have a test page to check it on. -- JPMcGrath (talk) 17:03, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I updated all of the 559 List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume ### articles to use the {{SCOTUSLinks}} template. I also made some changes to the template itself:

• Added a link to the Supreme Court Home page.
• Added links to the corresponding "Bound Volumes" at supremecourt.gov for volumes 502-548
• Expanded the range of volumes for the "Open Jurist" link (now goes up to 546), the "Justia" link (up to 559), and the "Find Law" link (now includes 1-150).
• "Dates of Decisions" link is now included only for volumes 2-107.
• Left in the "Case Finder" links, but marked it dead.
• Improved documentation.

Does anyone know anything about the "Case Finder" links? Is there a replacement URL for them at the new site? If not, is there any reason they should be retained?

-- JPMcGrath (talk) 23:41, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I was confused by the "www." problem for a while, but figured it out earlier today. I just fixed all of the links to the Bound Volumes (using AWB), so there are fewer than there were before. I think the External Links search lags behind the current state of the database, since it now shows 938 links to http://www.supremecourtus.gov, and I changed a lot more than one.

I also have noticed that there are some changes in locations at the new site. I will take a look at changing the slip opinion links tonight. If you can identify any other pattern change like this one, I may be able to change them. Once I have the pattern, it's not too bad.

-- JPMcGrath (talk) 16:47, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I updated the slip opinion URLs. I also fixed the missing "www." in supremecourt.gov URLs -- JPMcGrath (talk) 03:15, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I have been working on the Supreme Court URLs and have some details on the current state and some progress to report. I have created scripts that let me enumerate all of the links and check whether the target URLs exist.

In all, there are 2343 links to 780 URLs to the SCOTUS web sites, on 1319 pages. About half of those (1174 links, 419 URLs, 883 pages) now point to the new web site. The remainder are not working. Some of those could be updated, but those are on Talk pages, many of them archived.

In the main article space, there are 979 dead links to 270 URLs in 796 articles. These all currently point to the old www.supremecourtus.gov domain, and the matching URL in the new www.supremecourtus.gov domain does not exist. Most of the dead links are of one of the following two forms:

• /opinions/casefinder/casefinder_####-####.html (471 links)
• /docket/##-####.htm (391 links)

The "docket" links seem to be at different URLS at the new site. For example, http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/09-1061.htm can be found at http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/09-1061.htm. The main page can also be found at http://www.supremecourt.gov/docketfiles/09-1061.htm without the menus and stuff. Since I have not seen the old pages and I could not get them from wayback, I cannot be certain these are the right ones. Could someone verify that this is correct?

As for the casefinder links, I could not find them on the new web site. If someone knows where to find them on the new site, please let me know.

-- JPMcGrath (talk) 23:44, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I decided not to wait and updated the /docket/##-####.htm links. They all go through Template:SCOTUS URL Docket, so if this is wrong, they can all be changed easily. -- JPMcGrath (talk) 03:10, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

BTW

A Commons admin recently deleted the Scalia portrait that was then widely in use because it apparently wasn't an official Court portrait. The deletion itself is not an issue as far as I can see, but the problem is no one at Commons bothered to clean up the mess that was left. No notice was given and nothing was done about replacing its uses until I discovered it a week later. I'm less than satisfied with the answers I've gotten so far. See discussions here and here. Thoughts? postdlf (talk) 01:43, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Article for Deletion

The following AfD may be of interest to editors here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sessions of the United States Supreme Court -Rrius (talk) 01:51, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Just a separate opinion?

Please see thread here: Template talk:Infobox SCOTUS case#Separate opinion. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:21, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Sandra Day O'Connor

There has to be a public domain portrait photograph of O'Connor available; Commons deleted the one that was in wide use as a copyrighted work of the SCOTUS historical society (I go on vacation for just a couple weeks and this is what happens). Aren't there official portraits of the Court that are taken by federal employees? postdlf (talk) 17:11, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

How about this one? Although being hosted on the LOC site does not mean it's public domain, its "About This Item" entry says "Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication." TJRC (talk) 18:24, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

They don't have a record of the author. And the caveat "Rights assessment is your responsibility" confirms that Commons would (probably) not accept this. postdlf (talk) 23:34, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I notice that the photo is already on Commons, albeit with a slightly different resolution - it was uploaded on March 2, 2009. -- JPMcGrath (talk) 21:05, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Just a matter of time before that one gets deleted as well, given the unexplained PD tag. Maybe it's PD-USGov, but the author is not given. postdlf (talk) 02:56, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm lost. Commons only deleted O'Connor's photo, but left similar photos like File:Anthony Kennedy Official.jpg? That doesn't make any sense. Nor does trying to argue that the Supreme Court historical society has any claim to these photos. Let me ask this: is there any evidence that these portraits are not works done by federal employees (and therefore public domain)? --MZMcBride (talk) 18:20, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

notability of SCOTUS cases

Aren't all SCOTUS cases notable for inclusion in Wikipedia? Can someone point me to where this laid down in the notability guidelines? I ask because some are saying SCOTUS cases are non-notable. --Rajah (talk) 17:15, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

They are definitely notable. Who is saying that they are not? -- JPMcGrath (talk) 18:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

What we usually refer to as "cases" here are in fact limited to bench opinions, i.e., the cases for which the Court gives full, written opinions explaining their decision. These days, there are about 80 or so of these a year (you can see this term's list so far here). Mere cases would include thousands of lawsuits that get nothing more than summary decisions from the Court, most often to deny certiorari, but also often to vacate without any opinion; see list of SCOTUS orders here ("The vast majority of cases filed in the Supreme Court are disposed of summarily by unsigned orders.") (a "case" would also include every stage of a lawsuit from its inception at the trial court to its final resolution by the Supreme Court; our articles focus on the SCOTUS opinion, because typically the lawsuit itself would not otherwise be notable). So every SCOTUS bench opinion certainly merits an article. But not every SCOTUS case.

Even within the bench opinion, however, are per curiam opinions. These are "from the Court" and so do not have attributed authorship; they are typically short and less controversial (though still provoke dissents sometimes). So we typically handle these in much more abbreviated form than the full bench opinions, in list articles rather than stand-alone articles (e.g., 2005 term per curiam opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States). postdlf (talk) 00:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I was specifically talking about the US v. Comstock case that was decided yesterday. I started the article on it with a reference to washpost and the scotus pdf and another editor repeatedly place a notability template on it. I removed and it's no longer there. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but I was annoyed at having to explain the notability of SCOTUS cases (specifically bench opinions as Postdlf mentions). It seemed that any SCOTUS bench decision of which there are about 80 as mentioned is certainly notable enough for inclusion in wikipedia. Also, you guys should add the text "all SCOTUS bench opinions are notable" or whatever to the proper section of the wikipedia:notability page (or just link to it from the wikiproject SCOTUS cases itself. Sorry this is so poorly written, IANAL :) --Rajah (talk) 01:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The issue here is not really notability, but rather new pages patrol. The guy who tagged your article did it 11 minutes after you created the page, and you had made 3 additional revisions in that time. WP:NPP deals with the issue rather explicitly:

It is advisable to patrol new pages from the bottom of the first page of the log. This should give the creating editor enough time to improve a new page before a patroller attends to it, . . . . Tagging anything other than attack pages or complete nonsense a minute after creation is not constructive and only serves to annoy the page author.

If the article had been there for a day or two without references, his action might have made sense. However, tagging an article while someone is in the process of creating it is a bad idea, as it tends to annoy people who are making productive contributions, as you are clearly now aware.

-- JPMcGrath (talk) 03:23, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree, I thought the same thing about his immediate tagging with all the exclaimer tags. And I just noticed that notice yesterday also. It should be publicized more. --Rajah (talk) 03:39, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Berghuis v. Thompkins

I've done some work on this and put it up for GA review. Can someone from the WikiProject double check that it's adequate from a technical point of view? Barring minor edits I would hope it should be. Thanks. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:38, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Problem with Justia links?

I just received this message on my talk page, I haven't had a chance to investigate:

FYI. The SCOTUS case links to Justia are no longer working (see the ones at List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 544). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.121.23.2 (talk) 14:34, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

postdlf (talk) 16:28, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Works for me. The formatting looks a little odd, but it retrieves the page. — JPMcGrath (talk) 19:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I think I figured out what the problem is. Justia hasn't updated the final citations in its database beyond volume 542 of the U.S. reports, even though SCOTUS has published full citations through vol. 552. So when the citations were completed in the WP list articles, it messed up the Justia links for those volumes, which still use the docket number instead of the page number. The consequence is that when I click on any of the justia links, as in the vol. 544 list article above, it just retrieves the text from Justia's home page at http://supreme.justia.com/. postdlf (talk) 19:39, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

If this is your criticism against Justia, I'll have you know the very same problem exists with Findlaw's search/link design as well. The problem isn't the citation system itself. It's that most of these volumes after 544 haven't been officially bound (i.e., they are not a finished product, and thus pages are subject to potentially change). Sword cuts both ways. You need to be patient with the Clerk of the Court, since the Justices want the U.S. Reports to be as thoroughly without error as possible. Also, all you had to do was ask and I would have made a code to link to the docket numbers when I can find a spare moment. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 11:14, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, I see which links you are talking about. I thought you meant the links to the Justia volume index page in the "External Links" section.

