Talk:Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Missing Vote for Senator Cramer

See link for roll call vote.

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=116&session=2&vote=00224 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.218.139.235 (talk) 04:05, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Added. Thanks. — Swood100 (talk) 14:22, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Does anybody care?

In this article, Chuck Schumer is quoted as saying: “"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” Then it is said that this is a quote, verbatim, of something that Mitch McConnell said. However, the two references supplied do not support that. I tried to correct this by supplying an appropriate reference showing McConnell saying those exact words but Sdkb reverted my edits, insisting that the existing references supplied do show Mitch McConnell as saying those words verbatim. However, this misunderstands the meaning of "verbatim". The two existing references are this one and this one.

I’ve done all I can do. It is a very minor matter. If there is anybody else who cares about this I leave it to you. — Swood100 (talk) 23:41, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Scare quotes

Swood100 and I disagree about whether or not to use scare quotes around the word "precedent" regarding Merrick Garland. I, as I have argued above, maintain that reliable sources such as CNN establish the existence of the precedent, and that MOS:SCAREQUOTES, part of the "words to watch" guideline, means we should not use them here. Swood has repeatedly attempted [1][2][3] to introduce the scare quotes anyways, edit warring when I reverted to the status quo. Could others please weigh in? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm opposed to both positions. I don't think it makes sense to use scare quotes around "precedent" because doing so makes it unclear to the reader just what those quotation marks mean. Do the scare quotes mean "someone, somewhere, in some reliable source used the word 'precedent' to describe what McConnell is allegedly breaking and this Wikipedia sentence is quoting that person because it doesn't think WikiVoice should be used in this case" or does it mean "The WP editors of this page don't think it really is a precedent so they're scare-quoting it." I'm also opposed to using the unadorned word (precedent) because it has a specific meaning ( Precedent ) which doesn't clearly apply to what McConnell did. Specifically, WP defines the word to mean, "A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case..." There should be a phrase or word to describe what McConnell did do that characterizes how his Garland attitude differed from his Barrett attitude but I don't think the word "precedent" does the trick, with or without scare quotes. Novellasyes (talk) 19:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Novellasyes, interesting perspective. Looking at Wiktionary, there's two different pertinent definitions: [2.] is the one our page is about and what you seem to be referencing, but there's also [1.], which is the non-legal sense. I'd argue that what we're talking about here is the non-legal sense, and since reliable sources use it, I'm comfortable with us doing the same. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:00, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

You linked to this CNN article above which you cited as "establish[ing] the existence of the precedent". The article doesn't use the word "precedent" though (that I see; might be blind). And there might be other RS that do use the actual word "precedent". If that's the case, noting those RSes would establish that plenty of RSes believe that McConnell broke a precedent if by precedent, one means Wiktionary Sense #1, which is "An act in the past which may be used as an example to help decide the outcome of similar instances in the future". Using Wiktionary Sense #1, they would mean that the way he acted around Garland [ the "act in the past" ] which could have been used by him as an example to help decide the outcome of whether to move ahead on Barrett, surely did not. Granting all that, I'm not comfortable using "precedent" because it has two meanings. What is for Wikitionary the second meaning is nevertheless a strong enough meaning that it is how Wikipedia itself on its article actually defines it as the primary meaning. When there is ambiguity like that, such that a reader may either wonder which meaning of the word is intended, or actually think it means what WP thinks is the primary meaning, I think there could be an alternative phrase that doesn't potentially invite confusion. Novellasyes (talk) 16:23, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

What if we just quote the source directly, like this:

According to Boston.com, "[Massachusetts senator Ed Markey] called on Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, to follow the 'precedent' he set in 2016 when he blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court based on the reasoning that it was an election year." Otherwise, Markey said that his party "must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court".

Boston.com may have put the word 'precedent' in quotes because that was the exact word that Markey used. If so, they took care to avoid the appearance that that was their choice of word, or that in their judgment McConnell's action actually had constituted a precedent, which is the understanding that Sdkb would like this article to establish. Doing so is not supported by the source. — Swood100 (talk) 18:23, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

References