Template talk:SCOTUSCase
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This template is used to create infoboxes for United States Supreme Court cases.
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[edit] Usage
This template aims to standardize U.S. Supreme Court cases. It's a very versatile template that includes features such as: argue dates that are automatically formatted correctly, citations that include a link to the text of the case, and accurate court membership with a much lower chance of error.
- Optional parameters
Most parameters in this template are optional. Leaving parameters such as ReargueDate, Concurrence5, or Overruled blank is OK and will not change or alter anything in the template. Parameters such as Majority, JoinMajority, etc. are all optional. Any fields that need to be added can be done so easily – either add the code if you feel comfortable doing so, or contact me and I will add the fields you need.
- Argue dates
Most cases will only need to use ArgueDate, ArgueYear, DecideDate, & DecideYear. Only cases that have more than one argue date need to use ArgueDateA & ArgueDateB. ReargueDate and ReargueYear should only be used if there was a reargue date.
- Citations
Most cases should be cited using the U.S. Reports volume and page number in the USVol and USPage fields, respectively. Additional citations such as from the Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) or the United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyers' Edition (L. Ed.) should be entered in the Citation field (e.g., "Citation=111 S. Ct. 1282; 113 L. Ed. 2d 358"). For newer cases that do not have a full volume or page number, the following fields should be filled:
- CitationNew: you should enter the entire citation, for example: 526 U.S. ___ (2006)
- Docket: you should enter the Supreme Court docket number, for example: 06-1234
- Court membership
To add the court membership, you need to put in specific year or years where it says SCOTUS YEAR-YEAR. With "YEAR" being substituted for the beginning and end year of court which issued the case decision, not heard oral argument. Note: some courts didn't last more than one year and will only require SCOTUS YEAR. See the key below for reference.
For example: in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the case was decided in 1857, so the field in the template:
- |SCOTUS=YEAR-YEAR would be changed to |SCOTUS=1853-1857
[edit] Court composition key
To view the make-up of each Court, see List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by court composition.
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[edit] Assistance
If you find yourself confused in how to use this template or need assistance, please feel free to leave comments on this page in the discussion section.
[edit] Manual of Style
This is a proposed manual of style. Its contents are based on the infoboxes found in various case articles, but notably the styles used in the three featured-article cases: Dred Scott v. Sanford, Roe v. Wade, and Lawrence v. Texas. This manual attempts to add consistency throughout all of the case articles. The manual currently being used is vague in certain areas, and it attempts to apply different courts, not strictly the U.S. Supreme Court. This manual's aim is to focus on the style that is currently widely used throughout United States Supreme Court cases. This manual of style is meant to replace the one currently being used, once consensus has been built in it. It is in no way a final draft, or set in stone. Changes should be made to it, and then implemented in the different articles.
The manual follows the template's layout. All parameters (or places where the user inputs information) are in bold (e.g. Litigants). Cases inside a single set of brackets [ ] are examples where a certain item can be seen "in action."
[edit] General notes
Formatting is done automatically. There is no need to use wiki markup ('' or ''') or HTML (<b> or <i>) for most parameters. Exceptions are: Prior, Subsequent, and Overruled.
[edit] Litigants
In almost all cases, Litigants will be the name of the article [Dred Scott v. Sandford].
[edit] Argue date
Most cases will simply need to use ArgueDate and ArgueYear. If the case was argued over more than one day, ArgueDateA and ArgueDateB can be employed. Unless the argue dates span over more than one month, the month's name should only be used once [Eisenstadt v. Baird]. If a case was reargued, the same style should be used [Champion v. Ames]. Also, the full name of the month should always be used.
Older cases may not list an argue date. Thorough research can generally produce one, however, if a date can not be found, leaving the parameters blank is OK. Other old cases will have a submitted date. In these instances, use SubmitDate and SubmitYear [Nix v. Hedden].
[edit] Decide date
There is only ever one DecideDate and DecideYear.
[edit] Full name
The full case name should try to include the full name of both parties [Bowers v. Hardwick]. If that information cannot be found, using a shorter name of the case is permissible.
Any time "et al." is used, there should always be a comma preceding it.
[edit] Volume and page
USVol and USPage indicate that you should enter the numbers of the case from the United States Reporter of Decisions. Only numbers should be entered in this fields, nothing else. It takes about a year for reported decisions to be assigned a final volume and page number.
[edit] Docket number
Newer cases should use Docket [Hamdan v. Rumsfeld].
[edit] Citations
The U.S. Reports citation will be generated automatically from the USVol and USPage fields. Most cases should include additional citations such as the Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) in the Citation field. You should not begin this field with anything other than the next citation [Loving v. Virginia]. A semicolon or another space is redundant. Each citation should be separated by a semicolon and a single space, never any other type of punctuation.
Newer cases that have yet to be assigned a specific volume and page should use CitationNew. If CitationNew is used, Docket should be used as well. Citation, USVol, and USPage should not be used when CitationNew is filled in. CitationNew should begin as so: ### U.S. ___; . The correct volume that a case will be in when it's assigned its page can be found on the Supreme Court's website; it will be on top of every odd-numbered page of the PDF slip opinion except the first. Other citations will be available and should be separated by a semi-colon and a single space [eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C.].
[edit] Prior history
Prior is the most lenient field. The information here should be whatever you can gather. Sometimes that will be only a short statement [Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha] or may be more indepth [Roe v. Wade]. All formatting here must be added by the user. Prior should never end in a period, comma, or semi-colon. An exception can be made if a period is used as part of an abbreviation.