So, the problem is that, because of the inconsistency of the web site, the {{ussc}} template does not know how to link to appropriate web page for cases from volume 544 up and the template does not have the information it needs to do so. I think the best fix is to add a docket number parameter, then have the template figure out which to use based on the volume number. That way, it can be switched if/when Justia updates the site to use the page number.

BTW, this is exactly what I was talking about in the discussion we had a few months back on my talk page. Changing the ID for the case from docket number to volume/page is bad system design, as is made more evident by this problem. Time to enter the computer age, SCOTUS!

— JPMcGrath (talk) 00:09, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't rush off just yet to do this. Findlaw itself doesn't support linking to volumes past 544 either. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 11:55, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

That's still two more volumes than Justia supports. postdlf (talk) 13:40, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't have the template expertise to implement that, so I've switched the template to Findlaw pending something better.--Chaser (talk) 00:22, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I updated the template docs to reflect the change. I will take a look at the template when I get the chance. — JPMcGrath (talk) 00:39, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Why is this not being discussed on the Templates discussion page? It's called building consensus, folks. There's a lot of reasons why Justia was picked over Findlaw. Neither should anyone here have been making unilateral changes without dicussing this with other editors first. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 10:54, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

This discussion was linked to on the template discussion page. I started it here because I wasn't sure what the problem was at first other than that it had to do with Justia links in some SCOTUS list. Try not to bite people's heads off when they're trying to fix a problem; I think everyone viewed switching to Findlaw right now as a temporary solution, and a better solution for now than letting the broken Justia links remain as is. postdlf (talk) 13:44, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Test 1: 545 U.S. ___ (2005), (Docket No. 03-1454) Test 2: ___ U.S. ___ (2005), (Docket No. 03-1454) You will have to indicate that the year you enter is the year, and not the vol by putting a 3= ... -- Foofighter20x (talk) 12:11, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

New article review needed

Hello friends. I have just created a new article, Taylor v. Beckham, and would like your help in making sure it conforms to conventions for similar articles. I'm rather out of my element in creating such an article, but when I tried to get Kentucky gubernatorial election, 1899 classified as a good topic, one of the reviewers insisted that it needed this article to be complete. I am not a lawyer, and I don't play one on Wikipedia. Please feel free to correct anything in the article with regard to the formatting, legal terminology and notations, infobox information, or categorization. Also, since I'm going to have to get this thing designated as a good or featured article in order to complete the good topic, I'd appreciate any feedback you can give me on the content and how it may need to be improved. You can leave it here if you want, but I'd be more apt to see it on my talk page. Thanks in advance for your help. Acdixon ^{(talk • contribs • count)} 20:28, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I made some formatting changes. BTW, the appropriate place for any discussion related to the article would be Talk:Taylor v. Beckham. You can put the page on your watchlist if you want to know when changes are made (if it's not already there). — JPMcGrath (talk) 23:01, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

new related WikiProject: United States Public Policy

Hi everyone! I want to invite anyone who's active here and has an interest in public policy to join WikiProject United States Public Policy, which is just starting up. Court cases, obviously, are one major part of U.S. public policy, so hopefully we'll be working on articles that are relevant to this project. We've got some cool things planned, including working with students and their professors for several public policy courses.--Sross (Public Policy) (talk) 13:18, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume X

The formatting of the List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume X (all of the articles that track the US Reports) is inconsistent. Up until and including Volume 203 the entries are in a table. From Volume 204 onwards, the entries are simply in a list. Has there been any discussion about making the articles consistent? If so, which format should be the winner? Verkhovensky (talk) 02:03, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I think a table would be better, because it could be made sortable. The default view would be in citation order, but then make the case name sortable so it can be alphabetized.

I think there's a bigger problem with these lists than lack of formatting consistency: lack of context. Most (all?) do not explain what "volume x" means in the introduction, and the list titles obviously don't give a clue to that either. We in the know obviously know it refers to the United States Reports, but this needs to be clarified. Also, these aren't lists of all cases, only all bench opinions. All cases in a particular volume (at least in recent decades) would also include summary orders, of which there are thousands each term (mostly denials of certiorari). So we need that explained in each introduction as well. postdlf (talk) 02:15, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Is there anyway to templatize these pages so that people don't have to change 550 of them every time they want to change something comparatively minor? Volume number and table data is the only thing that changes from one to the other.--Chaser (talk) 03:35, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

The intro could be easily written in a template format, presuming we want to say the same thing about each volume. The earlier ones need some different content; the first 90 will also have to explain that the cases initially appeared in the Supreme Court Reporter's own publication (Dallas, Wheat., etc.). See also United States Reports, volume 1. But I think that a templated intro could be done for the bulk of the lists.

First off though, can we agree on a mass rename for these? I suggest List of United States Supreme Court opinions in United States Reports volume XXX. Wordy, but it's all necessary information. Terming them "opinions" rather than "cases" is also key for reasons I noted above. postdlf (talk) 06:00, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

How do I put up an article for Good Article review? (Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha)

Please see query at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Law#How_do_I_put_up_an_article_for_Good_Article_review.3F_.28Immigration_and_Naturalization_Service_v._Chadha.29

Thanks

Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 18:39, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's ready; I agree with the comments given at your link above. Much of it looks like a law student's brief of a case for study purposes rather than an article, with lists of facts in incomplete sentences rather than substantive description. The sections of it that are in prose look only loosely edited from portions of the syllabus or the opinion itself. So it still needs a lot of development. postdlf (talk) 22:46, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Concur, plus the article was assessed as a b-class article, while not meeting the requirements for that level. I re-assessed it as a c-class article, it needs significant work. GregJackP Boomer! 11:31, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

{{Italic title}}

If the title of the court case is italicized in the lede of the article, why then is the article title not italicized? Is {{Italic title}} appropriate for these articles? If so, someone should request for a bot to tag each article with the template over at Wikipedia:Bot requests. 64.85.223.249 (talk) 13:28, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Featured Article Candidate

Menominee Tribe v. United States is a Featured Article candidate. Any interested editors may participate, and can review the Featured article criteria prior to reviewing the article. GregJackP Boomer! 01:46, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Category:United States Supreme Court case litigants

I'm considering listing this for deletion, but I wanted to see first if there was a way to salvage it.

There are undoubtedly some people who are notable only because of their role in a Supreme Court case, such as Dred Scott and Norma McCorvey. If this category could target those, it has some hope.

But simply categorizing all SCOTUS litigants would involve an immense group of individuals, corporations, organizations, government agencies, U.S. states, and governments. Virtually every civil rights group would be included, every federal agency that had a rule or ruling challenged, every foreign government involved in a Alien Tort Claims Act or Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act case, the United States government itself because of federal prosecutions, and because of the Court's original jurisdiction, a fair number of U.S. states would be included as well (or probably every state because of the review of state supreme court decisions). Perhaps most damning though is the problem of nominal litigants, who are named in a case only by virtue of their office: these include the prison warden in any habeas petition, or the attorney general in any suit to invalidate a federal law, for example and the category's creator intended for those to be included as well by including John Ashcroft.

And that's just dealing with lead parties...expand the world to all the additional parties, consolidated cases, etc... And "litigants" is broader than just those who were party to cases for which the Court handed down a full opinion; GVRs, possibly even just cert. petitions that were denied? Then you're dealing with thousands more cases every year.

So I'm leaning heavily towards deletion. Any contrary opinions? postdlf (talk) 18:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Agree with Postdlf. I see no way of carving out a niche category of "very special litigants" without being indiscriminate, arbitrary, controversial etc. This, IMO, is the case where either a list or a proper article will fit the bill better - in case of a major topic directly related to SCOTUS, like "SCOTUS on labor relations", "SCOTUS on slavery" or etc. East of Borschov 19:34, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• The only future I see for it is in limiting it to individuals (by which I mean natural persons), but even then it will include people like Ashcroft or Gore. Better to delete it.--Chaser (talk) 23:25, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
• Keep and try a category name to Category:United States Supreme Court personal litigants, aside from a list, it is difficult to distinguish individuals from corporations for thse writting biographies on individual litigants. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:59, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Do you understand the problem with even that attempt to narrow its scope, given that you had added nominal parties to the category? Besides, "personal litigants" (a made up term) is a completely arbitrary distinction, because a corporation or government agency is no less a litigant to a case than a natural person. postdlf (talk) 20:06, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Category listed for deletion here. postdlf (talk) 15:07, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Schwarzenegger v. EMA

I'm a veteran with video game articles but not with law. Can anyone give a hand on the basic formatting of Schwarzenegger v. EMA relevant to SCOTUS cases? I'm sure I can take care of the article-writing part, but I'm completely stupid when it comes to law :) –MuZemike 01:13, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I wrote a basic stub on the case and filled in some of the infobox details. postdlf (talk) 13:49, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

naming guidelines

My apologies if this is written up explicitly somewhere, but do we have naming guidelines for the names for cases? For example is the "Inc." included if one of the parties is a company? --PinkBull 17:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

WP:NAME would say the most common name in English language reliable sources. I would not include Inc. It is Bluebook style, of course, but the Bluebook is ridiculous and this is a general reference source, not just a legal one.--Chaser (talk) 03:17, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Lots of SCOTUS case articles have the "inc." or "LLC" in the article name. See Category:United States Supreme Court cases. Should we add the common name rule to this project's guidelines or perhaps to WP:NAME itself? --PinkBull 16:07, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

"Quimbee"?

