Template talk:Constitution of the United States

Interpretation section

I am moving preemption to the "interpretation" section, since preemption is not a clause or concept that appears explicitly in the Constitution, but rather derives from—is an interpretation of—the Supremacy Clause. Hydriotaphia 17:14, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

In approximately a day, unless I hear objections, I shall remove Civil liberties of the United States from the template for several reasons.

1. Most importantly, it is not a particularly informative article. It contains nothing that other articles (Freedom of speech in the United States, Equal Protection Clause, etc.) don't already have.
2. I think the limited space on the Template would be better used for other articles.
3. I don't think it's quite accurate to say that civil liberties are an "interpretation" of the Constitution; rather, they derive from the guarantees of specific clauses, and thus the topic is better addressed in the articles on those clauses.

I hope no one will be offended that I plan on doing this. Please let me know if you object. Best, Hydriotaphia 03:38, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

For the moment, however, I shall content myself with adding Incorporation (Bill of Rights) to the "intepretation" section and moving "due process"—and renaming it "Due Process Clause"—to the "Specific Clauses" section. Hydriotaphia 03:42, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

I have chagned 'signatures' to 'signatories', which is the title of the page it linked to, and a more desciptive word of what it links to. JiMternet 23:49, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Albany Congress

I think a link to Albany Congress should be included, since the "Albany Plan" was the first document drawn up to create some sort of union of the colonies. --JW1805 02:01, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Exec priv

Anyone think that executive privilege should be added to "interpretation?" Kaisershatner 20:39, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Overlap

This template has a lot of overlap with Template:Infobox US Constitution. I think that infobox, at the very least, should have some actual info pertaining to each article it's used on. Possibly other changes are necessary. See Template talk:Infobox US Constitution for further discussion. —Tox 21:41, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

"Taxing and Spending Clause"? -> "General Welfare Clause"

For those of you who have watchlisted this page, you might be interested to know that "Taxing and Spending Clause" was moved to General Welfare Clause. Firstly, the former gets only 3,130 ghits and the latter gets 2,270,000 27,300. Moreover the article's own first reference supports the new name as primary, but doesn't even recognize the old one.

I've taken care of all the double redirects, but there are still dozens of single. Squee23 19:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Good; thanks. Publicola 20:03, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry that it's months later, but I've returned the General Welfare stuff back to the Taxing and Spending Clause article as the GWC is a component of the larger T/SC and can be properly explained there. Foofighter20x (talk) 04:32, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Preamble

{{editprotected}} I was going to rm the Preamble from the "Interpretation" group because it's already listed in the "Articles" group. Any particular reason why the Preamble should be listed in two groups on the same template?
 —  ^{.`</sup>^) Paine Ellsworth<sup>diss`cuss} (^^`.  08:39, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree and have removed the second link.  Skomorokh, barbarian  09:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

You da Bar!(barian)

 —  ^{.`</sup>^) Paine Ellsworth<sup>diss`cuss} (^^`.  09:45, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Minor fixes

{{editprotect}}

I tried to fix some of the links in the template but couldn't because it's fully protected. Here is what the new version would look like —Preceding unsigned comment added by NES Wii (talk • contribs)

Code moved to Template:US Constitution/sandbox. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Latest version

I've left a version in the sandbox where the list backgrounds are fixed, the "Bill of Rights" link is absorbed into list3 and divs are used to make the lists more distinct from each other. 212.84.103.144 (talk) 11:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

• Like what you've done with "Bill of Rights", but amendments 11-27 should be with 1-10 shouldn't they?

Thanks. I left 11-27 on the next line as that's how they are in the current template. It might be worth keeping them that way so there's a clear break between what's now called the Bill of Rights (1-10) and the rest (11-27). People new to the topic might otherwise start confusing the two...?

• I agree that the spacing looks better on your version, but I don't think we should be doing that locally. This could be proposed on the meta-template Template:Navbox.

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:45, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I keep seeing templates where -- at a glance -- the alternating white and faint grey backgrounds don't really do enough to make the lists distinct from each other. Could you propose this, please? Thanks, 212.84.103.144 (talk) 01:41, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Remove a redirect

{{editprotect}} Under the amendments section, "Unsuccessful" is redirect to the page "Proposed" also links to. Eliminating that would be best and non-controversial. Outback the koala (talk) 05:30, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

 Done —  Tivedshambo  (t/c) 06:52, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Doprendek, 6 October 2010

{{edit protected}}

Remove close paren

There seems to be an incorrect lone closing parenthesis after "Signers". Doprendek (talk) 20:20, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Doprendek (talk) 20:20, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Nope, it's correct. It's closing the parenthetical opened with "Philadelphia Convention (". --Cybercobra (talk) 20:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion: Add "Property Clause" to Clauses Section

Link to Article_Four_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_2:_Federal_property_and_the_Territorial_Clause Frappyjohn (talk) 23:02, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Signatories section

@Randy Kryn: I see we both edited this template recently. Do we really need the list of Signatories? I could see a link to Framers being relevant, but I'd argue that this template should focus specifically on Constitution-related articles. Much of the linked signatory articles are on the people themselves, not about their activities at the Constitutional Convention, and to the extent it is covered, it's already covered at the link to Constitutional Convention (United States). Any thoughts? Just trying to avoid template-bloat... SnowFire (talk) 05:00, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Hello SnowFire. Came by for a look after your interesting edits and again realized how the two Constitution templates differ (see {{Historical American Documents}} which has its own Constitution template and where the signatories were copied from). They probably should have the same template content, and the signors seem essential on these templates as the names of the Founding Fathers and their work have been recognized as inseparable (see the His.Amer.Docs template which includes the founders of all four major documents). Do you think that this template's content should be copied to the {{Historical American Documents}} or both left as they are with separately arranged content? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:08, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Randy Kryn. I'm not very familiar with the Historic American Documents template, but my inclination would be that regardless of duplication, this template should be on closely Constitution related articles. The signatories-as-a-whole are "interesting", but each individual signer's article doesn't really need to be called out, since their article will generally not be heavily Constitution related in the same way that an actual part or amendment of the Constitution is (most of the template) or articles directly on the Constitution's legacy as their only topic. It's still a reasonably long template with just that! But navigation templates are about articles, and those articles are clearly substantially less directly Constitution related than the others.

