Talk:List of federal judges appointed by Donald Trump/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Keeping in draft

I'm moving this back to the draft space because at the moment there is zero content. A handful of other AFDs on related subjects have decided that blank pages (violating CRYSTAL and TOOSOON) should be deleted. No point in deleting the work gone into this page, though, so I suggest leaving it here until there's actually something to report. Primefac (talk) 16:28, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

• Gorsuch has now been nominated. It may only be 1 nomination, but that is all that is needed for this to go live. Safiel (talk) 04:38, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Given that the title is "...appointed by", a simple nomination doesn't suffice. If (in the incredibly unlikely circumstance) he doesn't get confirmed, we'd be back at square one. There is no deadline. Better to have an accurate article with actual content than something that gets deleted and has to be refunded a month down the line. Primefac (talk) 13:04, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
    • I wonder if we'd be better off just changing the title to "List of federal judges nominated by Donald Trump." Personally, I would prefer it if, after Trump's presidency, this list had Trump's unsuccessful nominees as well as his successful ones. Orser67 (talk) 21:01, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
      • That would be similar to having a list of everyone who ran for President. If someone doesn't get the job, they don't get the job. There are no medals for second place. Primefac (talk) 12:47, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
        • There are hundreds if not thousands of obscure presidential candidates. Particularly at the appellate level, any judicial nomination is notable. These are very important jobs and anyone who the president bothered to nominate went through an extensive vetting process. The fact that the Senate chose not to confirm these judges is itself notable. Also note that we have an entire article called "United States third-party and independent presidential candidates, 2016." Orser67 (talk) 01:50, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
        • I agree with Orser67 on the point that anyone actually nominated by the President is noteworthy, even if they don't get confirmed. The comparison to Presidential candidates is inapt, because those people can choose to call themselves candidates at will even if they are cranks. But anyone nominated by President Trump is someone that the President of the United States actually bothered to name publicly as someone he wanted to put in office. An apt comparison is to Cabinet nominees, and I note that the articles relating to Donald Trump's Cabinet include his withdrawn first nominee for Secretary of Labor, Andrew Puzder (similarly Wikipedia has lots of references in other articles to failed Cabinet nominees by other Presidents). Frankly, I find the omission of Merrick Garland from the article on Obama's judicial appointments to be strange. I would favor including even failed nominees and changing the article title if necessary. 107.145.77.108 (talk) 23:59, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

"Excluding appointments to the District of Columbia judiciary"

Why? These appear to be the only judicial appointments by Trump that will be excluded from this article, and they don't seem to be included anywhere else that I can see on Wikipedia (and he's already made one such nomination: Jonathan Pittman to the DC Superior Court). Why not include them here? 107.145.77.108 (talk) 16:28, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm wondering the same thing re. Jonathan Pittman. He's a federal judicial nominee of Trump's, so I don't see why he shouldn't be included here. Marquardtika (talk) 17:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

This article is for Article III judges or Article I judges (See: Federal tribunals in the United States). Superior Court judges nominated by the President (separate from judges of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals) fall into neither category and typically do not receive a standalone article unless their nominated to a federal court bench, ex: Florence Y. Pan.Snickers2686 (talk) 04:38, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're wrong on at least two points here. First, this article includes (or is intended to include) more than just Article I and Article III judges, it also includes Article IV judges. Second, DC Superior Court judges are Article I judges: hence why the lede sentence has to explain that the listing of Article I judges in the article is only partial because it excludes DC Superior Court nominations. Frankly, even if this has been the standard practice in the past, and even if DC Superior Court judges don't ordinarily end up with articles of their own, I see no reason not to include them in this article. They seem to be in rather a similar position to the Article IV judges for territorial courts that the article already contemplates including if/when Trump makes any such nominations. I would be in favor of adding the DC Superior Court nominations. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 18:11, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

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More nominees incoming

The Washington Times is reporting eleven more nominees today: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/7/donald-trump-nominates-new-slate-federal-judges/ No official notice on the White House website yet. --Coemgenus (talk) 17:12, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

The Washington Times is adequate for adding them to the article, whether or not the White House has posted anything about it. (Wikipedia would generally prefer the secondary source WT over the primary source WH anyway.) LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 18:00, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Lead section prose

I made some improvements to the prose in the lead, to make it more readable, and Snickers2686 reverted to the prior text.[1] Why? You did not leave an edit summary. For example, I changed this:

The number of nominations currently awaiting Senate action is 14.

to this:

There are 14 pending nominations awaiting Senate confirmation.

