Template talk:Ussc/Archive 1

Why I am reverting this template to the March version

I do not think that this template should be prefixed with "Citation: ", because such text makes court citations even more unreadable and clutters up articles even more. If you disagree, please explain below. Thanks.

--Coolcaesar 4 July 2005 16:45 (UTC)

I agree with the reversion (I was planning to do it myself). Articles often use this template multiple times, for different cases, making the "Citation" link very cumbersome. An editor can still add the citation link to the article manually. Mateo SA | talk July 4, 2005 17:56 (UTC)

Why I am adding in links to the Justia/Oyez/USCF USSC cases

I am adding in links to the Justia/Oyez/USCF cases. These include all of the US cases since volume 1 and are more complete than FindLaw's cases which include case from 1893 and some selected cases, and are missing some cases. The Justia/Oyez/USCF cases also include the proper citation for the newer cases. In addition the Justia set are constantly being updated and fixed where there are errors. FindLaw has decreased its focus on case databases since it sold to Thomson-West in 2001, which has its own pay service Westlaw. Peace - Justia 21:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I still disagree with the link from this template to Justia. WP's job is to keep track of the notable, not bring fame to the non-notable. Thomson is a huge conglomerate with dozens of offices worldwide that dominates the information services sector; Justia is a tiny business (probably with less than 40 people) with a single office in Palo Alto.

Certainly, there is precedent for WP linking to high-quality databases maintained by well-established private companies like Google and Microsoft (such as in the map links template for geographical stuff). But I feel that we should not be helping out a tiny firm that clogs up its poorly laid-out version of the cases with even more ads than FindLaw. Justia's versions are riddled with errors (like "Footenote" instead of "Footnote") and strange layout conventions (like inserting a new paragraph after every page break notation).

I'm not denying that FindLaw's collection has serious problems. But if that's true, maybe we should be linking to versions maintained by nonprofit, neutral institutions like Cornell. --Coolcaesar 04:22, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

To help facilitate the discussion, below are links to the same case on the three systems. --Arcadian 05:25, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

1. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=410&invol=113
2. http://www.justia.us/us/410/113/case.html
3. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct-cgi/get-us-cite?410+113

Hey everyone, I am getting really irritated with the Justia links, since it has been a week and no one has given a really good reason for why we should be linking to that mess. Furthermore, Justia hasn't fixed the errors I pointed out. If anyone doesn't defend the ridiculous current state of the template within the next week, I am going to "be bold" and revert back to the FindLaw-based template as a temporary measure---until I get around to figuring out how to link properly to Cornell's version of the cases. --Coolcaesar 22:29, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Coolcaesar. --Arcadian 02:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I've reverted back to Findlaw; no one wants to use Justia except for Justia, and Justia needs to accept that fact and stop spamming his own site. Postdlf 20:43, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Great. Thanks for taking care of that. I've been too busy this week with work at the law firm to attend to Wikipedia as much as I would like. --Coolcaesar 03:24, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of that. --Arcadian 03:38, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

That Justia had the complete set of cases and had the correct citations for the recent cases was why I changed the template. I initially changed it to link to FindLaw and Justia, but someone said they did not like that, so I changed it again. I know that the Justia cases are not perfect, but they are better than the quality of what FindLaw has online (although FindLaw was bought by West, it is not West case law that they have online). We are fixing items as they come to our attention. The case quality and annotations will get better and better, we have no revenue stream involving the selling of access to databases of cases, and thus have no incentive not to improve the data. And while we are a small new company, the people are not new to this industry. Justia includes the founders of FindLaw, as well as many of the former programming staff of FindLaw. We are focused on putting up free case law, as well as other free services like law firm websites (http://freedom.justia.com) etc...Justia 23:06, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Okay I get the point Postdlf. All I can do is state the reasons why the Justia database is better (more cases, correct citations), but if you want to link to FindLaw, so be it. I am not going to play a game of template tag :) In any case, we will keep improving the database. Good luck to you and the users. Peace Justia 00:29, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Reporter of Decisions

