User talk:DLJessup/Archive 00

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[[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 18:27, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

As of

Please see Talk:United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:23, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

NDashes

Have checked Dash (punctuation) and the related section of the manual of style, but am fairly sure — not positive — that 8208 is neither the NDash, nor the deprecated Figure Dash. Can't translate hex to decimal in my head and only have a second at the moment though... and I do want to conform to the manual of style (and thought since someone had converted regular hyphens to 8208s awhile back) that this was what was supposed to be done, so will convert them back in such articles as I know I have done so. (Bad grammar that.) Thanks and apologies. Schissel‐bowl listen 17:06, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

First of all, I apologize: you were correct, and ‐ is not a en-dash. On my browser (Mozilla Firefox 1.0), it is larger than a hyphen, but smaller than an em-dash, so I thought it was an en-dash. It turns out that this entity — ‐ in hex — is a true hyphen; that is, it is supposed to always be treated as a hyphen, whereas the character on the standard keyboard is a hyphen-minus, which can be used as a hyphen or a minus sign.

That being said, however, the Wikipedia Manual of Style seems to prefer that numeric entities be avoided as being more difficult for human editors to interpret. Additionally, it appears that, at some future date, the wiki will be upgraded to interpret hyphens and double-hyphens as en- and em-dashes, at which point even the – and — character entities that are currently approved will be deprecated.

Thank you, though. I learned a lot, and this was one of the better encounters I've had on Wikipedia. — DLJessup 20:16, 2004 Dec 25 (UTC)

Likewise, and you. (Using Safari 1.2.4 while not at my own computer — when there I use Firefox 1.0 or Safari 1.2 (checks page, that's more likely than 1.2.3).) I remember that I was using &#8216|7;, ‐ both after seeing someone else do an almost search/replace edit of a page (may have been String quartet, ah, no, found that, but there too, just found it, that was just a n/mdash replacement) somewhile back (which also replaced date ranges with –es, true) and also poss. after reading (misremembering? also possible too) the latest HTML standards, but that's HTML, not Wiki, he points out to himself as he slowly learns his way about! Schissel‐bowl listen 02:27, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Faithless elector in Minnesota

Liked your recent edit to U.S. presidential election, 2004. You might want to pay attention to Talk:Al Gore where I'm trying to educate a recalcitrant User:67.82.3.41 in wikiquette, logic, etc. Dbiv 23:44, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Dbiv: Thank you for your kind words. As to User:67.82.3.41, I had been paying attention, but I could not think of anything constructive to say to him. Maybe later something will occur to me. — DLJessup 05:51, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I, too, liked your edit and now Keetoowah has gone and deleted it. — Davenbelle 08:55, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

2012 election

Ah, sorry I hadn't seen that there was an on going discussion concerning this page. I'll glady revert my changes if that is the concensus of the discussion. I just thought that the article will eventually be written so it shouldn't be linked to somthing on the Wikipedia namespace. Often articles which can't be written now but will eventually <such as the later Harry Potter movies> redirect to the latest one of the series in exsistance. BrokenSegue 02:30, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

wikifying dates

I wikified the other dates not for the links but for the display, otherwise it read 1981 January 20 - January 20, 1989. I can live with them not wikified or fully wikified - but half & half hurts my eyes ;) Alternatively, we could just use years in lower box, as full dates are usually included twice already --JimWae 00:27, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

I just read this; you must have posted this about four hours ago. In any case, right after you fully wikified the date, I realized that none of the other dates in the succession tables were wikified, so I de-wikified the dates.

As far as full dates go, I'm moving towards full dates in the succession tables whenever possible. — DLJessup 04:08, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"To be determined"

The "To be determined" with the subnote "as of april 12, 2005" for each current U.S. Supreme Court Justice is unnecessary and excessive. Unless you are willing to update that notice daily, it serves absolutely no purpose, and the successor does not have "to be determined" because the person is still serving in their position.