Anyone else know anything about this external source, or have an opinion on whether we should have links to it? I've never seen it before. postdlf (talk) 22:43, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Never heard of it—it looks like a generic case brief. Other cases link to similar case briefs (e.g., Marbury v. Madison links to brief on some website called "Lawnix"), but I haven't seen that one before. I'm not sure if the brief adds anything beyond what is already in the article, so perhaps it is unnecessary per WP:ELNO. Cheers, Stephen (talk) 02:43, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

United States related Tag and Assess proposal

There is a proposal on WikiProject United States to task Xenobot with tagging and assessment of articles that fall into the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject United States. Please take a few moments to provide your comments about this proposal.

If you are interested in joining Wikipedia:WikiProject United States please add your name under the applicable section here. --Kumioko (talk) 17:08, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Berghuis v. Thompkins - peer review for FAC

I've put the above article up for peer review, to gain feedback how ready it is for FAC. Comments and involvement warmly welcomed and openly invited. Thanks - FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 00:00, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to help with WikiProject United States

Hello, WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases! We are looking for editors to join WikiProject United States, an outreach effort which aims to support development of United States related articles in Wikipedia. We thought you might be interested, and hope that you will join us. Thanks!!!

--Kumioko (talk) 15:12, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

A consideration for cross project consolidation of talk page templates

I have started a conversation here about the possibility of combining some of the United States related WikiProject Banners into {{WikiProject United States}}. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please take a moment and let me know. --Kumioko (talk) 20:28, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Problem with an Article

I stumbled onto a disambiguation page that someone created that is mostly red links for articles not yet created. Since this pertains to your project, rather than delete it I thought I would leave a message here in case you want to create them as stubs for the time being rather than delete it. Here is a link United States v. Stewart. --Kumioko (talk) 17:44, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I created a couple of them, but I disagree that pages like this need bluelinks to be useful. An encyclopedia is supposed to be helpful to its readers. If someone is searching for a case by this name on the internet and finds a bunch of irrelevant results, at least this Wikipedia article provides them with a complete list of cases with the same or similar titles. It also has case citations, years, and now links for each decision.--Chaser (talk) 18:32, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, personally I agree with you however the problem is the instructions for DAB page sspecifically states that DAB paegs shouldnt contain red links. There for Articles that exist not articles that might someday exist. --Kumioko (talk) 18:53, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Where's that now?--Chaser (talk) 19:11, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I think these pages are important to the project. It seems that we're all mostly in agreement here. If the policy on DAB pages is really hostile to redlinks, then perhaps we should de-link the redlinks. Then folks still go there when they search for United States v. Stewart, and the unlinked cases still tip folks off about what articles need to be created. Verkhovensky (talk) 19:18, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

The lists of SCOTUS opinions by volume also have many entries that need to be disambiguated, as can be seen from United States v. Stewart. These disambiguation pages are necessary to aid in the process of fixing those links, and so at a minimum should be maintained until all of those are fixed. I'd also argue that whatever the merit generally of the DAB guideline against redlinks, it serves no purpose here but is instead counterproductive and should be ignored. postdlf (talk) 19:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

As I mentioned before I never really did like the rule.:-) Lists are differnet btw. The red link rule doesn't apply to them ust to dab pages. --Kumioko (talk) 20:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

William J. Brennan

I'm considering a major revamp of this article, with the objective of having it promoted to FA status. If you want to help, that'd be great. Please reply here or on my talk page. Thank you. Shoplifter (talk) 18:38, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Suggested policy change to the tagging of non article items

I have submitted a proposal at the Village pump regarding tagging non article items in Wikipedia. Please take a moment and let me know what you think. --Kumioko (talk) 02:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Findlaw template deletion

FYI: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion#Template:Findlaw_us.--Chaser (talk) 04:15, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Wong Kim Ark; Afroyim; Terrazas

I've been working on United States v. Wong Kim Ark, Afroyim v. Rusk, and Vance v. Terrazas — three important citizenship law cases. Comments welcome. Richwales (talk · contribs) 05:09, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Cases section of U.S. government portal

I created a section on the U.S. government portal for cases in the federal courts. Obviously these will tend to be Supreme Court cases. Changes, comments, and help keeping it up to date are welcome.--Chaser (talk) 05:59, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Change the standard template!

I'd like to suggest that we change the template recommended here for case pages, with standard headings of ==Background== and ==Opinion of the Court== and then ==Subsequent developments==. It could be shorter, more accurate, and capture everything that the headings should. The disadvantage, of course, of any change is that there's about a thousand pages already following this format, and I'm sure many users have become familiar with it. Nevertheless, it'd be better if the headings were ==Facts== and ==Judgment== and then ==Significance==. So clearly this is shorter. That's better in itself, and a reason to change it. Second, "background" might invite some people to go into the social history of the case, or something, which is more suited to a "significance" section. Then, "judgment" is better because courts don't give one opinion, but there is one judgment (one award, remedy, etc). There are enough cases in the US Supreme Court and every other where judges all give different opinions. So it's factually inaccurate to say that section is for the "Opinion of the Court". Third, significance sounds better. We often want to know not just what happened after, but also criticism of the case from commentators, which isn't only "subsequent developments". So for all those reasons - clarity, accuracy and comprehensiveness, don't you agree that we should change the standard template? Wikidea 12:08, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, and in regards to changing the articles with the current template, it could be accomplished rather painlessly by a concerted effort using AWB. I'm not sure "Signficance" is the best choice however, I think that section should be used to describe the subsequent legal/political history of the case, such as consequential Court cases and Acts adopted by Congress, or the resolution in the case. I think "Subsequent history" or "Subsequent events" could be used instead. I for one have added a "Commentary" section to describe the academic response, but I agree that "Significance" is broader. Maybe there are better titles that we have overlooked? Shoplifter (talk) 13:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I've always used "subsequent jurisprudence" for case law developments, and "subsequent developments" for everything else. I don't think "facts" is a good header title because it doesn't provide any context (what, the rest of the article isn't about facts?) and it may involve a summary of allegations rather than "facts." It's really going to be meaningful only to law students who are used to seeing that as part of a case law brief. "Background of the case" is much better, and it should include a broader context for the Court's opinion, to explain what preceded it both legally and culturally if reliable sources have so commented. You can't reasonably write about Brown v. Board of Education without some summary of the state of racial segregation. postdlf (talk) 16:52, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Postdlf. Some degree of flexibility on the headings is fine, which is why what's on the front page is a suggested outline. If "judgment" or "opinions" is more appropriate on a case by case basis, I'm sure our editors can determine that themselves. But "facts" will only be readily comprehensible to law students, and does a disservice to our broader audience. And "significance" is just vague. If you want to include commentary about the case's significance, then I'd suggest "critical commentary" or "analysis" or the like. But that's not a good reason to enshrine a vague section header into the default outline when most of our articles probably won't contain any critical analysis.--Chaser (talk) 19:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like at the least we all want ==Judgment==. Shall we change that now? I should say, I create quite a lot of case pages (eg Category:English contract case law and Category:United Kingdom labour law cases) and this is the format I've found to just be the simplest, and I've been inserting more American cases recently (which is how I came across Shoplifter's very good contributions). Rylands v Fletcher is a decent example of how a fuller page looks, or Carlill v Carbolic. It'd be nice if we can have some uniformity between Commonwealth, EU and US cases, though I agree that it's still all recommendations, and I wouldn't want to push anything. Wikidea 22:35, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I prefer "The Supreme Court's decision", which clarifies that it's not a section for a lower court opinion. "Judgment," like "facts", is simply too uninformative in the abstract. postdlf (talk) 02:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Delayed explanation from creator of these terms

As the user who AFAIK started using these header terms, let me explain (as I have somewhat modified them since someone decided to make them the standard, which I find flattering):

• Background of the case: This should be considered optional, to be used only if there's some greater ongoing social (i.e., Brown v. Board of Education) or legal (Erie Railroad v. Tompkins), issue addressed or giving rise to the case (Not that either of those articles have such sections, but if I had created them, they would have. And of course they still could).