The two versions convey the same information, but the second one sounds more natural, doesn't it? Many of my changes replace small numbers with their text representation, per MOS:NUMERAL, e.g. "2 pending nominations" becomes "two pending nominations" and "0 appointments" becomes "no appointment". What's wrong with that? — JFG ^talk 03:58, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I can't speak for why Snickers2686 reverted your changes without comment, but I did see them last night (your changes and the reversion) and I can offer a few observations: (1) I think you made too many kinds of changes all at once, some of which were real improvements and some not, and some editors will just revert the whole thing when they see that rather than trying to sort out what is worth keeping and what isn't, (2) I think using the numerals rather than text is particularly useful because this is information that is subject to almost constant updates, and it is easier for editors to find and replace numerals when editing, (3) guidelines are not hard and fast rules and MOS:NUMERAL explicitly says it is describing what is "generally" (i.e., not in all cases) done, (4) moreover, MOS:NUMERAL requires comparable numbers (which would be basically all of the numbers in this article's lede) to be in the same style, and since some of them already are—and others are bound eventually to be—greater than 10, I think the article is just preemptively writing all numbers as numerals, and (5) I think the prose text in the lede matches a kind of formulaic wording that is used in other similar articles (which would imply that they should all be rewritten somewhat in parallel). I actually appreciated what you were going for, and especially liked one of your changes ("Regarding") which I immediately restored, but I (also) didn't think it was worth the effort to go back through and figure out which parts of what you had done were worth keeping. Just my two cents. Not sure if you'll get a reply from the other editor. Cheers! LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

@LacrimosaDiesIlla: Thanks for your comments and your edits. I have further simplified the prose by getting rid of overlinks and shortening "United States" to "U.S." for most federal court names. I made separate edits to facilitate review. I don't really mind keeping numbers for 1 to 9, but I feel that constructs such as "Trump has made 0 appointments" are particularly ugly to read; I would strongly advise switching those to "Trump has not appointed any judge to the U.S. Foo Court", "No appointments were made" or, even better, "No judge was appointed". However, I have refrained from changing this until you or other editors get a chance to comment. Finally, I believe we are free to improve the prose of this article independently of what the "formula" has been for prior articles – those could be changed as well but we do not have to keep everything in sync at all times. — JFG ^talk 21:55, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

@JFG: I like almost everything you did. (Personally, I preferred the "but there" that you deleted—I think I wrote it actually—because I think SCOTUS vacancies have a different salience, but the sentence is fine without it.) I agree that we are free to rewrite the prose without worrying about keeping everything in sync with the other articles which may have used similar language; they can be changed later if necessary, or WP:OSE. I don't mind "Trump has made 0 appointments," but if it bothers you, I think either "Trump has not appointed any judges" or "No judges have been appointed" would be fine as alternatives (please notice the use of plural and the perfect aspect of the verb, both of which are better English style than what you suggested). Cheers! LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 00:26, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Presidential sidebar

Can anyone explain to me via project consensus, why we need to add the Presidential sidebar to the article when it doesn't exist for any previous federal judicial lists? Snickers2686 (talk) 19:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I can't speak for the editor who originally added the sidebar to this article, and I am unaware of any particular policies or project consensuses that would be relevant to this particular question, but I always thought it was standard to include a sidebar on the page of any article which is actually included in the sidebar, on the theory that the sidebar brings together articles on a given topic to aid a reader interested in a general topic to know what other related articles exist and to navigate easily among them. Since this article is one of the articles included in the Donald Trump sidebar, it made sense to me that the sidebar was included on this page. I understand that other similar articles about federal judges appointed by particular presidents may not include their corresponding sidebars, but WP:OSE and maybe that's something that should be changed in those other articles. If there were at attempt to formulate a general policy with regard to whether or not presidential sidebars should be included in the articles about their judicial appointments, I would favor including them. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:08, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Simply because the Trump sidebar happens to include this article, per WP:BIDIRECTIONAL. No prejudice against adding other presidential sidebars to similar articles, if such articles are also added to such sidebars. — JFG ^talk 17:30, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Reorganizing sections according to articles of constitution