I'll be reverting it back to incumbent unless you can provide me some insight as to why this is necessary... --tomf688^(talk) 02:03, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Let me go through this in order.

First of all, I am using the as of mechanism because a current Supreme Court justice isn't going to a current Supreme Court justice forever. (Heck, the smart money says Rehnquist won't be a current Supreme Court justice in six months.) Wikipedia discourages the use of statements that date quickly.

Second, I don't see why I have to update that notice daily. As far as I'm concerned, that notice can stay fixed at a given date for a year at a time, which is the granularity of the as of mechanism. I like the additional precision, and it gives the user some idea of how old that statement is. However, if it really annoys you, feel free to eliminate the "April 12" portion of the footnote.

Third, I detest the use of "incumbent" in the successor column. If I see that Rehnquist's successor is "incumbent", it appears that Rehnquist is not the current justice, but the predecessor to some unnamed current justice. I prefer "unknown" or "to be determined".

Fourth, a current justice's successor does have to be determined, just not now. Rehnquist will almost certainly have a successor — if he doesn't, then we will fill in the successor with "none" when the time comes — and we don't know who that is now; hence, that person is still "to be determined".

— DLJessup 03:05, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

1) If one of the Justices dies, I can assure you that the page will be neary instantly updated with the new information. By using the phrase "to be determined", you make it sound as if this person has already left the office and the selection of a successor is already in progress.

3) If "Incumbent" bothers you, then how about just leaving it blank or adding a "--" ? As it is right now, it seems like too much and is like saying "It is a pleasure to see you on this day, April 19, 2005, even though I have yet to meet you in my current existence" instead of "hi, nice to meet you."

4) Indeed, but I don't like jumping the gun. While you point out that Wikipedia doesn't like to make things sound dated, I'm fairly certain that Wikipedia isn't fond of assumptions either.

(btw: I'm temporarily watching your talk page until we finish talking this over, so you don't have to reply on my talk page). --tomf688^(talk) 19:23, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

1a) While Wikipedia itself will probably be instantly updated (although I would remind you that it was not terribly long ago that Wikipedia was locked down for several days due to a power failure at the host site), Wikipedia is mirrored on other sites which only scan Wikipedia at certain intervals. Additionally, Wikipedia is an open source project, and such projects have been known to fork. A CD of Wikipedia articles has been floated as an idea. So, even though the page will be nearly instantly updated with the new information, it still behooves us to act as if it may not be.

1b) However, you have a point respecting the (mis)interpretation of "to be determined"; while it seems perfectly obvious to me, it doesn't seem to be obvious to others. I'm going to try to think of a better alternative.

3) Blanks are edit-bait. A dash might serve if all else fails, but it is a last resort; a word or phrase would be far preferable.

4) I presume that when you write "I'm fairly certain that Wikipedia isn't fond of assumptions," the assumption that you are referring to is that the incumbent will have a successor. I've always thought that "to be determined" included the possibility that there would not be a successor, that the successor would be determined to be "none", but, again, not everyone thinks the way I do.

Let me mull this over further; I hope to have a better response soon. — DLJessup 05:44, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I've been trying to think of alternatives to "to be determined". Some of the options I've rejected include "indeterminate", "unknown", "undetermined", "future incumbent", and "next incumbent, if any". So far, my best choice is "next officeholder, if any", but I'm still not happy with any choice I've come up with. Therefore, I'm planning to just use the em-dash, even though I worry that it will be edit-bait.

I'm going to make sure that each justice's term will have an end-date of "present", and I will move the footnote marker to present. The footnote will be trimmed down to just "As of 2005".