To be honest, I'm skeptical of Historical American Documents including signatories as well, and I would probably also want to remove signatories from that and create a much shorter template. Just links to the lists of signers would be sufficient, it's list material not template material. But I'm not super familiar with that template, and maybe it makes sense depending on how it's used. SnowFire (talk) 16:08, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The importance of America's Founding Fathers equals and creates inseparability from the documents themselves. They belong on these templates as much as the ink from the Syng inkstand indelibly belongs on, and gave life to, their historically unparalleled oath-taking affiliations to the Declaration and Constitution. Randy Kryn (talk) 18:44, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Another point for continued inclusion is that the drafters and signers of the U.S. Constitution actually have their own proper name, Framers. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:21, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Sure, I agree, I already mentioned a link to Framers might be relevant - although technically it's already linked since that's a redirect to a section of Constitutional Convention (United States). But wouldn't one link work much better than a zillion? This isn't about a ranking of importance (obviously the Framers are very important, although so are lots of topics), just... it's already covered in the links to the articles on the drafting & signing of the Constitution. In my opinion, the template was already very long before adding signatories, and is exceptionally long now - I'd rather draw the scope narrower rather than wider. Most of those biographical articles are not in fact about the Framer's activities with regards to the Constitution. (ANd hell, I'd argue that the link to Framers is better anyway - not all Framers were signatories, but it's the full list of Framers that really matters, along with other related matters like the Federalist Papers if we're talking about understanding the creation of the Constitution.) SnowFire (talk) 04:42, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: I see you added this back a few months ago. I still disagree. Take a look at the template - it's huge now. 15 entire new rows have been added. That's more rows than the entire rest of the template (13)! That's already a sign that this template is getting too long and should be split up, and the thing that should be split seems to be obvious to me. As a compromise, would just creating a new, separate template called "Framers" or the like work? I wouldn't complain if that template was added to all the Framers, sure. But links to each specific Framers is just not relevant enough when talking about, say, Amendments ratified in the 20th century or the like. I'll note that Template:Constitutions of France or the like doesn't include lists of signatories either. It's interesting, sure, but it's also not quite the same topic. SnowFire (talk) 04:04, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello SnowFire. One reason this went to the full format was that the beautiful Historical American documents navbox was broken into pieces, and this is the United States Constitution navbox. The size of the navbox is not at all unusual, it's well within standard limits. No split seems needed or warranted. Please note that this is a navbox about one of the major events in United States history, and that the Founders who wrote and signed the document are paramount in the totality of the event. I really don't know why you'd want to split such a thing, especially with the focus on the nation's founding coming into prominence for the next couple years. Thanks for the ping, which I let go for a day before reading (too many backroom discussions to do all of them at once, apologies about waiting a bit). Randy Kryn (talk) 02:27, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

A list of signatories is also consistent with the three other founding document navboxes, and was preceded by the deletion of navboxes dedicated to listing these signatories. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:28, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: Can you link to these other cases? Was there a discussion somewhere or just bold additions?

Anyway, I will agree that extremely bloated navboxes are not unusual, but that's a bad thing, not a good thing. Obviously a matter of taste, but less is more. We don't need absolutely every somewhat related item. And it's extra-unnecessary because I don't think there's any complaint at all about having a link to "Framers" or some synonym in the navbox, which allows seeing this. That's the equivalent of a link when there's just one author, except the author is a group - if readers want to see specific signatories, they can find them. Per WP:NAVBOX, they are ideally for a " small, well-defined group of articles" (emphasis mine). These links also fail a bunch of the suggestions there - e.g. "The articles should refer to each other, to a reasonable extent." and "If not for the navigation template, an editor would be inclined to link many of these articles in the See also sections of the articles." - Nobody would ever throw in a "See Also" link to David Brearley or the like. The Framers as a group, maybe, James Madison, maybe, but we certainly aren't linking to 80% of the others in most Constitution articles, and sometimes 100% of them. SnowFire (talk) 05:48, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello SnowFire. No problem here, the navbox is not bloated but is of typical size for such an important topic. No bold additions occurred, the Historical American Documents navbox was split into four navboxes after a long discussion and became the navboxes for the four U.S. founding documents. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:06, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

But the problem is that these aren't even on topic, as discussed. Again, the topic here is "Constitution of the United States". That means stuff in the Constitution very specifically, to me. Sections, Amendments, Clauses. A link to "Framers" achieves exactly what you want. There just isn't enough direct relevance here for the likes of Abraham Baldwin. Picking an article randomly: United States congressional apportionment never discusses the writers of the clause nor their debates. Even if hypothetically a sentence or two were added on this (if this knowledge even exists!), this would link, what, one or two of the Framers? We would never, ever add any of the other random Framers in a "See also" to this article. So.. it's not a good fit for this template. To repeat again, I'm not questioning creating some sort of "Framers of the Constitution" template. Your work wouldn't be wasted, and it could go on all the articles for the Framers. But it's a separate issue that would help make this template far tighter and more on point, which is more useful to readers. If you still disagree, would you mind if I dropped off a request for input at WP:3O or at WT:USA? SnowFire (talk) 17:51, 23 November 2024 (UTC)