Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases

I have done a quick job of finishing and publishing this abandoned draft. It's a bit outside my area. BD2412 T 01:08, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

A bill of attainder case? Nobody's area, lmao. Love it. Nice save. lethargilistic (talk) 02:56, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Hey all,

I recently put some new categorization advice that I think reflects the current norms into WP:SCOTUS/SG. (TLDR: Have at minimum the main category, a CJ category, and a cases in year category.) While I'd appreciate feedback regarding that advice if you disagree or want to tweak some things, that's not the main reason why I'm here.

The shift to having a separate subcategory of YYYY in United States case law for Supreme Court cases has left a lot of older cases still categorized using the old way. I'd estimate that more than 500 cases are like this. This seems like the perfect fixup for an automated process to do: the fix is simple, the scope is very well-defined, and a large number of pages will be affected, so I was thinking about putting in a request at WP:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. Any thoughts?

Specifically, this is what I would propose the bot do: Any pages that:
• Are categorized with Category:United States Supreme Court cases and a direct subcategory Category:United States case law by year, and
• the title of which doesn't include "List of" (to avoid matching any miscategorized US Reports pages)
Should have the "YYYY in United States case law" category replaced with the matching "United States Supreme Court cases in YYYY" category. If the category does not exist, it should be made with the sole content "{{United States Supreme Court cases in}}".

Alternatively, this cleanup could be taken as a good opportunity to set up the infobox to automatically set the relevant categories. I think that could work particularly well for this purpose, where we already have the data in a well-structured format, but I understand that categorization via template can be unpopular, so perhaps not.

Thanks in advance for your feedback! GTink911 (talk) 04:01, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

I oppose making the infobox populate these categories. The base case seems obvious, but there are edge cases where the infobox is on the page but the subject of the article is not the SCOTUS case per se, IIRC. And not every order the Supreme Court issues is a case even though the infobox tends to get used for that, too. It's not a good candidate for hardcoded categorization. Automating the switch to the SCOTUS YYYY category isn't a bad idea, though. It's several thousand articles. lethargilistic (talk) 08:11, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Right, I guess I underestimated the difficulty the edge cases would pose. I will put in the request for the categories though :) GTink911 (talk) 21:16, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Hi there, I saw your post over at WP:AWBREQ, and wanted to touch base here to make sure that everyone was on the same page about the request. Right now, it looks like you're requesting a recategorization of roughly 3,000 pages from "Category:YYYY in United States case law" to "Category:United States Supreme Court cases in YYYY". This seems like a fairly straightforward diffusion (given that the US case law category is a parent cat to the SCOTUS case category) and should be easily handled by an AWB bot. I'm responding over at AWBREQ as well, but I just wanted to chime in here to make sure that the WikiProject members have some visibility. phuzion (talk) 13:05, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

@Phuzion: I'm in favor. We started doing that after the discussions referred to here. lethargilistic (talk) 16:03, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

@lethargilistic Ok, so it seems like based on the discussion, there is not a desire (or at least consensus) to fully diffuse the categories, which means we should keep Category:United States Supreme Court cases, in addition to replacing Category:YYYY in United States case law to Category:United States Supreme Court cases in YYYY. Do I have this right? phuzion (talk) 16:19, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

@Phuzion: Yes. The only change in this automated editing should be "YYYY in United States case law" to "United States Supreme Court cases in YYYY". That change should apply only to the Supreme Court cases within "YYYY in United States case law", which are all marked with that non-diffusing category. lethargilistic (talk) 16:30, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. BRFA submitted! phuzion (talk) 17:31, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

This is now done, courtesy of Phuzion! I will note three "List of cases" pages that seem to have been wrongly recategorized (which I have now fixed), not for any particular reason as far as I can tell:

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 399
• United States Reports, volume 3
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 559

But otherwise pretty much everything seems perfect! GTink911 (talk) 23:42, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

SCOTUS cases seem like a niche article category I might have fun working on, so I wrote my first SCOTUS case article (see in my Sandbox here) and would appreciate any feedback before I move it from Sandbox to Main Space. Happy holidays. Zxm92 (talk) 18:47, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Welcome aboard! I looked at it for a bit. My first impression is that it would be a good idea to review WP:PRIMARY. It's not a good practice to write about cases based on the filings in a case. The briefing of the parties is a primary source and a biased one at that, so a lot of the summary of the proceedings here is WP:OR. My typical advice on addressing that is that the SCOTUS opinion itself (and its syllabus, written by someone else) is a secondary source for the facts of the case and its procedural posture, so that is usually a good place to start. (Although, there is always some danger that the opinion is also being written to tailor the facts to suit their conclusion, too, so it's not always best as an only source.) But, of course the SCOTUS opinion does not yet exist in this case, so starting from whatever SCOTUSblog has summarized for it or leaning more on that Cornell source would be a good idea.