• Underlying dispute or underlying prosecution: What gave rise to the case before it reached the courts (sometimes this requires an extensive treatment, cf. what I felt I had to do in Waters v. Churchill). This is IMO not optional.

• Litigation: The progress of the case through the lower courts. The usefulness of having such an extensive section is that it allows the writer to explain the legal issues involved there instead of when you get to the Court's opinions. This is much easier now that Google Scholar gives you so much in the way of lower state and federal cases.

• Before the Court: If possible, discuss the briefs and oral arguments here (if there's enough, you may even need separate sections). For the former note who filed amici, ways in which the argument has changed or responded to lower-court rulings. For the latter write about significant discussions that emerge, with pithy quotes from the lawyers and/or justices (You will probably wind up quoting Scalia if he's involved; if Thomas says anything it should be quoted, even if he just asks to go to the bathroom :-)).

• Decision, or, if it's unanimous with no concurrences even (again, thank you, Justice Scalia), Opinion: I write a short intro graf laying out how the opinions played out ... who did what and what they said. Then I summarize the individual opinions in their own sections if they're long enough to require that (Short opinions, like White in Mancusi v. DeForte, can be touched on in a paragraph).

• Reaction: An optional section for contemporaneous reactions from the parties, major news outlets and commentators, if any exists.

• Disposition: What happened to the case after remand (See O'Connor v. Ortega for why long sections on this sort of thing are possible and sometimes necessary). Often a good place to squeeze in some mention of what later happened to the parties (a subject on which a whole book could be written, IMO), like Ernesto Miranda getting retried, reconvicted and then dying in a bar fight, or Harry Tompkins living out the remainder of his life eking out a living with only one good arm (And, I'd love to know, whatever happened to Henry Alford after the Court let him cop his eponymous plea?).

• Subsequent jurisprudence. Case law, not only later cases heard by the Court that address similar issues, but also from the appellate courts (and sometimes state courts) further interpreting the decision. The articles I wrote on Waters and Mancusi wound up having a lot of these, as fairly seminal decisions.

• Analysis and commentary. Summary of significant comment on the case from law reviews or other reliable sources.

Daniel Case (talk) 16:14, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

"Underlying dispute" is an obtuse way of describing the "background of the case," i.e., the facts giving rise to the case. "Litigation" is too broad because it covers the entirety of a court case's history, including proceedings before the Supreme Court. It needs to be more specific: "Lower court proceedings", with subheaders for each stage if necessary ("trial court decision", "Court of Appeals decision," etc.). As I noted above, "Decision" is too generic; we need to specify that it's the Supreme Court's decision. "Disposition" is synonymous with holding (i.e., was it vacated, remanded, affirmed", not with "subsequent proceedings," which is what that section needs to be called instead to clarify that it's for stages in the litigation after the Supreme Court's decision. postdlf (talk) 17:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, I thought "underlying" was better than "instant dispute" because not a lot of people understand that word in the legal sense. "Background" is to me better used for any larger issue when it's present (I think most non-legal readers will, scanning the article, figure out what "underlying dispute" means because all these articles are essentially a narrative. "Facts" suggests a disconnected section that might merely be a bulleted list.

"Facts" also has a judicial meaning that I think would be confusing here ... "facts" are what juries find from the narratives offered them. For example, in Ontario v. Quon the jury found that the police department's pager audit was work-related (and therefore permissible). That was considered a fact in the legal sense as a result, one the Ninth Circuit disagreed with but the Supreme Court did not. Compare Connick v. Myers, where the district court judge found as a matter of fact that the plaintiff had been fired from her government job for her speech act, the appeals court agreed and so did the Supreme Court ... but the Supreme Court said it was OK to fire her for that since it wasn't related to a matter of public concern. In neither case does some document in the official record state that "fact" ... it was found by the triers in question.

I'll go with "lower court proceedings" with subsections where appropriate, but I think we need something less wordy, and we also need to be able to recognize the myriad ways that a case gets to the Supreme Court (Stoner v. California, for instance, was heard directly from the California Courts of Appeal after that state's Supreme Court refused to hear it). I mean, what about cases where an adminstrative body first heard the case, then it was appealed into the circuits? I don't think, say, the National Labor Relations Board or the Merit Systems Protection Board count as courts per se, yet they were the dispute resolvers of first instance in a number of cases. At one point I used "litigation history" with subsections ... maybe that's better?

I think when someone reads the heds in an article that clearly identifies itself as being about a Supreme Court case, they're capable of figuring out that "Decision" refers to the Supreme Court's decision, not the lower courts (also because it will often have subsections for the individual opinions, something I don't do for appeals court decisions (nor do I think we should, even for complicated en banc denial free-for-alls)). Not making any assumptions about your readers means you also don't assume they're idiots.

How about "subsequent history" which jibes with what we use in the infobox? Daniel Case (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible?

Is it possible to get the case law articles written in non-legal terms? I've read about a dozen of them for a college project, and can't figure out the basics. I'm not law trained, and have no idea what some of these cases mean, or even what some of the legal terms, especially the latin ones, mean. Thank you. 75.222.84.82 (talk) 00:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear. Which ones? Wikidea 00:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Questions and a suggestion

Is there a good resource online for citations used in the case template, eg. Lexis and Supreme Court Reports? I noticed that if the "Citation" field is left blank, the US Vol. and US Page fields won't display. Bug or intentional?

I had the idea of starting an IRC channel dedicated to this project. I spoke to Richwales about it. I think it would be very helpful for coordination and collaboration, exchanging tips and information, and as a generally pleasant hang-out for likeminded people. As you can see, there are plenty of projects who have their own channels to this end. What do you think? I volunteer to set it up if there's sufficient interest. Shoplifter (talk) 08:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Lochner era

I've done major revisions to this article which was in dire need of an overhaul. All comments and/or edits welcome! Shoplifter (talk) 19:06, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

US Collaboration reactivated & Portal:United States starting next

Casliber recently posted a suggestion on the talk page for WikiProject United States about getting the US Wikipedians Collaboration page going again in an effort to build up articles for GA through FA class. See Wikipedia:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board/USCOTM. After several days of work from him the page is up and ready for action. A few candidates have already been added for you to vote on or you can submit one using the directions provided. If you are looking for inspiration here is a link to the most commonly viewed articles currently under the scope of Wikiproject United States. There are tons of good articles in the various US related projects as well so feel free to submit any article relating to US topics (not just those under the scope of WPUS). This noticeboard is intended for ‘’’All’’’ editors working on US subjects, not just those under WPUS.

The next item I intend to start updating is Portal:United States if anyone is interested in helping. Again this is not specific to WPUS and any help would be greatly appreciated to maximize visibility of US topics. The foundation has already been established its just a matter of updating the content with some new images, biographies and articles. Please let leave a comment on the Portals talk page or let me know if you have any questions or ideas. --Kumioko (talk) 23:27, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Opinion writer and case with the same name?

I'm currently working on O'Connor v. Ortega. One thing I noticed is that the plurality opinion in that case was written by Justice O'Connor.

That coincidence might make an interesting DYK hook, I've thought. Especially if we can find a way within the limits of WP:NOTOR to show that it's the only time, or one of a few, in which a majority or plurality opinion has been written by a justice with the same name as the case (I half think Rehnquist assigned that opinion to her with that in mind).

Can anyone do some search or something that could prove (or disprove, as might happen) this? It doesn't seem like it would be hard. Daniel Case (talk) 02:43, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I was fascinated by this, so I looked through some cases. I did stumble upon Kennedy v. Louisiana, written by Justice Kennedy. Perhaps there are more, though I am still sure this is a rare phenomenon. Verkhovensky (talk) 03:17, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

I also found United States v. White, with the plurality written by Justice Byron White. Verkhovensky (talk) 03:34, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. Are there any older ones? Daniel Case (talk) 05:23, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Florida v. Thomas - any third-party coverage of this decision?