Can we reorganize the section so that it is clear that Supreme Court, Courts of Appeal and the District Courts are all Article III courts? Basically have it reorganized as follows:

ARTCILE III

Supreme Court

Courts of Appeal

District Courts

Court of International Trade

ARTICLE IV

etc. Latex-yow (talk) 15:25, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't see why this is important structurally, and previous articles of this type have not followed that kind of organizational scheme. Why do you want to do this? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:27, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I've added "Article III" in parentheses to the titles of the first three sections, which makes their naming parallel to the other sections of the article. Does that seem adequate to you? Or do you think they need to be organized as subsections? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:44, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Right now the structure is inconsistent: we gather all Article I courts in once section but each class of Article III court gets its own. Adding "Article III" to the titles does not solve this problem. I would also change the order in the titles as well: "Article III Appointments", "Article I Appointments (Specialty Courts)" and "Article IV Appointments (Territorial Courts)". Latex-yow (talk) 03:32, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

I am opposed to reorganizing the page the way you're suggesting, as I'm sure the next step you suggest will be to reorder the sections so that Article I judges come first, then Article III, etc. You're right that the current organization is not the most consistent, but I think it's more useful than what you are suggesting. People are more interested in Article III judges than in the other kinds, so it makes sense that those come first, and they are more interested in the Supreme Court than in anything else, and more in the Circuit Courts than in the District Courts, so it makes sense to break those out. On the level of reader interest, this article should probably actually be in only three sections: Supreme Court, Circuit Courts, everything else. I also feel obliged to point out that if you're really interested in what the Constitution says, you might do well to remember that the Supreme Court is actually the only specific court mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, so on a purely textual argument, it would seem to deserve top, independent billing. So, let's leave the article organization the way it is; this is how it has worked on previous similar articles for other presidents, and no one else so far seems to share your concerns. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 12:50, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

I was not going to propose to move Article I first. The logic there is that Article III has the most important appointments by almost any metric. Latex-yow (talk) 16:26, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

My apologies then for making an unwarranted assumption. I am still opposed to the idea you have suggested for the reasons stated. I think that people's interest here is especially in the Supreme Court and the Circuit Courts and then in the other things listed on this page, and since it's perfectly clear which Article each set of appointments would fall under if someone was interested in that question, I see no reason to make the Constitutional authority of each kind of judgeship the primary organizing principle on the page since it is unlikely to be the perspective with which anyone approaches the page. User-friendliness, I think, trumps the structural "inconsistency" you're pointing out. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:35, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

I dispute the notion that my suggested changes are less user friendly. In addition to the inconsistent sectioning of the article if you read the intro the article separates the appointments by Articles (Article III, I and then IV) so I don't really understand the resistance to this very natural idea. Latex-yow (talk) 19:53, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

I've given you my reasons. You can disagree obviously, but "disputing" what I've said without an argument doesn't give me any reason to reevaluate my position. You asked for other editors' thoughts on your suggestion, and I don't like it. Perhaps if/when other editors show up, they will agree with you rather than me. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 13:04, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, Latex-yow suggests to add a level-2 heading such as "Article III courts" over the first 4 categories of courts discussed. The order of courts would remain the same: Supreme Court, Courts of Appeal, District Courts and Court of International Trade, simply those would be under level-3 headings. If that is indeed the meat of the proposal, I think it's fine. It would make the TOC more legible than adding the "Article III" in parentheses to each section, and readers would still see the most important courts listed first. So, count me as a supporter, unless there is something I missed. I'm not so keen on switching the titles around. For a lay person like me, seeing "Specialty courts (Article I)" is more informative than "Article I appointments (Specialty courts)". Note that the lead section already groups appointments according to "Article III", "Article I" and "Article IV" levels. We would need an appropriate umbrella title for all the Article III courts; is there a term of art for those courts already? Spontaneously, I would call them "Higher courts (Article III)". What do you think? — JFG ^talk 17:16, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