I've created a new Template, Template:Usscr, which allows citations to include the name of the Reporter of Decisions. See its talk page for its usage. --Mark Adler 17:33, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Cornell LII

I suggest linking to the cornell law school's supreme court collection. It is much easier to read, and the links are cleaner: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct-cgi/get-us-cite/{{{1}}}/{{{2}}} . If the case is not available, you get links to several different providers (FindLaw, LexisOne, Westlaw, LexisNexis). --Dana Powers 03:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

In my experience, Cornell's cases are improperly formatted more often than FindLaw's, and it's not uncommon for part of the first paragraph to be cut off altogether. The newer cases look very nice, but until they get around to fixing up their old ones, I'm in favor of sticking with FindLaw. --zenohockey 04:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

How to use (non)included

As a noninclude feature, a description on how to use this template has been placed on the edit page. Paul Robinson (Rfc1394) 17:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Pincite?

What about including a way to add a pincite? Then you would have two options: {{Ussc | volume | page | year }} without the pincite or {{Ussc | volume | page | pincite | year }} with it. Pygora123 18:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I have added a pinpoint feature. Ex: {{Ussc | volume | page | year | pinpoint=page# }}.

This will display Volume U.S. Page, Pinpoint (Year).

Enjoy! Foofighter20x (talk) 23:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Usscr now deprecated

I have modified this template to allow reference to the Reporter of Decisions. The default behavior of {{ussc}} is unchanged, but now if you enter a Reporter it will behave like {{usscr}}. --Selket ^Talk 19:28, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

More parser function fun

So, I've been doing some work on some of the earlier SCOTUS case pages and ran into the problem that some of the older cases are not on Findlaw. It also occured to me that we should probably link to decisions on the sister project wikisource. I created an extra switch Source that can select which source you want to use. The default is still findlaw, so none of the existing transcluding pages will be changed. I'll update the documentation later today, but for now I'll put some examples below.

default

• Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) {{ussc|5|137|1803|Cranch|1}}
• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) {{ussc|410|113|1973}}

justia

• Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) {{ussc|Source=j|5|137|1803|Cranch|1}}
• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) {{ussc|Source=j|410|113|1973}}

findlaw

• Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) {{ussc|Source=f|5|137|1803|Cranch|1}}
• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) {{ussc|Source=f|410|113|1973}}

wikisource

• Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) {{ussc|Source=w|Casename=Marbury v. Madison|5|137|1803|Cranch|1}}
• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) {{ussc|Source=w|Casename=Roe v. Wade|410|113|1973}}

junk

• Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803) {{ussc|Source=x|5|137|1803|Cranch|1}}
• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) {{ussc|Source=x|410|113|1973}}

--Selket ^Talk 19:30, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Year Link

I'm thinking the year should be link and not just text. On an article like McCulloch v. Maryland you have to go rooting for the year link (it's in the caption of the image of the book of which the case was recorded). -- BlindWanderer (talk) 21:50, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia discourages linking dates or years (See MOS:UNLINKYEARS). You can easily search for a year on wikipedia yourself, but they usually do not provide information inherently warranting an actual link. Sligocki (talk) 23:54, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Case citation

No matter when created, all uses of this template now link to the above article. Why has this change been made? SMP0328. (talk) 21:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with SMP0328. This template was created to enable editors to easily provide readers with direct access to the case opinions. If desiring to link a person to the the case citation page in order to enable the reader to better understand what the mysterious configuration of numbers and letters are in a case citation, then I suggest following the format of the {{usstat}} template, which for our purposes would only make the reporter portion of the citation a link to the case citation page. Foofighter20x (talk) 22:47, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Tweaked the default link. Who likes/dislikes? Foofighter20x (talk) 23:06, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Unless there's some pressing reason to give Justia a huge amount of prominence and precedence, I'd rather not. (a) It's not fair to the other resources; (b) it's not a particularly good site. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I picked Justia as the default for the following reasons:

1) The entirety of the U.S. Reports are not available online from any government website or source.