This case is likely to appear on the main page via DYK in the next few days, but has no references other than the Supreme Court decision itself. Does anyone have any commentary on the decision from academic / practitioner journals that can be added, to help prove notability? (My jurisdictional knowledge is limited to English law, so I don't know where to start looking for USSC case comments!) Thanks, Bencherlite^Talk 21:16, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I perused the law reviews citing this and there's not much there. Since the Court dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, there's really nothing for legal scholars to comment on. I doubt you'll find anything in the mass media other than disappointment that the Court "dodged" the issue or some such. Only three appellate decisions discuss it in any detail, but that's obviously limited by the fact that the Court didn't reach the merits.--Chaser (talk) 21:53, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Case review

I'm on a mission of turning red links into blue ones over at List of United States Supreme Court Cases. My last project was Railroad Commission Cases. These old cases are quite difficult to pin down by a layman like myself, and so I would be very glad if someone would like to review it for inconsistencies or errors. Thanks! Next up is Brown v New Jersey. Shoplifter (talk) 22:25, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

North v. Russell

According to Justice of the peace, North v. Russell is a very important case, but it doesn't have an article. Could someone please try to put one together? Citation is 427 U.S. 328 (1976). Nyttend (talk) 04:17, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I added it to the to-do list [1].--Chaser (talk) 05:05, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I've begun working on it; feel free to add or revise. Shoplifter (talk) 13:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Flagged articles code

What code in the document gives rise to the unremovable "Flagged U.S. Supreme Court articles" category? Shoplifter (talk) 07:55, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Collaboration for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Greetings, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution has been chosen as the U.S. Wikipedians Collaboration of the Month for February 2011. As a project who has identified this article to be in your scope we encourage you to edit this article and help to build it up to better explain the subject and to get it promoted. --Kumioko (talk) 20:49, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Featured portal candidate: United States

Portal:United States is a current featured portal candidate. Please feel free to leave comments. -- RichardF (talk) 14:29, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Adding "Popular pages" to U.S.-related projects

A very interesting tool of the Wikimedia Toolserver is called WikiProject Popular pages lists. These lists are similar to project-related article lists like U. S. article lists used for generating assessment statistics. The Popular pages lists include the rank, total views, average daily views, quality and importance ratings for the listed articles. Here is the full list of projects using popular pages lists. An FAQ also is available at User:Mr.Z-man/Popular pages FAQ.

I recently added links to lists of popular pages as shown below to the U.S. Portal - WikiProjects box and the nominations sections for each of the selected articles boxes.

---

Portal:United States/Projects/Popular pages

---

Because this project was not included, I am bringing up the popular pages tool here. This tool makes it very easy to track three of four balancing dimensions when selecting articles for showcasing at a portal - quality, importance and popularity. When tracking the fourth dimension, topic, the related article lists tool (such as for U.S. article lists tool) also might be useful by filtering on categories of interest.

If you do decide to use this tool, feel free to update Portal:United States/Projects/Popular pages as well.

Regards, RichardF (talk) 02:20, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Skilling v. United States

I think that members of this project need to comment on this AFD. Specifically, the issue is: Are decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court per se notable, or come close to it? Bearian (talk) 19:45, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikisource:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases

Hey everyone, I'd like to invite you all to participate in WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases on Wikisource. My colleague Slaporte runs a bot that is currently in the process of importing every Supreme Court decision from bulk.resource.org's collection of the United States Reports. We need help guiding and cleaning up after the bot by fixing lists of case names, disambiguating common case names, proofreading cases, etc. If you want to get involved, you can check out our to do list, add your name to our list of participants, or contact me.

I'm also going to add a more prominent link to the Wikisource project on this project page. Feel free to revert this if you feel that it is spammy or inappropriate. - LegalSkeptic (talk) 17:58, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Barber v Thomas (2010)

Would someone involved in the Supreme Court project be willing to look at the edits that have been added to the page on Barber v. Thomas <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_v._Thomas>? A lot of material has been added to discuss a personal grievance of someone who thinks he should have had more input into the litigation of the case, including personal attacks on several individuals (including myself) who were pro bono participants in that litigation. I don't want to get into an editing war; opinions and point of view aside, the comments are basically factual, but of no general interest, it seems to me, and border on vandalism of the article. The original author was CDogSimmons <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cdogsimmons> Thanks for your consideration, and for all your good work. 108.2.147.192 (talk) 03:11, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I removed that section. It's been uncited for months. Anyway, we usually don't include that level of detail about the parties' arguments--often we don't credit who made them at all, other than, for example, "Barber" or "Barber's attorneys."--Chaser (talk) 18:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Connick v. Thompson

I updated the stub article Connick v. Thompson to reflect its being decided on March 29, 2011. I added a small blurb of information on the decision and a reference link to the official opinion of the court. I also added appropriate project tags to the talk page. Somebody with a bit more expertise than me might want to flesh it out a bit. Thanks. Safiel (talk) 19:53, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I have added a summation of the opinion of the court to the article, but admittedly it needs work. Safiel (talk) 17:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Not listing all cases?

I noticed that it says " All inappropriate or nonexistent cases have been removed from the list."

Does that mean you are removing articles about supreme court cases? Shouldn't all of them be listed in wikipedia? I already noticed Bertman v. J.A. Kirsch Company doesn't have an article here. Can you make sure none others are missing please? 69.132.79.61 (talk) 19:26, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what that refers to; some edit long since past. Maybe there was a lot of vandalism or incorrect case names on some list? Anyway, the standard is that any case for which SCOTUS writes a full opinion merits its own article, which are presently about 80 each year. Here is the current term's list, and our corresponding list and opinion/vote table on Wikipedia. Many of these case articles simply haven't been written yet.

Those that don't ordinarily qualify for their own articles are the many thousands of cases that the Supreme Court disposes of by summary order, particularly if they deny certiorari, unless they can pass the ordinary WP:GNG standard. If I've found the right case (377 U.S. 995), it looks like Bertman is one of those, and thus won't qualify for an article unless the lower court opinion or the case as a whole was notable in some way. A justice dissented from the denial of cert. in Bertman, but this again doesn't guarantee that it merits an article. Such opinions relating to orders can still be covered in the opinion lists for each justice by term (e.g., 2010 term United States Supreme Court opinions of Samuel Alito), which can incorporate brief summaries, though only the past ten years have been covered so far, and most don't have more than barebones lists of the opinions at present.

So no, we don't list all cases (which again number in the thousands every year and typically generate no substantive content from the Court), just all opinions. postdlf (talk) 20:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

A case that gets DIG'ed or GVR'ed may still satisfy the notability requirement as these procedures are unusual enough that many reliable sources will comment on the case and suggest reasons the court may have acted as it did; likewise the very rare dismissals after oral argument. (In the case of notable dismissals, the article should probably be titled with its caption in the lower court, with just a redirect from the SCOTUS caption if it is both different and likely to be referenced by that name.) 121a0012 (talk) 05:25, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

A case for which the Court denies cert. really isn't a SCOTUS case in any meaningful sense, so only if it's demonstrated that the lower court opinions/proceedings received significant coverage from multiple reliable sources should it have an article. GVR's are usually short per curiam opinions, are they not? So those get covered in brief via summary articles like 2009 term per curiam opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, not ordinarily in stand-alone articles. If they are just summary orders (such as when a case is summarily vacated and remanded, without further comment, for reconsideration in light of another recent SCOTUS case) then again, there needs to be a demonstration that WP:GNG is met for that case. Only full SCOTUS opinions should be presumed notable, because only those necessarily represent the Court's substantive output, and only those inevitably do have GNG coverage, even if we can't demonstrate that initially. postdlf (talk) 17:16, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Postdlf. Briscoe v. Virginia is a good example. The parties submitted merits briefs, the court heard oral arguments, and the case was ultimately GVRed in a per curiam that looks more like a summary order. This case has a strong claim to notability under the general notability guideline, but we shouldn't simply presume that a GVR or a DIG disposition is notable. It's easy enough to look for two or three secondary sources to confirm that it is.--Chaser (away) - talk 17:44, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

That said, feel free to copy the Court's order lists to Wikisource, just not Wikipedia. Here's a typical day's orders: nine pages of routine matters. Essentially, it's just data. postdlf (talk) 18:33, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Collaboration on US Supreme Court case article improvement

• Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart

Wehwalt and myself will be collaborating together to improve the quality of this article. Others are welcome to help out with research, writing, and copyediting. :) -- Cirt (talk) 18:25, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Created new portal = Supreme Court of the United States

• Portal:Supreme Court of the United States

I've created a new portal for this topic. Collaboration and help would be appreciated, just drop a note at Portal talk:Supreme Court of the United States. -- Cirt (talk) 17:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States at peer review

A new portal Portal:Supreme Court of the United States is now up for portal peer review, the review page is at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Supreme Court of the United States/archive1. I put a bit of effort into this and feedback would be appreciated prior to featured portal candidacy. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 17:50, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Created new article on US Supreme Court case = Time, Inc. v. Hill

• Time, Inc. v. Hill

I have created a new article on the U.S. Supreme Court case, Time, Inc. v. Hill. Feedback and especially help with additional research would be appreciated, at the new article's talk page. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 00:18, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States at Featured Portal candidates

• Portal:Supreme Court of the United States

Portal:Supreme Court of the United States is a candidate for Featured Portal, with discussion at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Supreme Court of the United States. — Cirt (talk) 16:03, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Photo of Justice Kennedy

Hi, it looks like there has been difficultly getting a properly licensed photo of Justice Kennedy. Please see this discussion for more details. Any ideas? -- Sailing to Byzantium _(msg), 18:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

