Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Archive 13

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Category:United States Supreme Court opinions by topic

FYI, one editor has created and is populating narrow subcategories of this. Every past consensus I have seen has been against this level of fragmentation, and I am unaware of any new discussion establishing support for it or a framework as to how to proceed. @Apokrif: Please explain your thoughts here so other editors can consider what the best option is rather than one editor wasting a lot of time that others will just have to undo (or at the very least, rename). Thanks, postdlf (talk) 02:03, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

The current Category:United States Supreme Court cases is a mess. Do you think we should delete the 14 subcategories of Category:United States Supreme Court cases as well as Category:United States case law by topic? Apokrif (talk) 13:37, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Can you please point me to these past consensuses? Apokrif (talk) 12:28, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

What does "a mess" mean? Category:United States Supreme Court cases contains all U.S. Supreme Court cases. The category description page explains this. Why would we want to delete the subcategories or other categories simply because Category:United States Supreme Court cases is appropriately populated? I'm lost. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:19, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to delete, but to create categories. Apokrif (talk) 16:59, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

...could you elaborate? I asked for you to explain your thoughts. postdlf (talk) 20:18, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Could you elaborate? I asked you to point me to these past consensuses (I was unable to find them). Apokrif (talk) 21:13, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Apokrif. I was referring to edits such as this one. Feel free to create new categories if you'd like. You may want to publish an outline or some public notes in advance of big changes. Doing so allows others to review your proposal, saving you time and also potentially getting others to help you out.

For now, please keep all U.S. Supreme Court cases categorized in Category:United States Supreme Court cases. We try to keep that category fully and consistently populated in order to make it quicker and easier for a user to query all the U.S. Supreme Court case titles with articles on the English Wikipedia. If we only used subcategories such as Category:United States Supreme Court patent case law, it becomes significantly more difficult to query for such cases. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:08, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

So SCOTUS cases should be categorized in Category:United States Supreme Court cases and in subcategories of in Category:United States Supreme Court cases? AFAIK on en: we generally categorize articles in categories as narrow as possible (which can be found from larger categories of which they are subcategories) and we avoid redundant categorization (i.e., an article in Category:United States Supreme Court patent case law does not need to be also categorized in Category:United States Supreme Court cases) Apokrif (talk) 21:13, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

"Generally" being the key word. MZMcBride is aware of that general rule and just explained why this is an exception. postdlf (talk) 22:08, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment: For the record, I concur with MZMcBride and postdlf's arguments for keeping all articles about SCOTUS cases in Category:United States Supreme Court cases. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 22:13, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment: I agree that all Supreme Court cases should be in Category:United States Supreme Court cases. I have no firm objection to the additional category Category:United States Supreme Court patent case law (which currently holds only two cases). However, it is unclear to we why it is not sufficient to file it in both Category:United States Supreme Court cases and Category:patent case law. Normal database and search engines should be able to handle the AND function to find all cases that are in both categories, right? --David Tornheim (talk) 00:29, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685 (2001)

Anybody interested in tackling this? A redirect to the later per curiam opinion had existed at this title for a long time, but the original full opinion by the Court should be written there so I've moved the redirect to Bell v. Cone (2005). There are a lot of incoming links, and it seems like a fairly significant recent opinion in con law. postdlf (talk) 00:43, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I'll start an article about the case later this evening. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 00:49, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

It looks like Notecardforfree has a draft started at User:Notecardforfree/sandbox. Is there anything we can do to help get this draft into the article namespace? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:53, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

MZMcBride, I got a little side tracked with the article for this case ... I got distracted while looking through law reviews. Thanks for checking in though. I'll finish it in the next 2-3 days. I'll be at a Super Bowl party tomorrow, but my schedule on Monday and Tuesday is fairly flexible. I hope all is well and that you are enjoying a nice weekend! Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 04:29, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

MZMcBride and Postdlf, I just finished the article for this case. My apologies for the delays -- my schedule has been a little unpredictable these last few weeks. Also, FYI, it looks like many of the incoming links are the result of Template:US6thAmendment, which includes Bell v. Cone. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 22:38, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Very nice article! :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 00:03, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks, MZMcBride. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 00:42, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado

When this page is created (something I may work on when I get a moment), should "Pena" have a tilde? The Court doesn't seem to use ñ in the case name, but does use it when referring to Peña-Rodriguez himself (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-606_886b.pdf).

The article for Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña does use ñ, which the Supreme Court did not use in the case itself, but did use later in citations. So. Telos (talk) 16:49, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Telos. Yeah, I noticed this issue when updating List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 580.