2) The only non-profit site featuring the entirety of the U.S. Reports is www.oyez.org (provided by Northwestern University)... All other cites are probably subscription-based or have ads.

3) The directory of oyez.org doesn't fit with the template's case citation format. They group cases by decade and docket number, not by the U.S. Reports cite.

4) However, oyez.org and Justia run a joint site: supreme.justia.com, which does not have any ads other than a Google search bar.

5) Additionally, Justia's directory is organized in conformity to the U.S. Reports cites, and functions well with the structure of the template.

Unless you can come up with a good reason not to use Justia, then I would ask you not change it back. Foofighter20x (talk) 00:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

There are other sites like http://openjurist.org/ (and likely others out on the Web). And sites like FindLaw have volumes 150 and on. I don't like the idea of making the default one of the sites (perhaps a better solution would be something similar to Special:BookSources but that's not likely to happen anytime soon). I'll probably just create a separate template for my needs. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:17, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Compared to Justia, openjurist.org is a disorganized mess. Also, Justia has EVERY volume of the U.S. Reports, starting from 1 U.S., and can thus be used universally to link to any case found in the U.S. Reports. Also, linking to openjurist.org would require a variable for the NAME of the case, whereas Justia only needs the cite numbers. The directory structure of openjurist.org precludes its use. Hell, openjurist.org doesn't even have Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. 171 (1796). Foofighter20x (talk) 00:26, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

http://openjurist.org/3/us/171 --MZMcBride (talk) 00:43, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. It doesn't show up here: http://openjurist.org/3/us -- Foofighter20x (talk) 01:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

All that matters to me is that {{usstat}} links to a copy of the applicable SCOTUS decision. Which website is linked is not important to me. SMP0328. (talk) 19:48, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

"source selection": Can you add a=altlaw?

"The full text source to which the template links can be selected with the optional Source parameter."

Can you add a=altlaw? Agradman ^{appreciates civility}/_{makes occasional mistakes} 19:37, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Testing... 3 U.S. 171 (1796) -- Foofighter20x (talk) 03:47, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

DONE. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 03:48, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Pincite support?

Hi Foofighter20x, I noticed you recently added pincite support to this template -- e.g., 410 U.S. 113, 164 (1973). This is awesome. However, this doesn't incorporate pincite into the resulting hyperlink -- i.e. it produces http://supreme.justia.com/us/410/113/case.html rather than http://supreme.justia.com/us/410/113/case.html#164. Can you add this feature? Thanks. Agradman ^talk/_contribs 16:55, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

If you'll figure out how each site encodes individual pages, sure, I'll do it. I don't think they all do, however, which is why I never put them in the link scripting. :p I will put in the one for Justia, however. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 04:04, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Testing... Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 675 (1988) (487 U.S. 654, 675 (1988)) -- Foofighter20x (talk) 04:17, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Retest... Look for "As this discussion shows, there was little or no debate on the question whether the Clause empowers Congress to provide for interbranch appointments, and there is nothing to suggest that the Framers intended to prevent Congress from having that power." -- Foofighter20x (talk) 04:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

DONE, but only for FindLaw and Justia. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 04:58, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

a small (non-urgent) proposal: more bluebook styles

Hi,

Foofighter20x has done incredible work, and has earned the shout-out at Wikiproject:Law and Wikiproject:Supreme Court.

I wonder what you guys think of a further request, based on my experience implementing this new feature: there should be a way to generate "410 U.S. 123-5 (1973)". As you can see, when I have referred to multiple pages, I have to do "410 U.S. 113, 123 (1973)-129." See this permalink to Roe v Wade#structure

(in fact, there is a whole gamut of Bluebook citation styles that I wish were available.)

However, not urgent at all.