You and I understand the meat of the proposal essentially the same way; I'm just not in favor of doing it. If it is going to happen anyway, I agree that "Specialty courts (Article I)" is better than "Article I Courts" or "Article I judges (Specialty Courts)" or something like that. The defining characteristic of Article III courts is that they are judicial branch appointments. "Higher courts" would be at best misleading: Federal district courts are actually the lowest level of federal courts, and they are the place where almost all federal court cases start, so there's nothing "higher" about them. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:56, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

JFG you understand my suggestion correctly, but unfortunately Article III courts don't have a name. They are in one sense higher courts: "The Supreme Court has ruled that only Article III courts may render final judgments in cases involving life, liberty, and private property rights, with limited exceptions, as discussed below." But I agree with LacrimosaDiesIlla that "Higher Courts" is not a good title. Anyway I just scanned the Supreme Court opinion on Stern v. Marshall and Chief Justice Roberts uses "Article III court" throughout the court's opinion so using the phrase by itself should be fine. Latex-yow (talk) 18:41, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. So, could they be called "Judicial branch courts"? — JFG ^talk 19:11, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe "Federal Judiciary (Article III)", "Specialty Courts and Administrative Tribunals (Article I)", and "Territorial Courts (Article IV)"? Latex-yow (talk) 19:39, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

This terminology sounds fine to me. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 20:15, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

So can we change the section titling? Latex-yow (talk) 20:18, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done — JFG ^talk 04:29, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

It looks good. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:48, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Color for Pending Nominations

Technically, if someone has not been nominated yet, then they can't have a nomination pending before a Senate committee, so they should not be shaded using the colors we are using, unless we want to change what those colors are supposed to mean. Do we want to do that, or are we happy having "pending" nominees in white (which is the same color we're using for confirmed nominees), or do we want a special color for pending nominees? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:52, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Keep it simple, we have enough colors, text can be used to distinguish official nominations from pending nominations. I would color them like the officially nominated, though; it shows intent to nominate (per source) until we have an official date. (I suppose you are referring to the case of Terry F. Moorer.) — JFG ^talk 17:24, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Moorer is the only present example, yes, but there have been others recently. If we're going to allow pending nominees to be shaded with one of the existing colors, then we need to change the key on what the colors mean. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:32, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Is it worth it? How long does an announced nomination remain in wait of an official referral date? — JFG ^talk 17:05, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, at the moment Moorer is actually unshaded. I am not in favor of shading pending nominations with one of the existing colors. I think what we have right now (where Moorer is unshaded and the nomination date is marked "pending") is fine, or I could support creating a single new color to be used for all pending nominations across all the courts (as opposed to a different color depending on which Senate committee the nomination would eventually be referred to). There is no standard for how long an announced nomination may remain pending before being officially made, but Moorer was announced on May 8, so over three months for this one. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 17:52, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Wow, three months? I thought that would be a few days, tops. In that case I would approve of a generic color for all such cases. Suggest some very light shade of blue as in {{scheduled}} rocket launches (my other pet topic at Wikipedia). That would be #DFDFFF for the record. — JFG ^talk 18:14, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't know what the hold up is. Usually, it is only a few days, but there's no rules about it. We already have one light shade of blue designated for the Armed Services committee, and I'm afraid the one you've suggested may not provide enough of a contrast. What about something like this:   ? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 02:19, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I have chosen to apply a lighter shade of the existing color:   vs  , that avoids adding yet another legend for an edge case. — JFG ^talk 04:34, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

The color you chose looks great, and I think it's fine that we don't have a legend for it, since the fact that it's "pending" is clearly indicated in the entry (as opposed to whether the nomination has been reported by committee, which is not otherwise indicated). How did you find that lighter shade? I think it would be helpful, if it's not too much trouble, to identify what the appropriate lighter shades would be for the other color schemes in the article and then include a hidden note in each section indicating what color should be used for pending nominations. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:51, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Tahnks, glad you like it. We can get to other shades if/when the case happens. — JFG ^talk 23:42, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've added a hidden note indicating what the shading color for pending nominations is in the sections that use that color scheme. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 18:05, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

@JFG: We could use a lighter shade of this color ( ) for nominations which are currently pending but will eventually be sent to the Armed Services committee once they are made now. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 04:59, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Ordering Reported Nominations