That said, the courts' opinions are primary sources for their own meaning, so alternate sources are usually required when you at discussing what a court "held" and its significance. Law review articles are great sources for interpretation and significance, but remember that those are just scholars' opinions, not necessarily definitive either. All law review articles have some kind of goal they want to achieve, and it's usually advocacy of some kind.

But, because this case is pending, the coverage of what the case means is almost entirely speculative. Talking about what a case is "expected" to do always bothers me a bit from an encyclopedia standpoint because there truly is no telling if the Court is actually even going to decide the issue until the opinion comes out; it tosses cases out on procedural grounds to avoid uncomfortable questions all the time.

I understand that pending cases probably seem the most pressing, especially these days, but it would be a good idea to do an older case next time. That way, you could develop a whole decision from beginning to end.

So, review PRIMARY, but good first try! lethargilistic (talk) 21:39, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (Supreme Court decisions), a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Notability (Supreme Court decisions) and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Notability (Supreme Court decisions) during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:57, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Project members are invited to participate in the Destubathon of the Americas, a contest/editathon which will run from May 1 to May 31. The goal is to destub as many of our 475,000+ stubs for the Americas (from Alaska down to Chile) as possible. A good chance to have fun in expanding many of our old stale stubs and win up to $2680 in Amazon vouchers for expanding stub articles. Sign up in the Contestants/participants section on the contest page if interested. Even if not interested in prizes you are still warmly welcome to participate in it as an editathon! Hopefully we can achieve something significant in the month of May together! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:13, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

United States v. Alvarez has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:55, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Also Illinois v. McArthur, Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Ass'n, and Abramski v. United States. If you're interested in working on these articles, the GAR rules allow you to request that some of the nominations be put on hold. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:21, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Editors could request holds. However, I nominated all of these because they are so far from meeting the GA criteria that they should go through a new GA review only after they have been extensively updated, rather than evaluation at GAR. Alvarez and Brentwood Academy each cite one law review comment (not a note or an article), and no other secondary sources; Ambramski has a few more secondary citations, but still only cites a single comment from the legal literature. McArthur has a single non-primary citation: the Oyez Project summary of the case. Circuit City has 11 references and only one is a secondary source (which is a dead link that I can't currently access via IA). Abramski has very few secondary citations, and most of them are editorial coverage; there's a single citation to a law review comment as well. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:58, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Intellectual diversity § Racial diversity?, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. George Ho (talk) 16:12, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Just an idea. I post holding summaries in the volume articles to help me keep track of my project of going through all the cases. So, one of the side-effects of my project is that the most recent ~50 volume articles are essentially complete aside from referencing and a lede. I tried to mock-up what a Featured List version of Volume 600 might look like, and I'm looking for feedback or ideas for how to improve it. Here are some of my initial thoughts:

• The lede is too short, but I'm not sure how to expand it.
  • I'm not sure if the lede should incorporate summaries of any of the cases, because that could raise issues with favoritism. Like, why mention Counterman but not Mallory? All of them get relatively equal and complete treatment as list entries, anyway.
  • I suppose it could include more information about the US Reports at the time Volume 600 cases were decided, such as the appointed Reporter.
• {{SCOTUSRow}} needs to be updated so that, when both the page and the docket fields are filled out, the page number is displayed but the link is based on the docket number. SCOTUS has committed to page numbers and Wikipedia should follow those, but Justia's URLs are not up-to-date.
• Holding summaries are rule statements, so I don't think a dispositional statement like "Case vacated because the student loan members lacked standing" is a sufficient holding summary. Holding summaries are never going to be a one-rule-fits-all sort of thing, though.
• Years ago, a user made improvements to the first ~300 volume articles, including Volume 72. Although I like these and wouldn't disrupt them, I think they're probably too detailed about ideas that are not super relevant. The lists of justices with confirmation and tenure are duplicative fluff, for instance. The information about lower courts where the cases originated is not terribly helpful and is basically database animal content.

lethargilistic (talk) 10:03, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi. I agree that List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 72 is way too detailed. I cut it back a bit already but more paring is needed. List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 600 looks pretty good. The court of last resort bit is weird to include but I like the overall structure and length. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:58, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Just created to resolve some later cases dismissed per curium based on this outcome. BD2412 T 01:33, 1 August 2026 (UTC)