[edit] Subsequent history
Subsequent may or may not be filled in. Newer cases most likely won't have a subsequent history. Older cases may never have gone any further after being decided by the Supreme Court. A simple "None" can be used in this instance. Once again, Subsequent should never end in a period, comma, or semi-colon. An exception can be made if a period is used as part of an abbreviation and all formatting here must be added by the user.
[edit] Holding
Holding consists of a few sentences describing the Court's ruling. It should be concise and it should always end in a period.
[edit] Court membership
SCOTUS is a field in which you enter the court composition years in which the case was decided [Lawrence v. Texas].
[edit] Case opinions
[edit] Laws applied
[edit] Superseded and overruled
[edit] Discussion
[edit] Changes to the template
This template is used on more than 500 Supreme Court case articles, and it was developed using consensus for what would look and work best. If you feel changes should be made to the template, do so only with consensus among WikiProject SCOTUS Cases members and others after first discussing the changes on this page. Personally, I like the way the template currently looks, and don't see any need to change it to use class="infobox". Thanks. --MZMcBride 05:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Template for state supreme court cases
Per Wikipedia:Help_desk#Supreme_Court_of_California_Template a user is looking for a template to use in articles on state supreme court cases. Seems like it would be fairly easy to modify this template for this purpose (basically, just add optional params for the state court seal image, the state name, and the court membership). Anyone have any issues with this? -- Rick Block (talk) 20:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
- It's not a problem at all. I would actually like to standardize all the federal and state supreme court cases using an infobox like Template:USCourtCase. It's on my to-do list, but I've been a little busy with Template:Elementbox, trying to finish that infobox up. You should feel free to write it if you feel inclined to do so. Thanks. --MZMcBride 03:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
- OK, it's at Template:USCourtCase. See in use at California v. Anderson. Note that it's currently a (separate) clone of SCOTUSCase and could be a redirect here with very minor modifications. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:54, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I happened to see this template and thought we could use it on our own wiki for other purposes, with obvious modification....are these templates specific to the current release or will they work on older releases? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.8.233.10 (talk • contribs).
- You will need to have ParserFunctions installed on your wiki in order to use this specific template. It's available for download here. Thanks. --MZMcBride 23:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks, I added those to the installation but one thing I noticed additionally was it seems the table settings are all showing up garbled, as in the tags for <tr>, <td> etc. Not sure if that has anything to do with the parserfunctions or not. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.8.233.10 (talk) 15:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC).
- I'm not really sure what you mean by garbled, but I'd be happy to take a look at it if you'd like. --MZMcBride 22:37, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks, I added those to the installation but one thing I noticed additionally was it seems the table settings are all showing up garbled, as in the tags for <tr>, <td> etc. Not sure if that has anything to do with the parserfunctions or not. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.8.233.10 (talk) 15:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC).
--- Email me at dpalme@insightbb.com and I will provide you the URL to the site. Thanks for all the help. -- Actually I got it working, turns out I needed to add UseTidy to the LocalSettings.php file. I would however, like to thank you for the ParserFunction help! It is mucho appreciated.
[edit] Problem with Court Membership
I've had difficulties with "Court Membership" not showing up. My most recent issue came up while attaching the template to C&A Carbone, Inc. v. Town of Clarkstown, New York which was governed by the Rehnquist Court - 1993-1994. CheshireKatz 15:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
- You're problem stemmed from the type of dash used. The one employed by this template is a "standard" dash ( - ), and the one you were using was "non-standard." Generally, the minus sign on your keyboard is the correct key. Thanks. --MZMcBride 22:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Missing basic citations
I ran across a case (Leary v. United States) where the volume and page number were entered (fields USVol and USPage) but no other citations (field Citation), yet nothing gets displayed. The usage info above was pretty vague so I went to a random Supreme Court case to see what the proper usage of the fields should be and it had exactly the same problem. Finally, I just looked at the template code to find out what was going on and indeed the U.S. Reports volume and page number are only displayed if the Citation field is filled with not the normal U.S. cite but all the other random reporters. This seems odd since many people (like me) are lazy and don't want to fill in other random reporters. I propose that the U.S. volume and page get displayed regardless of the extra citations and that the usage documentation above gets re-written to be more clear. Pygora123 03:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- The USVol and USPage values have been made visible by default. If you find the documentation unclear, please feel free to rewrite it. I looked and the sections seemed clear to me, but that's probably because I wrote them.... Cheers. --MZMcBride 04:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the quick response. Next complication: if the Citation field is included but blank, no citation seems to be displayed (Blanton v. North Las Vegas). Meanwhile, I tried to make the usage documentation a little more clear. Pygora123 05:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- The infobox looks correct to me. It displays "Citations: 489 U.S. 538" in it. --MZMcBride 06:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Huh, I swear it wasn't doing that last night. Oh well, thanks for taking care of it! Pygora123 04:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
- The infobox looks correct to me. It displays "Citations: 489 U.S. 538" in it. --MZMcBride 06:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the quick response. Next complication: if the Citation field is included but blank, no citation seems to be displayed (Blanton v. North Las Vegas). Meanwhile, I tried to make the usage documentation a little more clear. Pygora123 05:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Why
...are there several "Concurrence/Dissent" fields and also several "ConcurrenceDissent" fields? What's the difference? --zenohockey 04:33, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
- Though admittedly it seems weird, it is not a mistake, there are actually two different classifications. "Concurrence/Dissent" is for justices who wrote an opinion that literally concurs with the majority in part and dissents in part. "ConcurrenceDissent" is for justices who concur with a dissenting opinion by writing a concurrence. Hopefully that clarifies the situation. Cheers. --MZMcBride 05:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