There are at least a couple on Commons (Commons:Category:Anthony Kennedy) that are clearly attributed to the SCOTUS staff photographer (and thus PD-USgov): File:Anthony Kennedy (2009, cropped).jpg and File:Anthony Kennedy Official.jpg. postdlf (talk) 20:01, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks a lot for the pointers! -- Sailing to Byzantium _(msg), 20:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Category:Petitions for a writ of certiorari listed for deletion

FYI. postdlf (talk) 17:04, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Wong Kim Ark FAC

I've nominated United States v. Wong Kim Ark as a Featured Article candidate. Richwales (talk · contribs) 04:11, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

And again, apparently: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States v. Wong Kim Ark/archive2. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Discussion about template for citing court cases

There is a discussion going on at Template talk:Cite court#Update to citation/core over the preferred look of cites generated via the {{Cite court}} template (designed for use when citing sources). Some people are suggesting that court case citations should conform to other types of references (such as for books, journal articles, etc.), while others insist that the accepted Bluebook norm needs to be followed at any cost (even if this means that the core "citation" template code used for every other kind of reference can't be used for legal cites). This question came up because United States v. Wong Kim Ark is currently being considered as a Featured Article candidate and is therefore getting additional scrutiny regarding the look and feel of its references. Hopefully some more people can go over there and get involved. Richwales (talk · contribs) 23:09, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Discussion on content in Bush v. Gore

More eyes and voices, please. postdlf (talk) 04:04, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council

FYI I have nominated Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council as a good article.--kelapstick^(bainuu) 09:16, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

More on Wong Kim Ark Featured Article candidacy

Some questions have arisen regarding the content and sourcing of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which is currently being considered as a Featured Article candidate. Any interested editors may wish to go to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States v. Wong Kim Ark/archive1 and participate in the discussion (go down to the end of the page) as you feel is appropriate. Richwales (talk · contribs) 07:11, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Opinion of the Court

The suggested outline says that the section titled "Opinion of the Court" should include a subsection for the dissent, but that seems clearly wrong. The "Opinion of the Court" does not include any dissent. An easy fix would be to change "Opinion of the Court" to "Opinion". Or something like this:

Subsections or a paragraph or subsequent sections for concurring and dissenting opinions can also be added as appropriate. Should be in the form of "Concurrences" and "Dissents" for section headers.

This issue has arisen at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark/archive1.Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:35, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I have long used "Decision" as the section hed, with "Majority", "X concurrence" and "dissent" as appropriate. I suppose "Opinion of the Court" would be appropriate only for a unanimous decision with no concurrences. Daniel Case (talk) 04:13, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I think any of the above are fine, depending on circumstances. I have edited that section of the project page to make it clearer the outline is a suggestion, and variations are acceptable.--Chaser (talk) 03:44, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the improvement.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Category issues

Savidan (talk · contribs) has been removing a lot of categories he thinks are redundant from case articles, such as removing a First Amendment category when it's in a free speech category. Obviously not all free speech case law is under the First Amendment, so this is . Anyway, we need more eyes to review these rather voluminous changes--check his contribution history, unfortunately none of his edits were made with any edit summaries, so we just need to check every edit to any case article. postdlf (talk) 22:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Currently the free speech category is just for Constitutional cases, based on its own contents and categorization. If you think there is need to make it a wider category (including decisions grounded in statutes or state constitutions) that can be done. Given that all the cases currently in that category are constitutional, I think it makes the most sense to take your case to WP:CFD and suggest a move to "Category:United States First Amendment free speech case law" and then create a new "Category:United States free speech case law" category with that broader scope of which the former would be a subcategory. That is a separate issue from whether an article about a case based on the free speech clause of the first amendment should be in both a First Amendment free speech clause category and a First Amendment category. The larger point is that categories like "Category:First Amendment case law" should be container categories. It's not useful to lump all the free exercise, establishment, speech, press, and association categories into the same category (at least not compared to the alternative of having them in sub-categories unified by a First Amendment case law category). Savidan 22:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The current category is named for the wider subject area. The best outcome might be to remove Category:United States First Amendment case law as a parent of Category:United States free speech case law. In other cases, however, you don't even have that argument of a subject area being so tied to one Amendment: you removed the 14th Amendment category from Lum v. Rice, an equal protection case, but there are also EP cases under the Fifth Amendment, just as there are due process cases under both the 5th and 14th. Bottom line is that unless the subject area categories expressly name a constitutional provision, they are not redundant to the categories for specific constitutional provisions.

One exception I see would be the category you just created, Category:Incorporation case law, as Incorporation of the Bill of Rights is a doctrine unique to the Fourteenth Amendment. Though that category is poorly named at present because it could also be about case law on forming corporations.

So the question remains whether categories should be created for the intersection of these areas of law with the specific constitutional provisions, such as Category:United States First Amendment free speech case law or Category:United States First Amendment free exercise of religion case law. postdlf (talk) 23:12, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

There is a need for a single category that contains only cases concerning the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the federal constitution (which would be a subcategory of "Category:United States First Amendment case law"). Whether this is accomplished by moving the current category to "Category:United States First Amendment free speech case law" and then creating a new "Category:United States free speech case law" category (that would not be a subcategory of "Category:United States First Amendment case law" but would be a parent category of "Category:United States First Amendment free speech case law"), or as you propose, I am indifferent to.

I acknowledge that there are equal protection and due process cases under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. However, it is not helpful to the reader to have four categories (5th DP, 5th EP, 14th DP, and 14th EP). It would be even more unhelpful to just put cases in the 5th or 14th amendment top-level categories, leaving the DP and EP cases separated from cases within the same doctrinal stream and mixed in with dozens to hundreds of unrelated cases (both the 5th and 14th amendments do more than EP and DP). Because the courts freely cite between the DP/EP cases regardless of the triggering amendment, it is more helpful just to have DP and EP categories and make both subcategories of both the 5th and 14th amendment categories.

As for renaming the Incorporation category, I am open to that. Feel free to start a WP:CFD discussion to that effect. Another key point with incorporation is that, once the Court has made the decision to incorporate a certain right against the states (say, the privilege against self-incrimination), it is not useful to put other subsequent self-incrimination cases in the 14th Amendment category just because they involved state prosecutions. The substantive discussions in those cases are only going to involve self-incrimination, not the 14th amendment (of course, if a concurrence or dissent devotes some space to the concept of incorporation, that cases can be included in the incorporation category). Savidan 23:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

"Moving" a category just means renaming it, as a category really has no existence apart from its name; it is not defined by its current contents. So your suggestion about the free speech category would mean creating a new category focused on the First Amendment and then moving articles from the current one to that new one. I'm still skeptical, but you seem determined so I'll say go ahead and try it and if it doesn't work it can be undone with little trouble. Another consideration, however, is that it isn't necessarily a bad thing for a category to be large, and lists can function quite well to document subgroups of a category without breaking up the navigational unity of that category. For example, including in a blanket First Amendment category something like a List of case law involving the free press clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, etc. This would also be better for cases that involve multiple clauses or that muddy the separation between them, like the many cases in which the Court analyzed religion-related claims as free speech under public forum doctrine.

I agree with you on how we should parent the EP case category, but I still think it's helpful to have the particular amendment categorized as well, as there may be discussion in a case relevant to the history of the particular amendment even though the Court decided upon the same EP test for either.

I also agree with you on the Incorporation category; I've always removed 14th amendment categories from cases in which it was just automatically applied because the Court had already determined by that point that a particular Bill of Rights provision was incorporated. Do you have a suggestion for a more clear and precise category name? postdlf (talk) 15:31, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I've looked and I have yet to find a single article on Wikipedia about a case that involved free speech as defined by a statute or state constitution rather than the First Amendment. So, we can cross that bridge when we get to it.

As for lists, certainly we can have both categories and lists. But, categories are at their most useful when they are defined functionally. Someone reading an article about a case involving the Takings Clause is far more likely to want to click on a category that will take them to other Takings Clause cases than to click on a category that will take them to an undifferentiated mush of grand jury, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, due process, and takings cause cases. Noting the fact that all of these clauses are included in the Fifth Amendment is best accomplished by a parent category (and perhaps a list as well).

If cases involve multiple clauses, there is perhaps a judgement call. The increasing trend of the Supreme Court is to grant cert to discrete issues, but for older cases it wasn't uncommon to consider, for example, several constitutional objections to the same conviction. If a case involves the actual adjudication of five distinct constitutional rights, there is no harm in having it in all five categories.

I'm glad we agree on not including cases that involve incorporation without deciding the issue of incorporation in the 14th Amendment category. This should be done by a list, if at all. I think a list is also the better strategy for distinguishing between DP/EP cases that involve the federal or state governments. It's simply not salient enough to justify the marginal category clutter. The high order bit is that the case involved due process; the fact that due process was channeled through the 5th or 14th amendment is of a lower order. Savidan 19:35, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh and I don't have a suggestion for the name of the Incorporation of the category. I'm more concerned with category contents and structure than with their names. I think it is fine as is but would not oppose a reasonable change. Savidan 19:37, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

List of pending United States Supreme Court cases

Since I've retired, no one has done much to maintain this. Therefore I have isolated it from the other lists. I was about to remove it from templates, when I realized we might need consensus to actually delete it. What do you all think? I like it if people will maintain it. I think wiki does well to have locally some of the same information as SCOTUS-blog, etc. But if we cannot keep the article more up to date, then I think it is best to roll it back into the list of Roberts Court cases.--Chaser (talk) 15:59, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

We don't need to go through AFD if it's just merged/redirected, as that's just a normal editing process.