It sort of depends on your view of page titles on the English Wikipedia. Some people try to insist on using Bluebook for page titles (so we end up with awkward abbreviations in page titles), others look for the most common name of the case, and still others look primarily for the "official" name of the case. With Pena-Rodriguez v. Peña-Rodriguez, I'm reminded of Dred Scott v. Sandford a bit (his name was Sanford), though I think the n v. ñ is not due to a clerical error, per se. Personally, I think using the accents is more correct generally. My suspicion has been that the lack of accented letters in printed editions is due more to technical restrictions than being intended, but it can leave English Wikipedia editors in the awkward spot of being wrong or following what the Court may or may not have intended.

I've created a redirect at Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado pointing to your new article. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:28, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that's mostly what I expected. Thanks for that! Telos (talk) 00:15, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment - Plummer v. State

There is an RfC at Plummer v. State, dealing with the Internet meme section. Please visit and comment on the proposed language for the section. While Plummer is not a SCOTUS case, the result of this RfC will affect Bad Elk v. United States, a SCOTUS good article. GregJackP Boomer! 04:45, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

was withdrawn by GregJackP, the proposer 12 hours after the above was posted. Jytdog (talk) 16:12, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment - Plummer v. State - 2nd Attempt

There is an RfC at Plummer v. State RfC, dealing with the Internet meme section. Please visit and comment on the proposed language for the section. This is revised from the first proposal. GregJackP Boomer! 16:48, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

That discussion is... a lot. I think characterizing a legal misconception as an Internet meme is dubious. If the misconception is notable enough, briefly mentioning it in the article in the "Subsequent developments" section seems reasonable. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:01, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The misconception is widespread, especially among the anarchist/voluntarist movement, the so-called "common-law" movement, along with the sovereign citizen movement, and is actively perpetrated by Infowars, Breitbart, Copblock.org and similar fringe sites. Hell, it even pops up now in the comments on mainstream sites, like PoliceMag.com. I would invite you to comment at the RfC, your insight is always helpful. GregJackP Boomer! 14:00, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Pavan v. Smith

I realize that I'm a bit early on this and that the matter is likely being addressed behind the scenes, but, just for the record, Pavan v. Smith really does need its own article. Is someone already preparing one, as I assume? Antinoos69 (talk) 14:27, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Gompers v. United States

Gompers was created ten years ago, and then quickly deleted as G11 (no significance). I just restored the deleted content, but obviously it needs a compete work-up. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:23, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

2017 term opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States

I just noticed this was created. I left a message on the creator's talk page explaining the problems and asking for his agreement to deletion, but I've also noticed that he's never made a single talk page edit in any namespace, so I'm not hopeful that he'll respond. Thoughts? I think it may be speedy deletable, it's essentially a fictitiously ordered/grouped list of cases that (I'm assuming) have been scheduled for argument only but obviously not decided yet. postdlf (talk) 16:44, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Thinking on this further, I've removed the list as there are no opinions in these cases, so it is completely false to list these as if they are opinions of the Court. We're left with just a header now giving the dates of next term. postdlf (talk) 20:25, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

We could redirect to 2016 term opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States for now. It is a bit confusing how decision dates relate to terms (i.e., there are plenty of opinions issued in 2017 that are part of the 2016 term). Or, if you don't like temporarily redirecting, deletion or moving to user space also seem like fine options to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:55, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

As created it was a list of the cases that the Court has accepted for consideration next Term ("cert. granted" or jurisdiction noted or postponed). So another possibility would be to keep the list but move it to a new title, if we want to. Or we could have a section (currently empty) at the top for opinions issued, and then a populated section for cases not yet issued (which would currently be all of them). Or still another alternative would be to move it to draft space until the first opinion comes down.... Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:00, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I think I'm liking the idea of redirecting for now as the best option. Having a running list of cases scheduled for or that have been argued included in the list of opinions sounds like a maintenance headache to keep up with, and the list of opinions gets large enough as it is. postdlf (talk) 22:28, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

As a bit of trivia, we used to, for better or worse, have an "Upcoming cases" section. It took me a minute to find it, but as an example: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases_from_the_Rehnquist_Court_through_the_Roberts_Court&oldid=146684423#Upcoming_cases>. This page is from July 2007 and the case Watson v. United States was not argued until October 2007 and not decided until December 2007. I don't think we do this any longer, but the idea of listing cases that have been scheduled for argument or granted certiorari is not unprecedented here. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Postdlf, Newyorkbrad: In thinking about this a bit more, if we have articles for future SCOTUS cases, it seems like we do want to list and index them... somewhere. Otherwise these articles become somewhat orphaned and quasi-disowned, which I think is bad. I suppose, as a WikiProject, we could reject the articles until such time that we consider them official SCOTUS cases. This would be a cop-out and would punt the problem elsewhere. However, as an encyclopedia, I feel like if we're going to have articles on cases not yet heard and not yet decided, we need to index them somewhere.