(PS: I would further add that the availability of pinciting to Justia and Findlaw has sort of made the other sources obsolete, but that's more of an observation than a proposal.)

Agradman ^talk/_contribs 17:30, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Justia is the default for a reason

1. Findlaw is a for-profit venture.
2. Justia is a not-for-profit joint project with the not-for-profit website oyez.org. This is in keeping with the spirit of Wikipedia's mission of providing free knowledge. Why send users to generate advertising revenue for Findlaw when they can get it for free and without ads from Justia? Further, the more Justia is used, the more its existence is justified for donors and getting grants to keep it operating.
3. Just because a misguided editor made a bot that unnecessarily and incorrectly altered web links is not sufficient grounds to change the default links in the USSC template to point at Findlaw.
4. I made Justia the default USSC reference source almost a year ago, if not longer, well before this bot editor was even a problem.

If you have good, rational, legitimate reasons to point it at FindLaw, please argue them here. Until then, don't make unilateral changes like that to the template without attempting to discuss it with other editors first. Thanks for reading. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 23:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually I wasn't advocating the use of FindLaw. I just have a problem with Justia, and here is why (please leave a comment). But anyway, I don't see why being a "for-profit site" is a problem. Wikipedia has thousands of links to commercial databases like JSTOR or ScienceDirect. --bender235 (talk) 23:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

You're correct: on its face being a for-profit sight isn't a problem. Still, Wikipedia editors ought to prefer directing readers to sources they can obtain without any cost if possible. Would you want to pay for information if you didn't have to? -- Foofighter20x (talk) 23:45, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

No, of course not. But I also don't want to "reward" a page with traffic after they have spammed on Wikipedia. --bender235 (talk) 23:50, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Hold on. Can you prove definitively that it was Justia when it could have just been a misguided, new editor? Unless you have admin privileges and can view editor IP addresses, I wouldn't jump to conclusions just yet, you know? :) -- Foofighter20x (talk) 00:20, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I'm not an admin and therefore can't prove anything, but I already asked someone who's familiar with WP:SPI to investigate. However, I highly doubt that this was just some "misguided new editor". In that case, we would've had one user account doing all this damage, but in fact there are more than 50 (yes, that's fifty!) user accounts, each created just to manipulate one single Wikipedia article at a time (some of them even pretend to be valid, see User:Lechmereinz, User:EvansonM, or User:DenverDennis). If it turns out after an SPI that those 50+ accounts represent 50+ individuals, I'll eat my hat. Whoever did this spent a lot of time, because it took me about three hours to collect that stuff on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#justia.com, and I'm probably not even done yet. I just don't see why anyone would do this unless he's affliated to Justia. --bender235 (talk) 00:48, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 00:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

SPI filed. --bender235 (talk) 11:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

@Foofighter20x: Since you don't like FindLaw, how about using AltLaw by default? --bender235 (talk) 11:32, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Is there anyway to get the pincite feature to work with it? If not... -- Foofighter20x (talk) 17:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, do remember, oyez.org is done by the Northwestern University law school in Chicago, which Justia paired with to provide the cases. No reason to prefer Columbia over NWrn, especially when the partnership of the latter is much more useful and has more features. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 17:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay. So I'm voting for FindLaw, since Justia is fishy after that spam incident. Anybody else? --bender235 (talk) 17:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Wait until the SPI is concluded, eh? -- Foofighter20x (talk) 17:31, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Sure. --bender235 (talk) 18:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I won't be able to monitor this conversation as it unfolds, so let me just put in my 2 cents that, if the results of the SPI should lead you to seek an alternative to Justia, I just hope that we substitute it for a site that lets you put a pincite into the URL. I know that Justia and Findlaw permit this; I know that AltLaw does not -- the developers have personally told me that they cannot add that feature. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 22:39, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I still don't see why a bunch of spammers changing links is sufficient grounds to not use Justia as the default. The changes of those alleged sockpuppets may have been made on other pages for the purpose of getting users to that website, but Justia has been the default here for almost a year without incident. Further, I don't think Wikipedia ought to be used to generate advertising revenue for other sites when a free alternative is available. Also, if an editor really wants to direct readers to find law, for whatever subject reasoning, a feature has already been built into the template to allow them to do so. Change isn't necessary.-- Foofighter20x (talk) 22:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Let's see what that SPI result is. If it turns out that Justia had something to do with it, we should punish them by not using their site as default. --bender235 (talk) 23:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

