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I have archived my law-related discussions here

Judge Kent

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See discussion on The Volokh Conspiracy blog today (www.volokh.com) for the latest on Judge Kent, including some links.

Will you be at the DC meet-up on Saturday? Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

There's a DC Meet-up on Saturday? bd2412 T 22:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes. I've been concerned the word wasn't getting out.... Wikipedia:Meetup/DC 6 has the details. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

John R. Thomas

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The Sources entry for John R. Thomas leads to a John Thomas different from the author of the book listed. The author is John R. ("Jay") Thomas, now a professor at Georgetown Law School and formerly an assistant professor at George Washington Law School. PraeceptorIP (talk) 22:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Fixed - I created a stub for John R. Thomas (professor) and directed the link there. By the way, I think your contributions thus far have been excellent, correct and on point. I reviewed Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc. in depth, and do not disagree with any assertions made therein. However, the best way to avoid controversy is to source every assertion statement made in the article to a third party, even if that third party is a newspaper summary of the case (unfortunately, this is something of a case of do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do, as I've started dozens of articles on Supreme Court cases just to have something in here on them, and most are wholly unreferenced). bd2412 T 22:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi there, I wanted to let you know that this edit isn't really correct. That particular external link wasn't being usd as a source for the article. I've changed the heading back to "External links". Thanks. Risker (talk) 06:43, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

The folks at Wikipedia:External links have told us that we can't use the FJC Bio template in an External links section because it violates their restrictions (you can see the rather extended discussion at Wikipedia:External links. The FJC cite is certainly the source of some information in the article (or, if not, the info must be added). Cheers! bd2412 T 06:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

An odd case

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Is this correct? A recess appointment to three different districts at once? – Quadell (talk) 02:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yep - happened quite often in the olden days. Although there were two or three judicial districts in a state, one judge was appointed for the entire state (i.e. to each of the Districts), and would travel from seat to seat within the state to hear cases. bd2412 T 02:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
There are still a couple of judgeships designated for multiple districts. See 28 U.S.C. § 133(a), entries for Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Wow, that is surprising. I would have thought in this age, with so many judgeships floating around, a multi-district judge just wouldn't fly! bd2412 T 16:59, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
The FJC website, in addition to the biographical information on the individual judges, contains historical information on each court and district, so you can trace the history of the judgeships if you are interested. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Been there, done that. ;-) I wish they had the succession of seats, too. bd2412 T 17:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
There is a little more detail in the legislative history notes at the end of Section 133 in U.S.C. or U.S.C.A. In addition, each FJC entry on a judge indicates whom he or she succeeded (although I have never thought of "whom the judge replaced" as a particularly salient question in dealing with, say, a 30-judge court which typically has a couple of vacant seats at any given time). Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Roberts

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It is well documented I chose my words carefully to use extreme caution because it is a BLP. If you read the blog post it references publicly available court decisions, which can be had in any number of mainstream news sources. You can re-word if you like but that should be in the article DegenFarang (talk) 07:52, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

This discussion, if it is to be had at all, should be on the talk page of the article. However, I note that you specifically wrote in the article that Roberts was "accused of being a racist in the media". The court decisions may be well-reported, but Roberts has not been accused of anything "in the media". bd2412 T 08:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Hi Degen, a blog is absolutely not a valid reference, especially for derogatory content. Even with a proper newspaper source this would be very dubious BLP-wise, but with a blog as source, you're not going to get any support for including it. Looie496 (talk) 17:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
If this discussion is going to be continued, I'm moving it to the article talk page. bd2412 T 17:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Jersey Judges

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The new table of judges for United States District Court for the District of New Jersey is indeed awesome, but would it be more helpful to arrange them chronologically rather than alphabetically? Offenbach (talk) 01:54, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

It's a sortable table, so it can be made chronological by the click of a button. However, if you'd prefer to have it set up that way from the start, feel free to re-order it. bd2412 T 01:56, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I've figured out how to do it relatively cheaply, so I'll get to it within the next few days. bd2412 T 03:43, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks! Offenbach (talk) 15:03, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Gay judges