This is not to say that I disagree with you regarding 2017 term opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, per se, but I'm wondering how and where we should list cases such as Carpenter v. United States. Do you think category membership lists are sufficient? Really, by virtue of being in Category:United States Supreme Court cases, these cases become part of our WikiProject. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:14, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe something like list of cases pending before the Supreme Court of the United States? postdlf (talk) 13:52, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Looking around a bit, we have List of cases pending before the United States Supreme Court, which was proposed for deletion and then deleted. And we have List of pending United States Supreme Court cases, which was redirected to List of United States Supreme Court cases by the Roberts Court in October 2011. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:36, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

When is a decision considered unanimous?

The current version of Packingham v. North Carolina says the decision was decided unanimously. The slip opinion syllabus notes that Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch "took no part in the consideration or decision of the case." However, he was a member of the court at the time of the decision. Should we describe decisions where a sitting member of the court did not participate as being unanimous in the infobox and in the article prose? I've read news articles that do this and I've personally always considered it an error to call a decision unanimous when a current sitting member did not participate. (cc: Newyorkbrad, Postdlf) --MZMcBride (talk) 06:00, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I'd say it's fair to refer to this decision as being unanimous, although one could say "unanimous (8-0)" if one wanted. I think that's particularly so where the reason for one Justice's non-participation is that he or she wasn't on the Court when the case was argued. Here, Packingham was argued in February; if the decision would have been "unanimous" if it had been handed down in March before Justice Gorsuch was confirmed, then it would seem to be no less unanimous for having been handed down in June, after Gorsuch had been sworn in but while he was effectively not on the Court for purposes of this particular case.

However, although I don't think it's dispositive, for what it's worth the Court's own usage in the syllabi prepared by the Reporter of Decisions, may cut against using the word "unanimous." As you know the "voting lineup" is always the last paragraph of the syllabus in a signed opinion. In the case of Packingham, the question of unanimity or not is obscured by the separate opinions concurring in the judgment. But I looked for an 8-0 case with a single opinion, and found as an example Water Splash, Inc. v. Menon, in which the syllabus reads, "ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which all other Members joined, except GORSUCH, J., who took no part in the consideration or decision of the case"—not "ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of a unanimous Court, except that GORSUCH, J. took no part...." Where it's 9-0 (or 8-0 with a vacancy), it would say "ALITO, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court." So there is that for what it's worth. And see also Unanimity#voting. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:34, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I think we should follow the same language the Court does. A decision would then only be "unanimous" if all members of the Court joined it, not merely those who participated. postdlf (talk) 00:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Clay v. United States is considered a unanimous decision even though Marshall didn't participate. So was United States v. Nixon when Justice Rehnquist didn't part in the case....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 01:02, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Do we have any examples of Justices (or even lower court judges) making this distinction? bd2412 T 01:26, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I think we should look at whether all participating justices agree as the standard for unanimity. @WilliamJE: found some good past examples. The whole point of a justice recusing themselves is to to excuse themselves from determining the outcome. I also think the plain meaning of unanimous supports only looking to participating justices. Knope7 (talk) 01:41, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

WilliamJE: Considered by whom? :-)

The text of Clay v. United States says "MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL took no part in the consideration or decision of this case." and indicates the decision was issued per curiam. While our article currently says the decision was unanimous, is that accurate? The text of the decision doesn't seem to indicate so. Are we citing other sources to say that the case was unanimous?

The same is true of the decision text from United States v. Nixon, which says "BURGER, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which all Members joined except REHNQUIST, J., who took no part in the consideration or decision of the cases." It doesn't say that the decision was unanimous, while the English Wikipedia currently does. Why is that?

It seems worth noting, as others have already, that the decisions don't seem to shy away from using the term "unanimous" when all members participate. For example, this case from volume 419 reads "BLACKMUN, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court." and this case from volume 404 reads "BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. BURGER C.J., post, p. 404 U. S. 199, and BLACKMUN, J., post, p. 404 U. S. 201, filed concurring opinions." These cases are both around the same time as the cases you mention.

Does anyone make a distinction between how we label the opinion in the infobox versus how we describe the opinion in article prose? To me, it seems especially wrong, in the infobox, to summarize the decision as joined unanimously and then explicitly note that someone did not participate when they were an active, sitting member of the court. Since the text of the decisions themselves seem to have made the same decision to not use the word "unanimous", is there a reason we should deviate? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

There's also a difference between a "unanimous decision" (the whole Court supporting the same judgment, such as reversal, regardless of whether they've joined the majority opinion or separately concurred in the judgment) and a "unanimous opinion" (the whole Court joining the majority opinion that provides the reasoning/explanation for the judgment). postdlf (talk) 17:39, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

That is a good point. It also goes along with this stats report from SCOTUSBLOG. They appear to make no distinction between 8-0 cases before and after Gorsuch was confirmed. They do distinguish based on whether justices joined in the judgment or the opinion. Knope7 (talk) 03:06, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

That's a really nice link. Thank you. I hadn't realized SCOTUSBlog was minding the types of unanimity.

