Talk:United States v. Washington

Held for 30 Years?

The case has significant negative citation history - while it may still be narrow law (and I am not sure of even that), I think it might be deceptive to say that it has held for 30 years. Is anyone more familiar with this case in a position to set me straight here? Editor Emeritus 16:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• • • It is accurate to say that this case has held. It is a case of continuing jurisdiction with multiple subproceedings being filed annually to fine tune it or interpret the many areas where the original decision was not able to provide guidance. Today, the orginal decision has been extended to shellfish harvest and its principals have been applied to off-reservation treaty hunting as well. It is alive and well. [Prof. Ron Whitener, Univ. of Washington Law School]

Source for expansion

This book, much of which is online in Google Books, has lots of info about this case:

Wilkinson, Charles F. (2005). Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 165. ISBN 0393051498.

-Pete (talk) 18:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Appellate history

This article does not list anything about the appellate history - unless there is objection, I will work on restructuring the article to show this history. GregJackP Boomer! 12:37, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Text of decision?

Is the text of Boldt's decision available online anywhere? And if not, does anyone know where best to look for a copy? - Jmabel | Talk 02:38, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

• Found it: http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/salmon/BoldtDecision8.5x11layoutforweb.pdf. - Jmabel | Talk 05:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:United States v. Washington/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Coemgenus (talk · contribs) 14:09, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Checklist

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, no copyvios, spelling and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Comments

I'll review this one over the next few days. --Coemgenus (talk) 14:09, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Lede

• I tweaked the wording of one sentence. Feel free to revert if I've changed the meaning somehow. Everything else in the lede looks fine.

Treaties

• In the last sentence, you could cut "This was due to the fact that" without changing the meaning of the sentence.

Post-treaty history

• "Initially, the treaty rights of the tribes were honored...." The passive voice makes this confusing. Might be better as "Initially, the [state/federal] government honored the tribes' treaty rights..."
• "By the time thirty years had passed, whites had established over forty salmon canneries by 1883." Might be better as "Within thirty years, whites had established more than forty salmon canneries." Or "By 1883, whites had established more than forty salmon canneries."
• "In 1889, when Washington transitioned from being a territory to a state..." Better to day something like "In 1889, when Washington Territory, became a state..." Later in that sentence, "the legislature began to pass" should have after it "what [some scholar] described as"

United States v. Winans

• "arose" might be better than "came up".

Seufert Bros. Co. v. United States

• It's not clear why you mention Sam Williams here. Was he also involved in the case?

Direct appeals

• Were there any notable points in the appeals court's decision? Any memorable lines?

Court supervision

• "As of 2013" -- is there any reading to think this has changed? If not, better just to leave off the "as of" language.

Landmark case

• One-sentence sections always look incomplete to me. Do you think you could combine this with "Public response"?
• "The Boldt decision is considered to be..." could be better as "Legal scholars [or whoever] consider the Boalt decision to be..."

That's all I have. Sorry this took so long! Looking forward to your responses. --Coemgenus (talk) 21:14, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Reponses

Treaties

• In the last sentence, you could cut "This was due to the fact that" without changing the meaning of the sentence.

 Done

Post-treaty history

• "Initially, the treaty rights of the tribes were honored...." The passive voice makes this confusing. Might be better as "Initially, the [state/federal] government honored the tribes' treaty rights..."

 Done

• "By the time thirty years had passed, whites had established over forty salmon canneries by 1883." Might be better as "Within thirty years, whites had established more than forty salmon canneries." Or "By 1883, whites had established more than forty salmon canneries."

 Done

• "In 1889, when Washington transitioned from being a territory to a state..." Better to day something like "In 1889, when Washington Territory, became a state..." Later in that sentence, "the legislature began to pass" should have after it "what [some scholar] described as"

 Done

United States v. Winans

• "arose" might be better than "came up".

 Done

Seufert Bros. Co. v. United States

• It's not clear why you mention Sam Williams here. Was he also involved in the case?

 Done, added clarification to the following sentence.

Direct appeals

• Were there any notable points in the appeals court's decision? Any memorable lines?

 Not done Not really, the appellate courts pretty much left Boldt's decision stand intact.

Court supervision

• "As of 2013" -- is there any reading to think this has changed? If not, better just to leave off the "as of" language.

 Done

Landmark case

• One-sentence sections always look incomplete to me. Do you think you could combine this with "Public response"?

 Done, combined it with the previous section instead, it fits better there.

• "The Boldt decision is considered to be..." could be better as "Legal scholars [or whoever] consider the Boalt decision to be..."

 Done

Let me know if I need to do anything else. I really appreciate your taking the time to review this. GregJackP Boomer! 22:09, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

I think you've gotten everything. I'm happy to pass this one. Nice work, it was an enjoyable read! --Coemgenus (talk) 17:59, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Statement needs clarity

Moved to Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/United_States_v._Washington/archive1

TFAR

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/United States v. Washington --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:43, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Article maintenance

I have just gone through the article and made a number of minor edits, mostly to correct good-faith attempts to improve the article. The key thing I noted is the change of the ". . ." (Bluebook citation ellipsis) to the common "..." ellipsis. GregJackP Boomer! 17:51, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Should Sohappy v. Smith be merged here, or kept and improved?

This article is promarily about the Boldt Decision, but when it comes to fishing rights in the PNW, it seems that the Belloni Decision, coming from Sohappy v. Smith a few years prior, is similarly important legal precedent.

Recently Sohappy v. Smith was proposed for deletion. As a result, Urve and I have explored that case and its connections to this one. We're both a little uncertain: Is the best approach to merge what little content exists there into this article, and redirect here, or to build out that article to be a little more thorough? It seems as though one or the other of those approaches is needed, as the current stub-like article is not particularly informative, and even lead me (the creator of that article) to get confused between United States v. Washington and United States v. Oregon. Neither of us are expert in complex legal cases, so some help from someone more conversant in this area would be most welcome.

Please see the proposed merge section on that article's talk page. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 03:52, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

New Book out on Case

Treaty Justice: The Northwest Tribes, the Boldt Decision, and the Recognition of Fishing Rights is a new (2024) book out by Charles Wilkerson whose previous book is cited in the article. There is a lot of information in the book and footnotes if anyone is looking to update or expand this article. @Auldhouse Auldhouse (talk) 23:04, 5 February 2024 (UTC)