Talk:Berghuis v. Thompkins

Justice name check

The "Associate justices" listed in the infobox as dissenting include Justice David Souter, whose name is not listed in support of the ruling or dissent. The dissent was by Justice Sonia Sotomayor whose name is omitted from the list of associate justices.

Can someone check this? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 04:48, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

 Fixed It was a template code error which listed the justices before Souter's retirement. Thanks for pointing out the error. —Kevin Myers 06:22, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Note for future - eventually when Law Report 560 is complete, the citation will need to be updated to reflect its permanent reference. For now it is simply "560 US (tba)". FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:27, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

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

Reviewer: GregJackP (talk) 21:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

• Pass quick-fail check.

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): 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, where possible and appropriate.

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

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Criteria detail

• Well-written:

the prose is clear and the spelling and grammar are correct; and

• Several small errors. Right to silence should be replaced with right to remain silent. The Butler case should be spelled out for the first use, i.e., North Carolina v. Butler followed by the case cite, as you did later with the Miranda case. It's easier to use {{ussc|vvv|ppp|year}} than spelling it out. Miranda should probably be italicized. It is done in some places, yet not in others. This is all for clarity as to what you are writing about.  Done

it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

• You may want to expand the 'Other opinions' section - one sentence orphan paragraphs are discouraged.  Done

• Factually accurate and verifiable:

it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout;

• Sources are not properly cited. Instead of "text of the decision" it should be cited as "Berghuis v. Thompkins, No. 08-1470, slip op., 560 U.S. ___ (2010), text of the decision" (linked) You may want to consider just citing to that, rather than the individual pages as you do later on in the references. Same for the other court cases. "Citing" is not needed. Ref #3 is actually a footnote, not a reference, and probably should be separated. All caps should be removed from one of the citations.  Done

it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines; and

• see above.  Done

it contains no original research.

•  Done

• Broad in its coverage:

it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and

•  Done

it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

•  Done

• Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias.

•  Done

• Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

•  Done

• Illustrated, if possible, by images:

images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content; and

• Not required, but you might want to consider adding an image of the justice delivering the opinion and the dissent.  Done

images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

• See above.  Done

Comments

Very good article. You may also want to look as WP:SCOTUS for the format that they recommend for Supreme Court articles, and consider modifying the article to match, although if you chose not to, it would not prevent promotion. I've put it on hold so it can be worked on. Regards, GregJackP (talk) 23:56, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Updated comments. GregJackP (talk) 14:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

That was fast! Comments on the couple of points outstanding:

1. Prose "MOS" is still flagged as "-" but all comments of matters to address have been struck through as dealt with. Is anything outstanding here?
2. The word "citing" is there deliberately, for clarity. Although not standard in SCOTUS articles, I think it's still better practice for Wikipedia decision citations. It is crucial that a reader can distinguish between article content where the Wikipedia editor has selected the supporting citation, and content where the Court selected the supporting citation. Apart from the section title (which is not by itself sufficient) a reader of the article has no way to tell if a citation of Moran v. Burbine is myself having selected the case to back up our article, or a case cited in the decision that is then re-cited by myself to show where the decision drew upon. Those seem crucially important things to distinguish. Similarly suppose I cited the same case in some sentence elsewhere, both cites would then have the same text; how would it be clear which citation was added due to my choice as an editor and which was the court's cite in its decision. Although context should make it clear, I have preferred not to assume, for clarity's sake, and where it's a court citation I have added the one word Citing... before the case name to make it clear.

As an aside on page numbers in the decision, I see you have cleared this point, but the rationale may be of interest. The decision is a 46 page document. A Wikipedia reference isn't going to be "readily verifiable" if it tells the reader to go read a 46 page document and the statement is "in there somewhere". I think WP:V and WP:CITE require that a cite from a lengthy document should give more exact information (such as a page, section, line, etc) so that readers can easily locate the cited material if they want to verify it.

Hopefully at the least, this small amount of extra detail in the citations (noting when a reference to another case is a citation of the court) isn't a problem from a GA criteria perspective. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:29, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

• For consistency, ref #12 should be cited in the same manner as the other Berghuis refs, or changed to another instance of ref #1. Ref #9 needs the original opinion cite, i.e. 423 U.S. 96, 103, and the date of the decision. Suggest combining ref #9, #14 and #20 as they are the same cite. Refs #16/18/21 needs the date of the decisions. I think that would take care of the last issues. Good work. GregJackP (talk) 16:38, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Above done. Also, all remaining cites converted to {{ussc}} format where it seemed likely to be correct (ie where they had a "XX U.S. XX DATE" format already). Can you check the diff and make sure none were converted that should have been left as they were before? Otherwise I think, done. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:30, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

• Congratulations, I agree. GregJackP (talk) 18:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Italics

Several of the quotes in the "Rationale" section are in italics. Is the emphasis in the original or is it added? If the quotes were not in italics, it should not be in italics here. See italic type. If the author of that section wishes to add emphasis, the disclaimers "(emphasis added)" and "(emphasis in the original)" should be used depending on the circumstances. The US Supreme Court often uses italics for emphasis and will add the two disclaimers when quoting previous opinions. The quotation is more meaningful if we can tell if the emphasis is coming from The Court or the author(s) of the article. 24.38.31.81 (talk) 13:41, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Confusing sentence in introduction

The sentence is "Others saw the ruling as a sign of strength and a signal that the Court, under its own impetus, was willing to address known issues resulting from the view of terrorism as crime." Am I being stupid here? This makes no sense to me. I think this and the sentence after should be rewritten. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Masonpew (talk • contribs) 09:18, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Definitely agree, no idea what this means or how it's relevant. Austincarrig (talk) 12:56, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@Masonpew Yeah, that read to me as a desperate attempt at false balance. "A show of strength against crime" (or whatever) by the Supreme Court is utterly irrelevant to what the case means. lethargilistic (talk) 11:54, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

@Masonpew Oh, I see. More specifically, the sentence (which I removed) was putting undue weight on an argument from John "Torture Memo" Yoo that is reflected in the reactions part of the article. Presenting the reactions to this case as "divided" just because of his response that brings terrorism up out of nowhere is UNDUE af, IMHO. lethargilistic (talk) 12:00, 25 December 2023 (UTC)