Currently the nominations which have already been reported by their respective committees are in the order of when they were originally submitted to the Senate by Trump. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to order them by the date the committee reported the nominations (or their number on the executive calendar) so people know which nominees the Senate is likely to confirm next? I say this with the knowledge that while Coggins Jr. and Friedrich had their nominations reported on the same day, their nominations were submitted on different days and McConnell is still moving them forward together. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 02:11, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Paging JFG (talk · contribs) and LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk · contribs). – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 02:12, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Paging Snickers2686 (talk · contribs) and Safiel (talk · contribs). – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 13:43, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

(pinged) There are so many names now, I'd rather list all pending nominations alphabetically. Readers are free to order by nomination date or by circuit. — JFG ^talk 13:55, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

• @JocularJellyfish: This is just my two cents but I say they should all be organized by date. Readers will be able to tell by the color blocking which have been reported and which haven't. To me, just because a nominee is pending on the executive calendar doesn't mean his/her nomination will come up for a vote--a Senator is free to place a hold on any nomination. From a readability standpoint, I just think it makes sense to order them chronologically. If you start organizing them too many ways, i.e. which are/aren't reported, their order on the executive calendar, new nominations announced, intent to nominate, etc it can get quite confusing. I understand the reasoning behind placing reported nominees first, but when I go to scan through the list and see a September date come before a May date, initially, that throws me off...Just a thought. Snickers2686 (talk) 17:35, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

• @Snickers2686 and JFG:, in that case, I'll just advocate for keeping the status quo. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 18:54, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• We're not here to track the process of the nominations. I agree with JFG and Snickers. Corky ^{Buzz by the Hornet's Nest} 19:13, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• I know I'm late to the party, and a consensus seems to have developed without me, but I'm going to add my thoughts anyway, since my input was requested and for future reference. I agree with Corky that we are not here to track the progress of nominations, at least not beyond the steps we are already explicitly tracking (pending before committee, reported by committee, confirmed). I do think that whatever principle we are using to order the names should be evident from information actually present in the tables (this practice is helpful not only to readers who don't have to wonder what they're missing when they look at the table, but also to editors who can clearly tell whether the order is correct or not). So sorting them by date, without consideration for whether the committee has reported the nomination or not, would work, and sorting them by status primarily and date secondarily would work (I prefer this kind of sorting personally). But sorting them by factors like when the committee reported the nomination or whether or not a vote has been lined up on the Executive Calendar would not. In point of fact, neither the nomination's number on the Executive Calendar (which, to be fair, is assigned in order as the nominations come in and so will essentially match sorting them by date, although not necessarily with respect to alphabetization) nor its "seniority" in terms of how early the committee reported the nomination has anything to do with when the Senate might take it up for a final vote. The Senate votes on the nominations it wants to vote on when it wants to vote on them (i.e., when McConnell makes up his mind and makes some kind of arrangement that the Democrats can more or less live with) and in the order it wants to vote on them. Hope that helps and isn't too confusing. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:04, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Okay, so this discussion needs to be tried one more time because apparently everyone has their own theory about what order we should be following, and nobody seems to have agreed on anything. I tried to put the page back in order sorted by status, date, name. JocularJellyfish apparently prefers to try to pre-report things that s/he expects the Judiciary committee to do in the near future by putting nominees soon to be reported in among those already reported, which gives the impression that the order is rather random. Snickers then reordered everything to be based simply and only on date (and then name as a tiebreaker). Can we develop some kind of consensus and then all just agree to follow it, please? Based on the opinions expressed above and recent events, it seems like we have the following options: (1) nominations ordered by date and then name, (2) nominations ordered by status (confirmed, reported, pending), then date, and finally name, (3) same as previous, but with adjustments to reflect expectations about what the Senate or a committee is going to do in the near future, (4) nominations ordered by name only. Personally I prefer option 2, but the only one I would be really unhappy about is number 3 (because it relies on information which is not visually present in the table). Can everybody else state their preference clearly (possibly by adding another option that I missed)? Calling JFG (talk · contribs), JocularJellyfish (talk · contribs), Snickers2686 (talk · contribs), Safiel (talk · contribs), and Corkythehornetfan (talk · contribs). LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 03:08, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
    • Favor date nominated – As is the case for the political appointments, we aren't here to track the process of the nominees. Therefore, I favor we order by the date they were nominated and leave it there. No moving around. My second option would be to alphabetize the list by name. Corky ^{Buzz by the Hornet's Nest} 03:47, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
      • Favor Chronological ordering So you're suggesting we look at the status (pending/reported) and then the date which they were nominated and then ultimately alphabetizing by first name, last name? I suppose it can be done but it makes for such a headache. When I organized it chronologically I went strictly by when they were announced and ultimately submitted to the Senate from the White House. I think it can get tricky when you have to constantly reorganize the table based on when a nominee is reported out of committee. There may be some nominees who were nominated in January, let's say, and they never have a hearing, so thus they end up near the bottom of the table. Again, as I've stated before, to see like an April date come before a January date, just doesn't logically make sense to me. So I advocate for chronological listing based on when nominations are sent to the Senate. Snickers2686 (talk) 05:13, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
    • Alpha order while pending, then ordered by confirmation date when confirmed. Any juggling of dates is confusing to readers who need not be familiar with the nominating and confirmation process. This option also simplifies updates: add new nominations in alpha order, without touching anyone else; move a judge up to a numbered position when confirmed. — JFG ^talk 10:37, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Still no consensus apparently: Snickers says chrono, I say alpha, and Corky says chrono or alpha. None of us cares about further distinctions in the process status beyond the nomination date, that's already something. @JocularJellyfish, LacrimosaDiesIlla, and Safiel: Other opinions on the main ordering criterion for pending nominees? — JFG ^talk 00:13, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I say chrono with reported nominations first. If that's not favorable then just chrono is fine. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 00:46, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