Your comments are appreciated on the above discussion re: categories, btw. postdlf (talk) 17:04, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussion regarding case law citation formatting and style

Your comments are welcome here; please also read this thread for more context.

Also, a discussion here at TT:Cite court about more specific issues, such as whether an access date should be given for links to online databases such as Findlaw. postdlf (talk) 19:54, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Fall 2011 Photo Contest

WP:NRHP is having a Fall Photo Contest running from Oct. 21-Dec. 4, 2011. I'd like to encourage anybody who enjoys photography, as well as anybody who is interested in historic places to participate as a photographer, a sponsor, or both.

One way that an individual editor or a project can participate is to sponsor their own challenge. For example, somebody here might want to include a challenge such as "A barnstar will be awarded to the photographer who adds the most photos to the NRHP county lists of previously non-illustrated NRHP sites related to U.S. Supreme Court Cases." To sponsor a challenge all you need to do is come up with an idea, post it on the contest page, and do the small bit of work needed to judge the winner(s).

Any and all contributions appreciated.

Smallbones (talk) 03:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation

I came across List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 81 which contained a link to a disambiguation page The Continental. I also noticed that it incorrectly linked to The Thames. Apparently these were ship names and the court case was named for the ship rather than the more typical X v. Y. While cases with titles like X v. Y are typically disambiguated with the case year, that seems unhelpful with cases identified by the ship name. I disambiguated as The Thames (U.S. Supreme Court case) and The Continental (U.S. Supreme Court case). If some other phrase is preferred feel free to update (though I'd suggest documenting that in your project pages somewhere). older ≠ wiser 18:33, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

This is a reasonable solution. Savidan 19:19, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Article needed for Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board?

While working on W. E. B. Du Bois, I stumbled on Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board, which appears to be undocumented in WP. I cannot tell if it is a SCOTUS case, or just a Fed appeals case, but in any case it appears to meet WP Notability requirements. I don't have any time to work on it now, but if anyone in this SCOTUS project could create it, or at least a stub, that would be great. --Noleander (talk) 07:27, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

It's SCOTUS, and it looks like there were two opinions in the case: s:Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board (one of the links listed there is just an order). postdlf (talk) 14:15, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that, I was unaware cases are in WP source. The important decision that relates to Du Bois is the 1961 decision (the final one). I think that it merits a WP article. --Noleander (talk) 14:43, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Every SCOTUS opinion merits an article.  ; ) Not just my own bias on that, consensus has spoken repeatedly. Three ways to go on this: two separate articles about each opinion, with links referring between them; one article for the whole legal proceeding, with both opinions covered in that single article; one article for the whole legal proceeding, with both opinions summarized in that article and each also having separate articles. postdlf (talk) 15:09, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds great. Normally I would pitch in and help write it, but I'm in the middle of preparing two articles for FA nomination, so I'm swamped with other tasks. --Noleander (talk) 15:33, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do later today. postdlf (talk) 16:19, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Take a look: Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board. Just did what I could from the Wikisource copies of the Court's opinions, which are unfortunately rife with scan errors. postdlf (talk) 00:25, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks a lot. --Noleander (talk) 00:32, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Wong Kim Ark second FAC

Please note that United States v. Wong Kim Ark is being considered again now for possible promotion to Featured Article status. Interested editors may wish to visit the article's Featured Article candidacy page and offer supporting, opposing, or neutral comments as they see fit. — Richwales (talk) 17:13, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Article needed for In re Primus, 436 U.S. 412 (1978)

Hi. I'm working on the ACLU article (trying to get it to GA status), and the sources mention an important case from 1978: In re Primus. It is listed in List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 436, but there is no article for it yet. The sources indicate it is pretty darn important (public interest attorneys may be exempt from anti-solicitation rules), so I was wondering of some SCOTUS black belt could craft an article for it? Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 02:04, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

article needed: Patterson v. Alabama (294 U.S. 600)

ACLU says that Patterson v. Alabama (294 U.S. 600), 1935, is one of their 100 most important cases. I'm unable to locate it in WP ... new article? --Noleander (talk) 20:07, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

See Scottsboro Boys; the ruling in Patterson v. Alabama is described briefly in a subsection without the decision being named. postdlf (talk) 20:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Thanks. Here are some other notable SCOTUS cases for which I cannot find WP articles. These are all listed in NH ACLU web site as big cases, so they are non-trivial. See [2]:

• Bolanos v. California not notable
• Hannegan v. Esquire
• Baggett v. Bullitt
• Carroll v. Princess Anne County
• Bond v. Floyd
• Keyishian v. Board of Regents
• Washington v. Lee
• Gregory v. Chicago
• Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe
• Communist Party of Indiana v. Whitcomb
• Smith v. Goguen
• In re Primus
• Smith v. Collin
• Patterson v. Alabama

Apologies if some are not SCOTUS. --Noleander (talk) 20:51, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Redlinks of interest

Those interesting in writing articles about SCOTUS cases may find some redlinks of interest in the references of United States constitutional criminal procedure. Savidan 04:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Wong Kim Ark 2nd FAC (restarted)

Hi. The Featured Article candidacy (FAC) process for United States v. Wong Kim Ark has been give a "restart for a fresh look". Some major questions have arisen regarding what sources to use, how to use them, how to make sure the article is comprehensive and doesn't display any biases or miss any noteworthy points, etc., etc. In particular, there has been a dispute between one reviewer who insists the article should be essentially based upon recent law review articles about the Wong Kim Ark case by professors without an axe to grind (and/or recent court decisions that delve into the legal history rather than just cite Wong Kim Ark in passing) — and another reviewer who insists on voluminous detail from primary sources (court decisions and congressional debates), with everything mentioned in the article (presumably so as to avoid any possibility of missing something important). We really, really need more input on the issues in order to come up with a credible consensus one way or the other. And since whichever way the Wong Kim Ark article goes is likely to guide the path other SCOTUS articles will need to follow in future if they are to have any hope of becoming Featured Articles, I believe it's very important for us here to get involved — regardless of whether you believe this article is FA material or not. You can find the Featured Article candidacy discussion here — and please note the earlier comments (before the "restart") here. Thanks. — Richwales 18:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Wong Kim Ark is now a Featured Article (see here for promotion info). — Richwales 17:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

How remove from "Flagged U.S. Supreme Court articles" category?

There are a few dozen articles, such as Nixon v. General Services Administration, which are in the Category:Flagged U.S. Supreme Court articles category for "immediate attention". A few of these articles may be okay now, so can be removed from that category ... what is the process for removal? It does not appear to be using the normal categorization system. --Noleander (talk) 01:00, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Apparently, by fixing the errors in the infobox. I have no idea which errors, though; I just fixed them all at once. (And this article needs to be properly categorized in any case.) 121a0012 (talk) 05:27, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the source code for the template, it appears to use that category when some of the required date parameters are missing from the infobox invocation. It would be nice if it also emitted some text to explain what was wrong (like some other templates do). 121a0012 (talk) 05:33, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the clue. The Template:Infobox SCOTUS case InfoBox Talk page does indeed say that if the dates are formatted wrong, it will add the article to the Flag category. But I'm looking at the dates in the offending InfoBoxes, and they look okay to me. I found a couple of editors that worked on the template, and I posted a query on their Talk pages (referring to this Talk page section) so they can come here and give us some ideas. --Noleander (talk) 05:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the template code, I think the category gets added if one or both of the following conditions are true:

• 1. {{{SCOTUS}}} is blank or missing AND
  2. {{{Outcome}}} is blank or missing

OR

• 1. {{{USVol}}} is not equal to 1 AND
  2. any of the following parameters fail the test below: {{{SubmitDate}}}, {{{SubmitYear}}}, {{{ArgueDate}}}, {{{ArgueYear}}}, {{{ArgueDateA}}}, {{{ReargueDate}}}, {{{ReargueYear}}}, {{{ReargueDateA}}}, {{{ReargueDate2}}}, {{{ReargueYear2}}}, {{{ReargueDateA2}}}, {{{DecideDate}}}, {{{DecideYear}}}.
     A parameter in the above list fails the test if it is non-blank AND does not match the title of an existing Wikipedia article (this is a quick-and-dirty test of whether the date is in a common format, as there are article titles for years and each day of the year).