I think we have pretty inconsistent treatment in our infoboxes currently about how we note (or not), for example, whether a justice concurred only in the judgment. I find myself continuing to wonder about the various cases and how best to summarize some of the more complex opinions in an infobox. The question of unanimity came up previously in the context of potentially adding a "score" (e.g., 8–0 or 9–0) to Template:Infobox SCOTUS case. Packingham v. North Carolina would be considered 8–0–1? Or 8–0 with a note? But it would probably never be considered 9–0, even though there were nine members of the court at the time of the decision. I continue to wonder whether it's accurate to call this unanimous.

Newyorkbrad notes that there are other times, for example when a justice recuses, that a case could be 8–0 or even 7–0. It seems to me that this type of situation also raises the question of whether or not the label "unanimous" is appropriate. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:40, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@MZMcBride, Knope7, Postdlf, BD2412, and WilliamJE: Coming back to this topic as I serendipitously came across a lead while looking for something else. For an example of an instance when the Court described itself as unanimous, go to here and see the references to Cobbledick v. United States in the September 16, 2014 entry. I think this supports describing an 8-0 decision with a recusal as "unanimous." Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:13, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

I am satisfied by this. If a later court considers an 8-0 decision with one justice not participating as "unanimous", then I see no reason for Wikipedia to depart from this understanding. We could have an article, of course, explaining "unanimity" in court votes. bd2412 T 16:20, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that one example sways from the better principle of following how the syllabus classifies such opinions. How justices later characterize things in their written opinions is not going to be anywhere near as consistent, instead a function of rhetoric depending on whether they want to elevate or diminish a precedent. postdlf (talk) 17:25, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Are law clerks to the US Supreme Court inherently notable?

FYI. Discussion includes links to currently pending AFDs for former SCOTUS law clerks. postdlf (talk) 03:00, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Draft:Original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States

I have started Draft:Original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States, a fascinating topic brought to my attention by a recent aborted DYK hook falsely stating that an article subject had appeared as an expert witness before the U.S. Supreme Court. An article on the actual (rare) instances of individuals appearing as witnesses before the Court will be much more worthy of appearing as a DYK topic. bd2412 T 20:17, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Nice work! I'll reiterate my opinion that such drafts don't need to be in a separate namespace. That text is absolutely fine for a main namespace article. Part of me wants to boldly just move the page into the article namespace, but I'll hold myself back out of deference to your apparent wishes. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:33, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I would like to build it out a bit more first, so that it presents a reasonable coherent whole by the time it gets moved. I don't anticipate that this will be in draft for more than a few weeks. bd2412 T 20:38, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

As you wish. I think we may be able to merge/move some content from special master and original jurisdiction into this new article. Or at least add some bidirectional pointers. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:53, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Also being discussed on the Wikiproject Law talkpage. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:37, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Copyright problems using WestLaw? --Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board--

The article Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board appears to violate copyright. I didn't want to go so far to have the page blanked by using {{subst:copyvio}} and to file a formal objection, but I'm still considering and welcome someone else to do so if necessary.

It looks to me like the text for the Holding portion (and likely some of the rest of it) was lifted from WestLaw. My guess is the editor probably didn't realize that copying from WestLaw would be a problem.

This also bring a question. Are citations like this acceptable in our law articles?

The President could not “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” within meaning of Article II if he could not oversee faithfulness of officers who executed them. U.S.C.A. Const. Art. 2, § 1, cl. 1

I don't have access to WestLaw (and neither will most readers), so I believe that using a WestLaw (or LexisNexis) citation should be avoided. However, U.S.C.A. or U.S.C.S. could be found in a law library. So I am not sure if it is generally acceptable or not.

--David Tornheim (talk) 22:58, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi David Tornheim. U.S. Supreme Court opinions, as works of the U.S. federal government, are released into the public domain, as I understand it. Which parts of Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board do you think are problematic specifically? I'm a bit confused by your note here as it sounds like you don't have access to WestLaw, so I'm not sure how you're identifying potential copyright violations. The first sentence of the "Facts" section, for example, seems to come from <https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-861.pdf> ("Respondent, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, was created as part of a series of accounting reforms in the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002."). WestLaw has no copyright over this specific text, as far as I know. There may be other parts of the article that are inappropriately copied from WestLaw, but I'm not sure which parts those are and how you're identifying them.