• I see no reason to depart from the long standing status quo. I think we should stick with the way we have been doing it. Safiel (talk) 03:09, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

@Safiel: and this longstanding way is what order, exactly? — JFG ^talk 19:07, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

• In chronological order of nomination, then in chronological order of appointment. Safiel (talk) 20:57, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

I see. And alpha order within the same date, e.g. currently for a bunch of people nominated on July 13, 2017. Fine by me if everybody can live with the status quo. What looks confusing is the strong visual contrast between "nomination pending" and "nomination reported"; this is unexplained specialist jargon and it breaks the lists of people who are listed under the same nomination date. Could we get rid of the color difference, and perhaps mark the reported nominations with a distinctive sign such as "‡" to note their different stage of advancement? — JFG ^talk 09:06, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

blue slips returned?

Firstly let me say how much I appreciate the work going into this page. One thing I would find useful would be if it were possible to differentiate between those nominations pending before the Judiciary Committee which have had two 'blue slips' returned and those which have not. Just a thought, but please keep up the good work. Cheers Lin4671 (talk) 15:05, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

• @Lin4671: Is there somewhere to find out (other than searching articles) when a Senator has returned his or her blue slip for a nominee? Snickers2686 (talk) 17:36, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
  • This is what I use: [2] It was last updated 8 days ago. Cheers Lin4671 (talk) 19:18, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

known names

I hope I'm doing this right. I have a question about this page, even though overall it's very well put together.

There are cases where a judicial nominee is known in the press and public by names other than their full names. In a recent example, Stuart Kyle Duncan is known in the press and public as Kyle Duncan. I think he should be listed that way, but didn't feel comfortable making that edit. Another example is Lisa Branch, who is listed as Elizabeth L. Branch in wikipedia. There are precedents in wikipedia itself. For example, Cordelia Pillard is listed as Nina Pillard, which is how people in the legal profession know her. Would I be justified in making such edits, or should I leave it up to wikipedia to do so? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:AD19:EF00:38CE:616B:3828:FA81 (talk) 03:16, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. Wikipedia usually favors referring to people according to the most widely-used variant of their name in the body of reliable sources. We do not necessarily use a person's full name or their official name. Consequently, the examples you cite would seem to me appropriate cases for using the common name instead of the full official name. Feel free to make those edits. — JFG ^talk 16:12, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Me again. I couldn't change Ryan Wesley Bounds to Ryan Bounds, which he's best known as, because it would not lead to wikipedia page. Would you be able to change the title of that page? As with the case of Kyle Duncan, I've seen no links which refer to him as Ryan Wesley Bounds. The case with Lisa Branch is different, because no one seems to have settled on what the most common version of her name was. Thanks again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FCC8:AD19:EF00:1052:4D4B:FF41:5362 (talk) 06:39, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