I will be making these changes shortly. — DLJessup 00:13, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Another possibility is "Still in office" --tomf688^(talk) 01:21, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

I don't like "Still in office" for much the same reason I don't like "incumbent": the phrase is describing the primary, rather than the successor. There is less confusion (under the current template — all bets are off if "Succeeded by" is replace by "Successor"), as it is an adjectival phrase rather than a noun; however, that adjectival phrasing also makes it more awkward. I think I'll stick with the em-dashes for the time being and see what happens. — DLJessup 00:11, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Section titles

Please stop adding an empty header to articles for Reference when they contain only one external link; furthermore, the standard format here is, I believe, "External links", note the plural. Why are you doing this? You're giving two entries in the Table of Contents to a single link. --Golbez 08:15, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

I haven't had time since you wrote this entry to give this a proper reply, and I don't have time now, but let me give you a summary:

As far as the double header goes, you're right. I'm going to plead temporary insanity.
I had just been rereading the Wikipedia project pages; in particular, Wikipedia:Guide to layout indicated that external links could appear under "References".
As to "External links" being singularized, however, I'm going to have to say you're flat-out wrong. I haven't had time to dig up a reference in the project pages, but I think it's actually the standard to singularize "External links" when you have only one link. I'm certainly not the first person to make that change.

— DLJessup 13:16, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. :) The biggest issue was giving two headers to a single link. The other stuff is minor in comparison. Also, including external links under references could be misleading; if I link to, say, Namco.com in the Namco article, is that a reference even if I never read it while composing the article? --Golbez 06:12, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to be extremely pedantic and say that it's a reference, but not a citation. (You're still referring the reader to it, but you're not citing it as a source.) — DLJessup 17:21, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices

I like that you added the succession diagrams to this page. Might I suggest, however, that we break up the top portion of the page (chronological list of justices) into Chief Justice and Associate Justices. This would serve three purposes: (1) it would differentiate the two positions, which are constitutionally and statutorily distinct from one another; (2) it would allow us to remove the Seat column from the chronological chart, as that data is contained in the succession diagrams; and (3) it would allow us to remove the succession diagram for Chief Justice as it would be redundant. Let me know if you think this is a good idea. --Saucy Intruder 15:19, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree with breaking the CJ out of the complete list. There should be a list somewhere with a complete listing of all justices. Many people may refer to such a list to see how many justices a particular President appointed, this is made harder if they have to consult 2 lists (the associates list, the CJ list) instead of one. Also it will be harder for someone who wants to know the exact order of confirmation when justices are listed on two lists. The Chief Justice article has a list of just CJs as does the bottom section of this article, we could just link Chief Justice of the United States in a note at the top of the list for those looking for that list. As for the column on seat #, I agree that it could be eliminated. We could just put "(Chief Justice)" after the name in the name column. NoSeptember ^(talk) 16:17, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have copied this discussion to Talk:List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, as I think that this discussion would be more appropriate there.

— DLJessup 18:28, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Judiciary Act

There must be Judiciary Acts between 1802 and 1866 (I remember that the SCOTUS was expanded during Jackson's prresidency). I only see the Judiciary Act and Judicial Circuits Act articles, maybe I missed the others. I am going to link the 2 articles mentioned above. NoSeptember ^(talk) 00:55, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If you check out the FJC, there are acts called the "Seventh Circuit Act", the "Eighth and Ninth Circuits Act", and the "Tenth Circuit Act" which expanded the Supreme Court. Feel free to add them as separate articles (or, if you can find a reference to these laws being called the "Judiciary Act of yyyy", to the Judiciary Act article). — DLJessup 01:35, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I just found a reference in the National Archives to the "Judiciary Act of 1837", which clearly refers to the "Eighth and Ninth Circuits Act". — DLJessup 01:42, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

EV

I have left my reason for making the removal on this article's talk page. The IP adress, and another used by the same user, have been making a mixture of good and bad faith edits over the last few days and I perhaps did not look beyond the low google count for "era vulgaris". Thanks for pointing out my mistake. Rje 20:40, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Judges Confirmation/Swearing in

