Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases

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The United States Supreme Court Case Article Improvement Project is a project started by Skyler1534 to improve the quality and uniformity of the Supreme Court case articles on Wikipedia.

Contents

Project Collaboration Article

Periodically, Project members come together and choose a Project Collaboration Article to give us all a focus. The goal of this PCA is to improve a Supreme Court decision article to the standard of featured article. Nominations for the next PCA are submitted by midnight (EST) on the Sunday following completion of the previous PCA. The PCA is decided on the following Wednesday, by majority vote.

The current PCA is: Miranda v. Arizona

Information regarding the current PCA can be found on the Project Collaboration Article page.

Nominations

Voting for the next PCA does not begin until the current one has been closed, but the following articles have been nominated:

Encarta cases

The following cases are redlinks found on the list of missing Encarta Encyclopedia articles (now deleted due to copyright concerns) - and we can not let Encarta boast of featuring cases that we lack!

To-do list

Pending tasks for Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases:

edit - history - watch - purge

Introduction

The idea for this project came while adding "The Bench" section to a number of the articles. It was noticed that there is a large lack of uniformity among the articles as to how certain things are written or formatted. Also, the outline (when there was an outline at all) seemed to change often. The readers would benefit from a more uniform outline as to how the articles are written.

A later part of the project is to put complete information in every section of each article and check each article for grammar and formatting. The last part of the main project will be to assure there are no "red links" left. Since new mentions to articles and stubs are added all the time, this will surely be an ongoing project. The goal is to have anyone who contributes an article regarding a Supreme Court case follow the formats laid out by this project and if they are not followed, to have someone helping with the project correct any problems in a timely manner.

Wikipedia is an amazing project. In order to further its greatness, this sub-project will improve quality in this particular area so that any reader who wants to learn about the Supreme Court cases can navigate and read them more easily and also have supporting information. Wikipedia is knowledge. Knowledge is power.

The project

Since this project is obviously a large task, it is not likely to be completed quickly or easily and as stated above, it will be ongoing. Due to the project's size, the main project is currently being done is waves. The main source used to find the articles involved is the List of United States Supreme Court cases. This list is used and dealt with by the project.

The phases

The phases or "waves" of the project are easier to accomplish in a certain order, but there are no set rules; any Wikipedian can work on any phase at any time.

  • Case citations: The object of the phase is to add, verify and/or format case citations.
Proper format- ''Name v. Name'', VVV U.S. PPP ([[year]]) See Court citation for further help.
  1. Add the proper case citation to every reference within each article.
  2. Add the proper case citation to every case on List of United States Supreme Court cases.
  • Avoid redirects: The main object of this phase is to change every instance of Supreme Court wikilinks to read United States Supreme Court, but be directed to Supreme Court of the United States, which is the actual article.
Proper format- [[Supreme Court of the United States|United States Supreme Court]]
This should also be done to every wikilink involved. Other examples are the names of the Justices.
  • External link to text: Every article should have an external link section with at least one link to the full text of the decision. The easiest and probably most reliable place to link to is FindLaw.com. Opinions can be found by searching at http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/supreme.html
  • Outline: The desired outline for every article is shown below. This phase is simply to add the outline. Every part does not have to be filled in, so you do not have to be able to read the opinion or know everything about the case. This phase has several parts (being the different sections) and is fully described below.
  • Categorize: Every article should be put into the category of United States Supreme Court cases, but also can be put into proper categories regarding the type of case law.
Example: Category:United States copyright case law
  • Copyedit: Make sure everything that should be linked is linked. Proofread for grammar, style, etc.
  • Fact-check: (For those who qualify only.) Read and checked for accuracy by a legal scholar or knowledgeable person in the area of law.

Guidelines and article outline

The following is the current desired outline for Supreme Court case articles. It contains all the necessary information and, if followed, will give some structure to the articles. This outline is not set in stone. This project is a living project and any element of the project or the outline can and will be adjusted upon reasonable debate.

  1. Introduction - The introduction should always contain the case name (bold AND italics) with the citation and a brief case description (one or two lines is sufficient; simply stating that it was a Supreme Court case and what it had to do with, and why it was important).
  2. Prior history - The first header should be "Prior history." This section should contain information on the case's prior history, its history in lower courts, as well as any precedents that the case references. Often times there are one or two precedents used by the Justices as main precedent to either uphold or overturn. These precedents should be mentioned and linked in this section.
  3. The bench - This section contains information on who was sitting on the bench and what opinions they wrote or joined in for the case. For a good example of this section, see Branzburg v. Hayes.
  4. The case - This section is obviously the heart of the article. It should contain a summary of the case as well as any important events of note that occurred during the case. Also, any excerpts from the decision or dissenting opinions should be put in this section.
  5. Effects of the decision - This section should contain information about the effects the decision had on the relevant law. This would include effects the case had on precedents involved in the consideration of the decision as well as effects on the regular business of the American people. The basis of this section is to say in plain English what effect the case had on the law (e.g., Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in all 50 states).
  6. Subsequent History - This section should contain any events that occurred after the decision. Such events would include what happened after a case was remanded to a lower court, "Nixon turned over his tapes and resigned", etc. Also included in this section would be any information on cases that have since been decided using this case as precedent or cases that have since clarified, nullified or reversed the current decision.
  7. External links - Every article should have a section for "external links" ("external" capitalized, "links" lowercase). Every external link section should include a link to the complete text of the decision that will likely be there for some time to come, preferably with both majority and minority opinions (Good sources are Oyez.com and Findlaw.com). Any other interesting external links can be added, as well.
  8. Categories - Every article should be in the Category:United States Supreme Court cases category. The goal is to place each article in its appropriate case law category as well, but at the very least, it should be in the main category so it can be shown. Category:United States case law shows most relevant sub-categories of case law, including case law relevant to a certain amendment(s) of the Constitution.

Resources

Examples of good articles

Wikipedians Involved

Any wikipedian interested in helping with the project should feel free to add their name below.

Project Accomplishments

The following is a list of accomplishments that are direct results of this project:

Comments

Any comments regarding the project should be directed to the Talk page. Wikipedians interested in helping with the project can leave a message on Skyler's Talk Page.

Redirection

I think it is a good idea to create a redirect using each case's citation, for example:

This is possibly helpful. -- Toytoy 17:18, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

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