You could have changed the appearance of Ryan Wesley Bounds to Ryan Bounds by using a piped link such as [[Ryan Wesley Bounds|Ryan Bounds]]. Read about piped links here. (However, someone else has since created a redirect so that Ryan Bounds goes to Ryan Wesley Bounds.)

Please sign your posts on talk pages. This is normally done using four tildes (~~~~).

Pemilligan (talk) 19:54, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Getting Ahead of Reality

I appreciate how eager some of my fellow editors have been to keep this article up-to-date, but unfortunately a number of their efforts have involved getting ahead of the facts. The most glaring example of this is the recent removal of nominees Talley, Mateer, and Petersen from the article, whose nominations, despite breathless news bulletins reporting sources who "confirm" that the nominations are dead, have not been formally withdrawn. In order for the nomination to be withdrawn and to no longer be pending before the Senate, the White House has to actually send paperwork to the Senate withdrawing the nomination. That's how it actually works. That has not happened for any of these three nominees yet, which may be confirmed in any number of ways. The Senate keeps a list of withdrawn nominations, and none of these nominees are on it yet; it also keeps lists of nominees pending before committee or before the whole Senate, and all of these nominees remain on one of those two lists. One of them even still appears in the current edition of the Senate's Executive Calendar (Talley, because he was reported by committee), i.e., as business pending before the whole Senate. Furthermore, the primary source for this article (USCourts.gov) continues to list all of these nominations as pending. We need to not get ahead of our sources, please. If there is a desire to include a qualification along the lines of "but three of these nominees (Mateer, Petersen, and Talley) are expected to be formally withdrawn" (with appropriate sourcing), I would have no objection. But as long as the nominations have not been withdrawn, and as long as our sources continue to recognize the nominations as pending, it is not our business to withdraw them from this page. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 01:25, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

@JocularJellyfish:, I have tried to avoid calling you out by name, but really you need to calm down. Wikipedia is WP:NOTACRYSTALBALL. Don't edit the article to reflect outcomes that haven't obtained yet, even if the events are scheduled and the outcome is virtually assured. When the outcome does occur, do the update. If you want to draft the update somewhere and keep it ready, do that, but don't get ahead of reality. The Senate has not adjourned sine die yet. The Senate will have at least one more pro forma session this coming Wednesday before adjourning. The Senate website still lists all of these nominations and does not list any nominations as returned to the President. The USCourts website (which is the primary source for this page) still lists all of the nominations (although it doesn't seem to have picked up on the most recent two DC noms). You have also previously updated the page to reflect committee votes before the committee voted. I know because I was watching the SJC one day, and this article was updated at least an hour before the committee voted. Even if you knew how the committee was going to vote before it voted, it would still be wrong to update Wikipedia to say a nomination has been reported by the committee before it has been reported by the committee. Just calm down and let things happen when they happen and update when appropriate. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:09, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, the particular update I am referring to concerned the SJC's reporting of the Willis and Ho nominations, which they voted on around 11 am on December 7. You updated this article to indicate that the nominations had been reported, however, at around 10:30 pm on December 6, more than 12 hours before it happened. There's no good reason for that. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 15:14, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

@LacrimosaDiesIlla: I apologize for the mistaken edits when it came to returned nominations. I assumed that since the Senate was only conducting pro forma sessions for the remainder of the 1st session of the 115th Congress that the nominations which weren't held over were ipso facto returned to the president and no longer needed to be visible on the article. As to the situation with the Willett and Ho nominations, that was me getting ahead of reality and won't happen again. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 16:45, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

@JocularJellyfish: Thanks for the reply. I'm sorry I didn't see it until now. I certainly understand any confusion you may have had about the timing of the returned nominations. Please note the reversion I have just made to the page, undoing your recent edits which indicated that the two nominees scheduled for confirmation votes today had already been confirmed. Please wait for the events to actually occur before updating the page. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk)