After looking more closely at the Justia website, I sincerely doubt they had anything to do with this.

Justia is focused on making legal information, resources and services easy to find on the Internet. The company provides Internet users with free case law, codes, regulations, legal articles and legal blog databases, as well as community resources. Justia works with educational, public interest and other socially focused organizations to bring legal and consumer information to the online community.

We don't need to punish anyone except the alleged spammers. I'm starting to doubt they were even spammers, but instead either a misguided editor with a bot, or several misguided editors. Hell, it could have even been done by someone from FindLaw with the intent of getting Justia booted (plenty of motive there on grounds of lost advertising revenues from displaced web traffic). There's plenty of reasonable doubt here that this was any sort of malicious effort by Justia itself. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 23:42, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm starting to doubt they were even spammers, but instead either a misguided editor with a bot, or several misguided editors.

Again, we'll see. But you should know that there is no such thing as a bot that creates 50 accounts to change pages, let only changing only on page with each account. Also, given the similarities between those edits, I highly doubt that there are "several misguide editors" behind this, but only one single spammer. --bender235 (talk) 23:54, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and BTW, I agree with you that Wikipedia isn't suppose to generate traffic for a commercial website. But if I had to choose between a commercial website and a free website that sends out people to link spam on Wikipedia, I rather go with the commericial website. It all depends on whether we can find out who's behind those vandalism. --bender235 (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. Yet, even if it is determined it came from one spammer, there's no reason at this point to even assume or speculate that Justia intentionally or knowingly loosed the spammer upon Wikipedia. I could easily spam this site with unnecessary links to the N.Y. Times. That doesn't mean the NYT sent me here or that the NYT should be banned as a source. So, as you propose, best to wait and see. Until then, however, I'd presume good faith on the part of Justia. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 06:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

For the record, I agree with Foofighter20x that this spam situation is not grounds to stop Justia from being the default USSC reference. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 23:23, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay. --bender235 (talk) 23:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks like they closed out the SPI. They never answered if it was from Justia or not. Absent that evidence, I'm all for a presumption of innocence. -- Foofighter20x (talk) 17:55, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree. --bender235 (talk) 19:06, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

How do you cite recent cases?

First, I should note that I'm not a legal expert. This might be a trivial question for experts.

I read the LII syllabus for Abbott v Abbott, docket 08-645 and wanted to look up the meaning of "ne exeat". That led to Ne exeat republica, which seems to regard the phrase as obsolete... obviously incorrect given its use in today's decision. I went to add some additional text and a reference, and found that I couldn't find the volume and page number for the case. Presumably that's because it hasn't been published yet. Also presumably there's some way to cite a case before it's published. What is that way? Jordan Brown (talk) 16:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it has one right yet... Just the docket number and case number so far. -- 02:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Problem with Justia links for more recent cases

See discussion here. postdlf (talk) 19:49, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Years go by... See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases § Ussc template and Justia links for an update on this. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 02:52, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Three questions: incl template for UK cases?

Great template. Can I ask,

(1) could anybody here create a parallel template for bailii.org - these are UK cases, which go in the format of UKHL, UKSC, UKPC, EWCA Civ, EWCA Crim, and EWHC (from the House of Lords, Supreme Court, Privy Council, England and Wales Court of Appeal Civil, and Criminal Divisions, and the High Court). It would be superb.

(2) is the lock symbol necessary, and can it be removed?