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Same way I know there are two on the Oregon Supreme Court, read the news. Aboutmovies (talk) 06:12, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Openly would be assumed, otherwise we shouldn't list it. But the broader point, which is why gay was one of three minorities listed in the edit summary, is that types of minorities that have not been on a court should not be listed. There are many, many minorities out there and there is no reason to list all that have not been there, and only listing one is a bit of a NPOV problem. Really, why did you only choose Hispanics out of the plethora of minorities that have not served on that court? Asian Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Eskimos, those from the Indian sub continent, Arab Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, are also all minorities, are they not important enough to be listed too? I'm sure it was a simple oversight, but as I said, that then becomes a NPOV problem. Aboutmovies (talk) 22:15, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
Actually, it's based on the statistics that the FJC keeps. Although FJC also notes Asian and Native American judges, the numbers are so low as to be negligible. bd2412 T 22:17, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
In St. Louis (where the court sits), the population is 51% African American, 44% white, and 2% Hispanic. No other race or ethnic group makes up 2% or more. The entire state is 87% white, 12% African American, and 2% Hispanic. Again, no other group breaks the 2% barrier. Women are about 51%. (The US Census doesn't track sexual orientation, which is probably for the best.) Based on this, in my opinion it makes sense to mention the presence or absence of female, Hispanic, or African-American judges, but not other groups. – Quadell (talk) 00:10, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
If there had ever been an Asian judge on the court, it might be worth mentioning. But there hasn't. I think if we are to compare the demographics of the court to the population it represents, we really should look to the whole district. bd2412 T 00:23, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm confused, the edit where I removed the Hispanic reference was the District of Oregon. So I'm not sure how Missouri's demographics play in this situation. Though, I think it brings up that demographics do vary much between states/districts, which is why I think its best only to mention the firsts for various minorities. Otherwise you would need to investigate for each district, and then determine an arbitrary cut-off point (which in Oregon would mean you would need to also mention no Asian or Native American judges going by the arbitrary 2% threshold). Also, as to the FJC, why are you and this project so focused on the FJC as a source? It's a good starting point, but only that. Aboutmovies (talk) 01:11, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Because FJC brings together so much information on this rather narrow area of interest, which no one else does. There simply is no other venue which has biographical sketches of all ~3,200 Article I judges, in a format that can be searched for useful patterns. bd2412 T 01:16, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Oops!

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Well that was embarrassing. I see exactly how that happened, but I'm surprised I didn't catch it. Thanks for fixing it. – Quadell (talk) 12:41, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of which, there appear to be no subpages for Benjamin Harrison appointees in Polbot/scrap. Were they not made? bd2412 T 13:31, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Right, she was looking for judges in the list appointed by Benjamin Harrison, and she didn't find any, since she thought they were all appointed by Benjamin Harrison (judge). I'll try to get her to create BH lists soon. – Quadell (talk) 14:22, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
I just need the District Court list. There were few enough that I could pull all the info for the Appellate/Circuit lists from the existing lists by court. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:24, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Actually scratch that, I did it manually. Didn't take long at all. bd2412 T 03:14, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Clean-up help on Mark W. Delahay

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Please, can you please help clean-up a page you created, Mark W. Delahay. If you have any questions, please contact me on my talk page. Thank you.

--The New Mikemoral ♪♫ 02:48, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Cites for our list

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The noble workhorse

At List of federal judges appointed by George Washington, I can't find a source for Note 5. I've left it as {{fact}}. Can you provide a source for this? (Also, thanks for fixing my Washington presidency dates--oops!) – Quadell (talk) 18:15, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again! You're a real workhorse. And I mean that as a compliment. – Quadell (talk) 22:55, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
P.S. Good luck on your exams! – Quadell (talk) 17:29, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

References error

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Please have a look at List of federal judges appointed by Dwight D. Eisenhower. You reverted my edit, and did precisely what I would have done also to fix the references error, but you still have a references error here. I have no clue how to fix it, though. Debresser (talk) 02:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

BTW, thanks for saving me from that block. Debresser (talk) 02:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

It's in the last line of the page:
Hidden categories: Pages with incorrect ref formatting Debresser (talk) 09:04, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Took me a lot of time to find it, but there was a </ref> tag missing. I left you a remark inside the text because it looks as though some more information went missing there. Was my pleasure. Debresser (talk) 17:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

  • I saw your edit. That's what I went back to do. :) Debresser (talk) 17:32, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Thanks, I appreciate your work on this. bd2412 T 17:36, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
      • This is my usual work here. It's what I like to do. Goes together well with my character. :) Debresser (talk) 19:03, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Assistance Needed

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I would like to request your assistance in updating the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois article, which you have substantially contributed to. I recently attempted to update the article's wiki-table of Judges to reflect the recent death of Judge James Byron Moran, but the "edit preview" revealed that I would have bungled the wiki-table formatting. After several edit preview attempts, I resorted to adding a "update needed" tag to the appropriate section. Any assistance you can provide in fixing this problem would be most appreciated. --TommyBoy (talk) 23:37, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Thank you for updating the article. --TommyBoy (talk) 03:47, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
    • My pleasure. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:57, 25 April 2009 (UTC)