You reverted my edit in United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. I assume that you did so because you saw no news article that said that Judge Brown had been sworn in. My impression is that it is just a formality, and in most cases happens the same day (sometimes within minutes) of Congressional confirmation. It is now a day and a half later, and I still haven't seen anything in news.google.com when I search for the following: "Janice Rogers Brown sworn". I would assume that it has happened without much fanfare and wasn't considered newsworthy. But I could be wrong. Do you know if show has been sworn yet? --Rogerd 05:34, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, Justice Brown has not been sworn in yet. Look, Justice Brown has to wrap up and turn over her existing business before she can resign her current position — and she's not allowed to take the oath of office until she's resigned her current job. It took Judge Owens 12 days to from confirmation to being sworn in. And Owens didn't need to move, while Justice Brown has to move from California to D.C. to get her job. So I would expect that it would be at least June 21 before Justice Brown becomes Circuit Judge Brown.

— DLJessup 05:59, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Political composition of courts

I am putting together something on the "political composition" of circuit courts since there seems to be some interest in that. User:NoSeptember/Federal judge appointment history Before I get too far, I would appreciate any comments or suggestions you may have. NoSeptember ^(talk) 14:03, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I looked at the tables you developed, and they look pretty good, which makes it difficult to come up with anything helpful to contribute. The only thing I can think of that you might want to consider is senior judges. In the circuit courts, senior judges actually do a noticable portion of the work of the court, so their breakdown might also be helpful. — DLJessup 17:15, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I put together another chart including senior judges, but I notice for the DC circuit almost all of the senior judges died in office. Surely several must have been de facto inactive and in poor health for years. Is there a way to measure the level of activity of senior judges? (Maybe the number of panels they participate in.) Also, do understaffed circuits use senior judges more than other circuits? NoSeptember ^(talk) 10:46, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Is there a way to measure the level of activity of senior judges?" You could do counts of the number of cases handled and opinions written by a judge, but that gets dangerously close to violating Wikipedia:No original research. I certainly wouldn't do anything more for the senior judges than you're doing for the active judges, so, if you think that the breakdown of senior judges by itself wouldn't be meaningful, I would just skip the senior judges entirely.

— DLJessup 00:06, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

CE

Well, now I am in a pickle. I am pretty sure that I read it on some list-serve (at the time, I just checked out whatever internet stuff existed on BCE and CE). I know this is not a preferred source, but I did check out his bio and he is a real linguist who went to two good universities. But I do not remember where I read his statement. I have tried various google searches, but thanks to our popularity, and that many people copy us, the first five or ten links are alwas to ... well, what I wrote. I have tried e-mailing him, from other sources I found two e-mail addresses but both seem to be defunct. I will continue to search the web, but it may take a while. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:57, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Stub place

Is there any rule that stub note has to be at the very bottom (after elinks, references, see also, etc.)? I feel it looks better after main body - as not everybody takes time to check the lists 'below' main. Thus the new users can more easily spot the stub if it is after the main, which they are likely to read. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 11:40, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Stub:

After writing the stub, the editor must insert what is called a stub template so that the article can be flagged as a stub. These stub templates should invariably be placed at the bottom of the article.

At the beginning of most subpages of Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs, such as Wikipedia:Template messages/Stubs/GeneralStubs:

To be placed at the bottom of stub articles:

As to your contention that a stub note is more easily spotted in the middle: I've generally found that stuff is easier spotted at the very top or bottom of an article rather than in the middle.

— DLJessup 14:08, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

9th Cir

I'm going to start working on the 9th Circuit, and also add some info about current split proposals. After that, I'll start on the 7th. --Saucy Intruder 00:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Roger wilco. I'm working on the 11th, of course, and will head to the 4th afterwards. — DLJessup 03:16, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Article I and Article III tribunals

You beat me to it by a few minutes! Here is what I had written so far, please feel free to incorporate as desired:

Article III of the United States Constitution vests the judicial power of the United States in the Federal Courts, and requires that all Federal judges have lifetime tenure and irreducable salaries. Therefore, any court created by Congress where the judges do not have lifetime tenure or secured salaries must exist under some other provision in the Constitution.