(3) why was law.cornell.edu not included?

Many thanks, Wikidea 08:59, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Answering two out of three:

1. Check out {{Cite BAILII}}.
2. This symbol is automatically displayed (by the MediaWiki software, I think) whenever an external link uses the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) – that is, whenever the link starts with https://. This is the same set of rules that cause a PDF icon to automatically appear when linking to a PDF file. Therefore, this functionality is out of this template's control.
3. I dunno... Bueller?

 —Grollτech (talk) 01:25, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Rename

The current template name is opaque. It should be renamed, probably to "Cite United States Supreme Court", with the current name remaining as a redirect for shorthand use. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:17, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

What's the deal with the little "lock" icon?

Apparently there is an icon of a small golden padlock for Justia links (and any other HTTP Secure links, apparently--it's just that Justia is the only external case source with https links). I find this icon unnerving for a few different reasons. First of all, it is not immediately apparent that this icon represents a hyperlink to a case, or that such a link goes to a site outside of Wikipedia. One must click to figure this out. This is hardly helped by an icon that represents a lock. My first impression was that somehow and for some reason some portion of the lead content of articles about cases had been locked as uneditable. But my biggest beef is that the template puts the lock icon right smack dab in the middle of the cite. From my perspective, it's important to be able to copy and paste case citations from Wikipedia into other places--legal search engines, legal documents, academic documents, etc.--without non-text content cluttering up the citation. What can we do about this? Can we get rid of the obnoxious lock icon, or at least move it to the end of the citation so that the citation may be copied and pasted without the lock? Robert K S (talk) 01:37, 9 October 203 (UTC)

The padlock doesn't actually copy when you select the url. Anyway, this is a WP:VPT issue, as it's a question of how the site software renders external links, not anything that this template can affect. postdlf (talk) 01:59, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Good to know about copying & pasting. But are you saying that the template couldn't move the link until after the year of decision? Robert K S (talk) 02:02, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I misunderstood what you were asking. Yes, the external link could be moved anywhere in the citation. It's just a question of what would make sense for readers. postdlf (talk) 02:11, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the problem is now moot; apparently Justia no longer requires a secure connection, as @UnitedStatesian: has changed the https to http. So once the cache clears out at least (it often takes some time for template changes to show true), the padlock icon shouldn't appear again. postdlf (talk) 21:28, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Have the template ignore spaces?

Would it be possible for the template to ignore spacebar characters in the fields? E.g. cf. {{ussc|410|113|1973}} 410 U.S. 113 (1973) and {{ussc| 410| 113| 1973 }} 410 U.S. 410/ 113/ 113 ( 1973 ). The problem may occur if people copy and paste the code from #Usage. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 14:47, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I made this change in the sandbox - give it a try. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:54, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

{{ussc/sandbox|410|113|1973}} 410 U.S. 113 (1973) and {{ussc/sandbox| 410| 113| 1973 }} 410 U.S. 410/ 113/ 113 ( 1973 ). There's still a problem with the 1973 parameter for me. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 15:35, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I just looked at those places where the parameter was used to construct a URL, I ignored those where whitespace was undesirable from a purely visual point of view. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:50, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to address that as well? People would presumably want the same (correct) formatting, no matter what the code looked like. AFAIK this is how the CS1-type templates work (i.e. |first1=φ|last1=ψ|; |first1= φ | last1= ψ |; etc. would all come out the same AFAIK). It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 16:14, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

The CS1 templates use named parameters exclusively, which always strip whitespace (whether you want them to or not). {{ussc}} uses a mixture: there are some named parameters (|casename= |docket= |pin= |source=); but the problem is caused by the five positional parameters, where whitespace is preserved unless you take conscious steps to strip it, like this. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:49, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

The Sandbox looks good now; I think it's ready to incorporate? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 15:40, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

OK,  Done --Redrose64 (talk) 19:15, 30 May 2014 (UTC)