In general, using offline sources or restricted sources is fine, but we obviously prefer open and online sources if/when/where available. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I didn't read closely enough. You're concerned with the Holding text? I think a simple edit to remove any offending text would be fine, though arguably it's already heavily attributed to WestLaw, with external links sprinkled throughout. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:46, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Why would we be linking to Westlaw for a constitutional provision available everywhere? The citation is complete without the external link, anyway, which is just a convenience link. postdlf (talk) 01:23, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

My thinking exactly. Better to link to a place where it is publicly available. I was about to do that, but waited for two reasons: (1) I'm not sure what source we prefer. (2) in this particular citation, it's possible that the reason the editor chose to use U.S.C.A rather than U.S.C. is not simply because the editor was using WestLaw for the research, but instead because the source of the interpretation for that sentence originated in WestLaw and is not available in U.S.C. or U.S.C.S. Then it would be incorrect to replace U.S.C.A. with U.S.C. Again, because I don't have access to WestLaw, it's not easy for me to know the answer that question. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:50, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Like MZMcBride, it is also my understanding the text of SCOTUS opinions are public domain (see this law review article at p. 1189). I agree that we should remove any text that was created by Westlaw. To the extent that the article is comprised of text that is copied directly from the Supreme Court opinion, that should be summarized into the author's own words. Wikipedia is not (and should not be) a repository for the original versions of SCOTUS opinions (see WP:NOTREPOSITORY, which states that "Wikipedia articles are not merely collections of ... Public domain or other source material"). -- Notecardforfree (talk) 01:30, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the many responses. Looks like this board gets much more attention than WikiProject_Law, where I rarely get a response to a question like this.

Yes, I agree that the text of the opinion as published by the court should be public domain, and additionally that it should not be copied word for word into the body of our articles, except for reasonable-sized quotes. Also, the Court's opinion should not be summarized in the author's words either--since everything is supposed to come from secondary sources rather than primary sources WP:SECONDARY. (I believe this is a pervasive problem with many of our articles on court cases, either that the author has summarized the case his/herself or has used a secondary source and not cited.)

Regarding WestLaw: It is, of course, a secondary source (except text of the official opinions). So I see no problem with summarizing WestLaw's holdings. I was concerned the holding written by WestLaw were directly copied and pasted into the article (based on the fact all of the links were exclusively to WestLaw). And since I do not have access to WestLaw, I would have to go to the law library to check--maybe one of you has WestLaw?

Citation issue: I responded above.

Mostly, I came here to check in on conventions before making changes that might violate them, and welcome this feedback. I have much Wiki-experience editing non-legal articles.

--David Tornheim (talk) 04:50, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

David Tornheim, we generally prefer that editors cite directly to the original source document when describing the contents of a law or court decision. Unlike other disciplines, which sometimes require interpretation of data or the distillation of competing theories, authors of legal articles need only present a straightforward description of the language of a statute or the details of a court ruling. To that extent, the original source material is the only place you will find a pure, unfiltered picture of the topic. MOS:LAW also provides some guidance on this issue; it states that authors should consult both primary and secondary sources (and to give priority to primary sources when there is a conflict between a primary sources and a secondary source).

I should also note that WP:PRIMARY allows authors to use primary sources to provide "straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source". Ideally, a summary of a court's ruling will only consist of straightforward, descriptive statements, though there are many articles about SCOTUS cases that do a poor job of this. Of course, if editors want to talk about the future implications or potential impact of a case, or if they want to provide a summary of a case that draws inferences beyond the text of the decision, then they will need to support their assertions with citations to secondary sources. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 19:31, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Makes sense. Thanks for the tips. I will read through MOS:LAW before doing any more edits to legal articles of this nature. --David Tornheim (talk) 02:24, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Chiming in very late here (hence the outdent) but when I've worked on articles like this in the past, I've generally followed the clerk's syllabus (included in the slip opinion), which like the opinion itself is in the public domain. The syllabus should definitely be considered a secondary source, albeit not entirely independent of the primary source. 121a0012 (talk) 06:14, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

New Article: Seeking Input

Hello, I'm a college student writing an article for Wikipedia for my senior project. The article I'm currently creating is Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia. I'm looking for feedback so I may continue improving the article, so any help would be appreciated! Kimmecca (talk) 15:02, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

United States Reports now available digitally

The Law Library of Congress has digitally released all volumes of the United States Reports from inception (1791) to 2004. For more information see this SCOTUSblog post. A link to the collection is here. We may wish to start including links to these official reports in the case articles, although for some purposes such as searching the PDF images may be less convenient than sources like Findlaw that we already use. Let's discuss. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:00, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

• Maybe a radical idea, but I think the goal should be to link (theoretically) exclusively to WikiSource copies of the documents. Three main points. 1) The page design of WikiSource makes the cases inherently easier to read than any of the third party options. 2) There's no reason to rely solely on third party sources when there is a body under the WikiMedia Foundation that can store entire public domain works. What if they change their URLS? What if they decide to take the copies of the cases down, or the sites that host the cases down entirely? 4) It's just generally an incentive to preserve the texts on WikiSource manually if you happen to be working on a particular case, which is a fine practice. Lethargilistic (talk) 22:24, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Neat, thanks for sharing! I added a link to <https://www.loc.gov/collections/united-states-reports/> to Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Resources#External in this edit.

The PDFs can be super-useful if the plaintext or HTML transcripts are confusing or misleading. And for older volumes, the PDFs can sometimes be the only real resource available. When I've looked for certain obscure cases in volumes like 70, it used to be pretty difficult to find the case text. I think it's gotten somewhat better in the past few years.