In all flagged cases, if {{{category}}} is supplied, then its contents are inserted instead of "​[[Category:Flagged U.S. Supreme Court articles]]​". So, for example, an alternative category could be specified; or, if {{{category}}} were specified as blank, the tests would have no effect and the invalid parameters would not be flagged at all (not recommended).

The {{{Outcome}}} and {{{category}}} parameters seem to be undocumented, so the first test in effect flags the absence of {{{SCOTUS}}}.

Hope that clarifies, or at least agrees with your own understanding!

— Richardguk (talk) 13:10, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Great! thanks for the info. I'll add that the the template Talk page, for future reference. --Noleander (talk) 14:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Richard: could you pinpoint the issue with this ariticle's infobox: Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen. Its infobox includes:

 SCOTUSCase
 |Litigants=Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen
 |ArgueDate=February 28
 |ArgueYear=1916
 |ReargueDate=January 31 and February 1
 |ReargueYear=1917
 |DecideDate=May 21
 |DecideYear=1917
 |FullName=Southern Pacific Company, Plff. in Err., v. Marie Jensen
 |USVol=244
 |USPage=205
 |Citation=37 S. Ct. 524; 61 L. Ed. 1086
 |Prior=Error to the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, of the State of New York
 |Subsequent=
 |Holding=State legislation affecting maritime commerce is invalid if it contravenes the essential purpose expressed by an act of Congress, or works material prejudice to the characteristic features of the general maritime law, or interfere with the proper harmony and uniformity of the law in its international and interstate relations.
 |SCOTUS=1916-1921
  ... more clipped off ...

I'm not seeing where it is violating a rule. --Noleander (talk) 15:03, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Could the problem be in a compound date like "January 31 and February 1"? Clearly there is no WP article with that name: January 31 and February 1. --Noleander (talk) 15:05, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Another offending article has the date string January 11-12; another's is February 11-12. Richard: I think that many SCOTUS cases are argued over two days. Can you disable the check for the following parameters?

• ArgueDate
• ReargueDate

I think all the other date strings should be a single day, but those two bulleted params are often two days. Thanks. --Noleander (talk) 15:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Richard: I went ahead and made that change to the template, here, so no action required on your part. Thanks for the help. --Noleander (talk) 15:19, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I've reverted your change to the template code. I wrote it a long time ago and it's worked fairly well. In the cases you all are seeing, it's user error. January 31 and February 1 are sequential. It'd be "January 31–February 1", not "January 31 and February 1". January 11 and January 12 are similarly sequential. If you're dealing with non-sequential days, the template also supports that. The code is a bit esoteric, but have a little faith that it's smart code. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I fixed Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen in this edit. Richardguk: Thanks for your work deciphering the code. Your comments look spot-on. There may be one or two other edge cases where an article is flagged, but I think you got the biggest cases and you understood the logic behind the code. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:57, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

MZMcBride: You sound a little defensive about the template. Did you write it? There are about 100 articles "flagged" for "immediate attention" in that Category, and yet the Info Boxes all look just fine to me. As a practical matter, no one is going to go through 100 articles and change the date formats. The template should not be so sensitive about date formatting. Ascribing it to user error is not a good response: fixing the template is. Would you consider updating the template to be more flexible about date formats? --Noleander (talk) 20:26, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Responding to the above:

• Date ranges are intended to be created by using ArgueDateA and ArgueDateB (or equivalents for reargue dates) to pass the start date and end day separately; the documentation includes links to example usage.
• Editing 100 articles to fix infobox parameters is not necessarily very time consuming; we all have different interests and priorities as editors, balancing quantity and quality, so horses for courses. But the category flagging does not seem to adversely affect article readability, so is harmless in itself. I'd therefore suggest avoiding renaming or deleting the category unless there is a consensus that no checks at all are appropriate.
• As to whether the template is too complicated and constricting (or not complicated and constricting enough): that is an editorial and technical balance. I don't know much about this particular template and its associated articles, but from the above discussion it's not clear to me that the current checks are causing significant problems, given that the flag category does not stop the infobox from displaying readably. Some templates take an alternative approach when flagging errors, by displaying a very obvious error message in the relevant article, which makes editors more likely to notice and try to fix the error, but is disconcerting for readers while the error remains unfixed. So the current approach of using an almost-invisible flagging category is not necessarily heavy-handed and is only a problem if, in practice, editors are discouraged from using the template by its complexity.
• The undocumented {{{Outcome}}} parameter seems to have been added by MZ in April 2007. I won't pretend to understand its purpose!

— Richardguk (talk) 23:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I hear what you are saying, but the bottom line is that the editors/readers are the customer, and the template writers are providing a service. The date formats giving rise to these "flag" errors are reasonably formatted. Blaming the editors for not reading the template Doc page is not a constructive thing to do. The impact to WP of these date-format limitations is that now we have nearly 200 articles who are in a "Flagged" category ... it appears at the bottom of every one of those nearly 200 articles. We should be more receptive about improving the template logic, not defensive. --Noleander (talk) 23:55, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that maintenance categories should not normally be visible. I've edited the wikitext at Category:Flagged U.S. Supreme Court articles to make it a hidden category, invisible to article readers unless they are logged in and have altered the relevant user preference. — Richardguk (talk) 00:22, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I'm defensive or just wary of changes to the (working) logic. If there's a demonstrated problem, feel free to fix. But as far as I see, the logic is sound.

The Flagged category is unique to this WikiProject, I think. Or was when I created it. Articles with bad infoboxes (where the year is repeated, there's info missing, fields are incorrectly filled out, etc.) tend to accompany articles where general improvement is needed as well. High correlation. Don't read "flagged" as anything more than follow-up. No deadline, and all that. :-) And the category is a hidden category, I think?

The Outcome parameter was for older cases of some kind, as I recall. It's been a while. There's probably something about it in the talk page archives of this talk page or the template's talk page (or maybe my talk page archives, but probably not). --MZMcBride (talk) 01:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

P.S. If you've got questions about any particular article, feel free to ask here or on my talk page. Nixon v. General Services Administration was in the flagged category as it read "Argued April, 20 1977, 1977" and "June 28 1977, 1977".

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fellows v. Blacksmith/archive1

I have nominated Fellows v. Blacksmith to be featured. Please feel free to comment. Savidan 20:33, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I see a few people have commented over there already. Good luck with the process. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:24, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Arizona v. California

Hi. Looking at the current version of Arizona v. California, it's pretty clear that something needs to be done. I think there are two options:

1. turn "Arizona v. California" into a disambiguation page and split off the individual cases into individual articles
2. turn "Arizona v. California" into a proper index page, with subsections for each individual case and separate infoboxes in each section

Any thoughts on this? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

It looks like there aren't separate cases, but rather multiple opinions in the same case. Some of the cited decisions may even just be decrees. I don't think we have a good example of a well developed article about an original jurisdiction lawsuit like this, do we? postdlf (talk) 19:47, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I was using "case" kind of loosely there. I mean splitting by decision, which is how we split most articles already. It'd be nine separate articles, it looks like. They're all interconnected, obviously, and would be linked via an index/disambiguation page and "see also" sections, but the current mess of a page (including that infobox!) really serves no one, I think.

Not sure about good examples of original jurisdiction lawsuits. They're rare, so the odds of having an article about one and having it be decent are small.... :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

As the separate opinions link up to form a single narrative, I think there should be one article about the litigation as a whole, with an overview and summary of all the decisions (maybe with each under a separate header), with {{main}} links to any separate articles on opinions (maybe all are merited, maybe some, depends on the opinion's substance) just as we would in any non-case law article with split-off subtopics. postdlf (talk) 21:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Roe v. Wade

I ended up working on Roe v. Wade a month or two back, for reasons that I am not clear about (I generally do my best to avoid these kinds of controversial articles, but thankfully, the page has been pretty calm since). This is what it looked like in mid-December; this is what it looks like now. It has improved a bit, but I'm not sure by how much. The "Controversy" section isn't that great, and the sourcing is not really what I would expect for a featured article. I'm not really that well-informed about how either this project or the FA project works. Should this a candidate for WP:FARC? NW (Talk) 04:49, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Any on-wiki thoughts? I was chatting to another contributor off-wiki the other day, and he suggested that I take the article to FARC. I'm inclined to do so, unless anyone has an objection. NW (Talk) 05:36, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Good idea, I can agree with bringing it to FARC. There is a need to discuss the standards for a Supreme Court FA, and this is probably the vehicle to do so. As an editor in this area, I need Roe v. Wade to be of top quality as I use it as a basis for improving my own work. Thanks NW for working on this! :) Lord Roem (talk) 13:47, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I have nominated Roe v. Wade for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. NW (Talk) 16:26, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Template:Sixth Amendment

I have created Template:Sixth Amendment, modeled after the first amendment template. I hope it will inspire more article creation in this area. Savidan 06:48, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

You know, I may just take you up on that :) Great template! Lord Roem (talk) 17:49, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I like it. Good work.--Chaser (talk) 16:49, 18 February 2012 (UTC)