Speaking of not getting ahead of ourselves

Democrats objected to holding most nominations in status quo and as a result, I believe all Article I & III Judicial nominations will be returned to the President when the First Session adjourns sine die and the Second Session of Congress convenes at noon on January 3, 2018. Likely, this information will be included in the Congressional Record of January 3rd, 2018, which will be publicly available the morning of January 4th, 2018. Edits to the article reflecting the return of the nominations should not be made until that Congressional Record is available. Safiel (talk) 23:44, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

@Safiel: Just a point of clarification. So the likelyhood of the nominations staying in limbo until January 3, 2018 but then potentially could be renominated January 4, 2018, right? The CR should be used to show the adjournment and return of the nomination once that happens, correct? Snickers2686 (talk) 04:23, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

@Snickers2686: Yes. Basically the time line will be: 1. Sine die adjournment of the First Session/Convening of the Second Session, an event that will happen simultaneously at 12:00 noon on January 3rd. 2. Sometime during the day on January 3rd, pursuant to the Senate rules, the Secretary of the Senate will formally transmit the nominations back to the White House. 3. The Congressional Record for January 3rd will be released the morning of January 4th, giving the exact sourced list of nominees returned. 4. Sometime on January 4th or later, the President will issue renominations (minus Mateer, Talley and Petersen), with sourcing for that being available either at the White House website or via the Congressional Record when it is released the following day. Safiel (talk) 04:46, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

@Snickers2686: Re-pinging, as I messed up the original ping. Safiel (talk) 04:47, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Note I am being specific for anybody else who might come here and read this, as most people are not familiar with the arcane rules of the Senate. Safiel (talk) 04:46, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you but why did the Senate keep some of the nominations and return others? Is there a rule on how they choose or is it up to the majority leader? Latex-yow (talk) 21:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Latex-yow: it's up to the Democratic leader, actually, and the rest of his caucus. Presidential nominations usually only last 1 session of congress (not to be confused with a Congress like the 115th United States Congress, but just 1 session of many that makes up a congress) and then expire and are returned to the president. Unanimous consent agreements are needed to hold over the nominations, which means that all 100 of the incumbent senators have to agree to hold over the nominations for the next session. If the nominations are not confirmed by the end of the second session, however, then they can't be held over to the 116th United States Congress. The Democratic Caucus did not agree with many of the nominees, so they did not allow them to be held over, which is really just a stalling tactic and a paperwork maneuver that has been orchestrated by both sides of the aisle. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 22:14, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@JocularJellyfish: But then why retain any at all? I mean if the purpose is to delay confirmations, why not return all of them? Latex-yow (talk) 22:38, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Latex-yow: ask Chuck Schumer that. I'm just a lowly constituent and wiki editor. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 23:54, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@JocularJellyfish: Washington Post's nomination tracker (doesn't cover the judiciary or military) has the following:

On January 3, 2018, the Senate returned 64 pending civilian, non-judiciary nominations to the president, as was required by congressional procedure. 57 of those are tracked below. The Senate passed measures that prevented this from happening to Obama, Clinton and H.W. Bush.

So maybe this wasn't up to Schumer, maybe because they passed the tax reform so late in the year they didn't have time to do this.

@Latex-yow: If Congress NEEDS to do something, they'll get it done. If what you're saying is true, then every single pending nomination would be returned. The Democratic Caucus did not agree with some of the nominees' views or support them, so they delayed their (possibly) inevitable confirmation by requiring them to be returned to the President. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 02:44, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

@JocularJellyfish: Congress didn't need to do anything, this is not the debt limit, the nominees are returned and the White House resubmits, and it could be that Congress needs to do something or a category of nominees (decided by a Senate rule) are returned. Finally, I am trusting Washington Post to know their stuff, if it was because Democrats did not cooperate it would be reported. Latex-yow (talk) 03:30, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Safiel Lin4671 (talk) 11:38, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Hovercard

is there anyway to get the hovercard to show the Gorsuch pic and not the signature with keeping the pic below the sidebar as on the Bush and Obama page? עם ישראל חי 23:16, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

its showing it now עם ישראל חי 14:44, 12 January 2018 (UTC)