As noted on that Resources page, we used to have HeinOnline as an option for all of these PDFs, but it seems to have gone behind a paywall. There are lots of options for citing the text of recent cases, including FindLaw, Justia, OpenJurist, and supremecourt.gov itself. And, as Lethargilistic notes, we also have Wikisource, which has a lot fewer of the privacy and advertising issues that other resources have, but still isn't as comprehensive or as easy to work with, last I looked. Templates such as {{ussc}} offer Wikisource, FindLaw, and OpenJurist as options.

There are also other digital options such as Westlaw and LexisNexis, but we've typically avoided those as being non-free and non-open. We do sometimes include proprietary citations in case infoboxes, however, and nobody really seems to mind that. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:03, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Naming new Supreme Court articles

I've been killing some redlinks for cases, and noticed an inconsistency to how the cases are names, so I'd like some advice. Take, for example, Mcloughlin v. Raphael Tuck and Sons Co.. I omitted Mcloughlin's first name because I assumed that's just how cases are cited, but he is called James Mchloughlin in the title of the actual document. Additionally, I've seen inconsistency in whether or not shortenings like "Co." should be spelled out. Is there a Manual of Style for this anywhere? lethargilistic (talk) 19:57, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

We title articles after the short form of case names. This is basically the same form used in a citation to that case, for which you can consult the Bluebook, or look at the opinions themselves... If it helps you distinguish any more, there's a difference between the case name (shortened names of lead petitioner v. lead respondent) and the case caption (which lists full names and titles of all parties v. all parties). So when we finally have an article on this case, it would be titled Hall v. Hall, not Elsa Hall, as personal representative of the Estate of Ethlyn Louise Hall and as successor trustee of the Ethlyn Louise Hall Family Trust, Petitioner v. Samuel Hall, et al. Editors may further shorten an article title even more in a bid to WP:COMMONNAME, or unpack what might otherwise be confusing or uncommon acronyms or abbreviations, but the Bluebook short form name of the case should be the starting point. postdlf (talk) 22:30, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Articles for denied appeals?

Going through the cases, I'm seeing cases in the Court Reporter that the Court denied appeals to and therefore did not hear listed right along side the cases the Court adjudicated. Should these be given articles, too? My heart says yes, but my head says no. lethargilistic (talk) 00:57, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Cases decided by full, signed opinion are presumed notable, and in the modern era you would be unable to find any that do not satisfy GNG. Per curiam opinions are typically brief and more routine and so are usually best dealt with in lists for the term. But cases in which the Court denies certiorari? There are thousands of such cases every term and whether any of those cases merit a WP article has to be decided for each individually on its own merits. postdlf (talk) 22:34, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran

Hello, I am writing the article for Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran but I am having trouble with the infobox. How do I change the Associate Justices involved with the case? The infobox still includes Scalia and does not include Gorsuch, and Kagan took no part in the case.--MainlyTwelve (talk) 15:12, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Never mind, figured it out.--MainlyTwelve (talk) 15:16, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Case lead sentences

Hi. We have a proposed style guide for U.S. Supreme Court cases. I'd specifically like to nail down how we want to treat lead sentences. I'll list some options below.

Option 1

'''''Roe v. Wade''''', {{ussc|410|113|1973}}, is a

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a

Option 2

'''''Roe v. Wade''''', {{ussc|410|113|1973|el=no}}, is a

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a

Option 3

'''''Roe v. Wade''''', 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a

Option 4

'''''Roe v. Wade''''' is a

Roe v. Wade is a

Option 5

'''''Roe v. Wade''''', [[Case citation|410 U.S. 113]] (1973), is a

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a

My preference is probably option 3 at this point, but I don't feel super strongly about which option is picked. I'm also open to considering other options, of course.

I would strongly like to standardize our articles in order to clean up what I view as the current untidy mess. Before I try to do that, I'd like to hear what others think and try to reach a consensus on which option to go with. If nobody responds, silence will be taken as consensus. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:46, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