An Article I Court or Legislative Court is a Court established by the United States Congress pursuant to its powers under Article I of the United States Constitution, instead of under Article III. The existence of Article I Courts has been controversial, and their power has been challenged before the United States Supreme Court, which has determined that the Constitution places certain restrictions on Article I courts.

Cheers, -- BD2412 ^talk 01:19, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)

Well, it looks as if you have already managed to incorporate what you wrote. Thanks! — DLJessup 03:22, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually Toytoy did that - I mistakenly thought he had created the article because he deleted the terms from the list of missing legal terms. I just added info from the Marathon Pipeline case. Excellent work bringing this article up to speed, by the way! -- BD2412 ^talk 04:26, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)

We're on the Main Page!

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Article I and Article III tribunals, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

And this article is less than 16 hours old! -- Toytoy 16:43, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Circuit template

Would adding the image (a larger version) improve the template or make it too busy? NoSeptember^T 28 June 2005 23:22 (UTC)

I couldn't tell you without seeing it. You could put up a draft on, say, Template talk:U.S. Courts of Appeals/Draft 1, and copy it into production if it works.

— DLJessup 28 June 2005 23:37 (UTC)

It would look something like this: Draft, size and location of map could be adjusted. NoSeptember^T 28 June 2005 23:55 (UTC)

Wow. I like it. — DLJessup 29 June 2005 00:09 (UTC)

Good, I added the map to the template. NoSeptember^T 29 June 2005 00:40 (UTC)

Can we remove the whitespace from the image? --Saucy Intruder 29 June 2005 01:33 (UTC)

I just widened the link lines so that there's less space to the left and right. Was that what you were referring to? — DLJessup 29 June 2005 01:44 (UTC)

I think he means on the image itself (look at all the white space to the right of New England). I'm sure someone could photoshop and download the modification as a new picture (though this is not my expertise). Also, we could enlarge the image (currently 550 pixels) to take up a width consistent with the width of the charts on the pages above (which are wider). The Draft shows it at 700 pixels. NoSeptember^T 29 June 2005 01:52 (UTC)

This is my fault, as I originally uploaded the image. I don't have Photoshop but I can try to use Gimp to make the edits. I think we can also crop out the title on the image as it would be redundant with the template heading. Since the graphic is already government-issued public domain it is not inappropriate to create a derivative version. --Saucy Intruder 29 June 2005 15:56 (UTC)

Looks like someone fixed it. Thanks - --Saucy Intruder 2 July 2005 16:57 (UTC)

It was User:Toytoy who fixed it. You might want to thank him/her directly. — DLJessup 3 July 2005 03:31 (UTC)

I've created an SVG from the original PDF, and am substituting the original PNG image for it. -- Tintazul ^msg 08:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Senior judges vs. retired judges

See 28 U.S.C. § 371. Could the lack of a "certification" by the Chief Judge explain the existence of "phantom" judges on the 6th and 7th Circuits who are still listed as being in service by FJC but do not perform any work and are ignored by their circuits' webpages? Alternatively, they could be senior judges who continue to receive full pay but have no workload as a result of permannent disability. Any way to find out? --Saucy Intruder 30 June 2005 21:41 (UTC)

I'm trying to figure out what separates a retired judge from an uncertified senior judge: both get their previous salary, but a retired judge can't be unretired, while an uncertified senior judge can be recertified. What's the incentive to retire? (And I ask this because some judges have retired after being in senior status.) Wait a second … it turns out that until 1996, once you were uncertified, you couldn't be recertified, so at least there was no cost to being retired instead of in uncertified senior status.

Anyway, in answer to your question, I think you're right: the "phantom" senior judges are really retired judges who just haven't officially retired because there are now strong incentives against official retirement. Whether the judges are retired by choice or permanent disability, I couldn't tell you, and I don't know how to find out, short of writing the circuits and asking them. — DLJessup 30 June 2005 22:19 (UTC)

Rossnixon 3RR violation

See the bottom of WP:AN/3RR, and leave any comments you want.