• I'm fine with options 1, 2, or 3. However, I don't think we should use option 4; including the citation in the lead is incredibly useful. Option 3 might simply be the easiest, especially if newer editors are not familiar with citation templates. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 20:12, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
• I'm obviously biased since I did a lot of the work on {{ussc}}, but I prefer option 2 because it gives a link to other cases in the same volume of the reporter which can be useful. I agree with Notecardforfree that option 4 is not a good idea. I think Option 5 is confusing and not be preferred over a template or non-linked citation. Option 1 is on the wrong side of WP:EL (which, coincidentally, is why ussc now has an el=no parameter). I would be okay with option 3 but think the links are helpful. So essentially my preferences are 2 > 3 > 5 > 4 > 1. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 20:36, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Hi Notecardforfree and Wugapodes. The concern with option 1 is that external links in inline prose are generally discouraged, particularly in the first sentence. The concern with option 2 is that it introduces some fairly ugly syntax into the first sentence. (Though arguably infobox syntax or even references syntax is a lot uglier.) It sounds like option 2 is the current favorite. Thank you both for replying. If nobody else chimes in, I think going with option 2 is fine. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:25, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
    • @MZMcBride: If you don't want to take this on manually (and are willing to wait a few days) I could whip together a bot script to go through the articles and modify them to be in line with whatever consensus we find. I think this is a great effort and honestly would love to see a more complete style guide. So, regardless, thanks to you for bringing it up. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 03:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
      • Sure, writing a script or bot would be pretty easy. (I have some familiarity with bots and scripts here. I don't do as much these days, but I'm somewhere north of a million logged actions between this account and a few bots.) I'm personally not really interested in that here, as I think there's benefit to having a human review the articles. I do have some reporting in place, though: WP:SCOTUSWORK. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:33, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Daniel Case, Postdlf, Cdogsimmons, Chaser, bd2412, et al.: any opinions on this? --MZMcBride (talk) 04:47, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Prefer 5 or 3. I agree the citation is helpful in the lead. I always know to look for a link to the opinion in the infobox and/or at the bottom of the article. I don't know whether the casual reader finds it so easy, but Wikipedia:External links guides us to excluding same in the first sentence. As to options 1 and 2, I've never understood the benefit of linking to the respective volume list, particularly in the first sentence. For example, the only relevant case in volume 410 is the companion case, Doe v. Bolton, which is of such obvious significance that it is already mentioned in the second sentence of the Roe v. Wade article. Otherwise, everything in 410 is wholly unrelated and irrelevant.--Chaser (talk) 23:50, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Chaser. I think the idea behind linking to the volume was somewhat similar to templates such as {{usc|18|45}}, which output as 18 U.S.C. § 45. When you see a number such as "18" in a citation, the number doesn't provide much context as to what it means. A link is an easy way to provide some additional context. In the case of "410 U.S. 113", the "410" alone won't tell the reader much, but a link to volume 410 will at least explain its significance. That said, I mostly agree with you that the volume links are often unhelpful.

It looks like option 3 has sufficient consensus. I've updated the project style guide and Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases/Reports/B shows which pages are and are not following this format. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:59, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I'm late to the party. I concur on option 3. Best regards.Cdogsimmons (talk) 05:39, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I am weighing in on this very late for what it's worth. I had been using Option 2. I agree with Chaser's point that the links to U.S. Reports volume lists aren't very useful for substantive purposes, but on the other hand, the link to the main United States Reports is arguably useful for explaining what the citations mean generally. I do strongly prefer either Option 2 or 3. Option 1 definitely violates WP:EL and Option 4 omits helpful citation information. My pet peeve is Option 5, as I think the Case citation wikilink is way overused and should be avoided whenever there is an article on the specific case reporter in question, e.g. the U.S. Reports. --LegalSkeptic (talk) 18:03, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Also late to the party. I support Option 4 – I have been canvassing real world readers, and the results (which I admit are by no means conclusive) are that citations are distracting to the majority of readers, who (even quite educated ones) are unlikely to be familiar with the idiosyncratic style of court reporters. Regarding the "citations are useful to include" arguments – I think Wikipedia is very far down the list of sources in legal research, far below Westlaw/Lexis and below Justia, FindLaw, Google Scholar, and so on. Including citations in an infobox on the side is more than sufficient.  White Whirlwind  咨  19:42, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

I added a link

Civil Rights Cases Erfson (talk) 02:17, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

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Background

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There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

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Input requested at Talk:Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission#Prognostication?

Interested editors are invited to comment in the discussion at Talk:Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission#Prognostication? whether the article should contain a paragraph about the impact on future cases. Regards SoWhy 10:06, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Parallel citations

Hi all, following up on another talk page discussion: I've seen a large number of SCOTUS articles with five, seven, nine parallel citations (in addition to the United States Reports) listed in the infobox. Is all of this really necessary, particularly in older cases with established U.S. Reports cites? I can see the argument for including Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) and maybe Lawyers' Edition (L. Ed.) cites in relatively newer cases, but I just don't see how, e.g., U.S. LEXIS cites could be really useful for anyone when there's a good universal U.S. Reports cite available. Feels a bit cluttery to me. Should we set some sort of recommendations on what parallel citations to include? Thanks! Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 00:05, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi. Here's a somewhat buggy report about the current state of the "Citation" and "ParallelCitations" infobox template parameters: Special:Permalink/855962582. I feel like this topic came up previously and I didn't really see the harm in including as many parallel citations as we could to reputable/reliable sources. I think the presence of multiple parallel citations more often makes an article/subject seem more distinguished than cluttered. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:52, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for starting this discussion, Kevin. This was prompted by my addition of parallel citations to many case articles. My main source for these is CourtListener, which lists 3 parallel citations for modern SCOTUS opinions in addition to the U.S. Reports: Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.; Lawyers' Edition (L. Ed.); and Lexis (U.S. LEXIS). I am not necessarily opposed to streamlining these if there is a consensus in favor. I do think that at a minimum, cases should always have a S. Ct. citation if available (the Supreme Court Reporter does not cover older cases predating the West National Reporter System), and the nominative reporter citation should be included for older cases. LegalSkeptic (talk) 13:30, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

No longer need to use SCOTUS year for court membership

People here might be interested in knowing that now only |DecideDate= and the year is necessary to fill out the court membership for {{Infobox SCOTUS case}}, due to work by lethargilistic and MZMcBride Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:20, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for dropping a note here! I was going to say that we can probably remove the |SCOTUS= parameter from templates such as Template:SCOTUS-case, but it looks like lethargilistic is already ahead of me. This is great. --MZMcBride (talk) 12:41, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

SCOTUS case that is not one?

I was looking at Hall v. Sebelius, and as far as I can see, it never was a supreme court case, only being decided in the DC appeals court, with the petition for a writ of certiorati being denied per [1]. DanielCase the creator of articles seems inactive. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:20, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• Actually DaltonCastle, but yes he's inactive. You're right; the case never rose higher than the DC Circuit. I've cleaned up the worst of it, but the whole article is poorly written and sourced. Mackensen (talk) 12:19, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks! Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:45, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
• Daniel Case is definitely still active. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 12:37, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oops! Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:42, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

RfC on Brett Kavanaugh

If you would like to give your feedback on whether certain polls should be included in Brett Kavanaugh article regarding his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, please respond here: Talk:Brett_Kavanaugh#RfC_--_polls_on_nomination. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:10, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Peer Review: Feedback Requested

Hi all. I just asked that an article I wrote, Alabama v. North Carolina, be peer reviewed. Since the article is about a supreme court case, I was wondering if anyone here would be willing to help review it? Thanks in advance, --DannyS712 (talk) 09:07, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Calad -> Davila merger proposal

I proposed that CIGNA Healthcare of Texas Inc. v. Calad be merged into Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila. I invite other WP:SCOTUS editors to join the discussion at the Davila talk page. LegalSkeptic (talk) 14:00, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

more eyes needed please

...on Fluffy89502 (talk · contribs)'s contributions. It started with them adding stuff like the 14th amendment to the infobox in cases that were not about the amendment (in cases where incorporation was already automatic),[2] and the most recent edits have devolved into full-fledged OR, for example their interpretation that a later case distinguishing a precedent was "overruling it in part"[3], (where the later case says no such thing), or that the Court "possibly" applied a particular amendment in a case.[4] I've reverted many of these and left a note on their talk page a couple weeks ago, and they have failed to respond, discuss, or change course. postdlf (talk) 01:34, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I took a bit of a look, and I concur that there is a problem. I think the issue is that the edits are not based on reliable sources nor is Fluffy providing citations for their edits, they are in essence doing original research. I have given them a talk page warning on our prohibition of OR. Hopefully they will engage or stop, if not we should keep warning them on their talk page (and reverting edits if necessary), and if there is still a problem then at that point they would be breaking policy and could be blocked (maybe that would bring them to their senses, but hopefully we don't have to go that far!). Captain Eek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!} 04:23, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

He's persisted in adding the 14th to cases that are not about it,[5] and has still never once responded or discussed. @Fluffy89502: This is unacceptable. postdlf (talk) 17:00, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

My apologies. I didn't notice that this discussion was occuring at all until I checked my notifications today :/ Fluffy (talk) 2:18, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

We've also left two posts on your talk page[6],[7] and repeatedly reverted nearly all of your SCOTUS edits for months now. I'm going to repeat what I said back in November: I think you should start asking on an case article's talk page before you make such changes, or discuss here, where you can raise some questions from experienced editors in this area that could improve your understanding. postdlf (talk) 10:25, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Stub assessment

Hi. Currently, we have 574 unassessed articles. Of those, 119 are tagged as stubs. Would the project be interested in or object to a bot run to assess all stub articles as "stub class"? Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 06:00, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Given the lack of opposition, I am going ahead and filing a BRFA --DannyS712 (talk) 18:47, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Terry v. Ohio in disrepair

Just dropped by to mention that Terry v. Ohio, the most important case in Fourth Amendment law, is in a terrible state and needs your attention. Just for starters, it has no citations. Thanks! Seahawk01 (talk) 05:58, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'm not sure gutting that article was the right move. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:19, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

CFD of Category:Lists of United States Supreme Court cases by volume

He has a point about redundancy to the list. Discussion here.--Chaser (talk) 06:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

@Chaser: Thanks for cross-posting here --DannyS712 (talk) 06:30, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Unanimously kept for what it's worth, which seems like the correct outcome to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:22, 2 July 2019 (UTC)