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Archive 1

Comments

This is listed as "experimental", which is fine. The "optional" parameters seemed oddly optional. I've now used it to cite a wikisourced case. If Rene Joly isn't yet deleted, search wikisource for it. --Otheus 18:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I see that about 40 pages link to this template. I'm not an experienced template coder, so I'm not going to mess with it.

I just used it for the first time on Status of religious freedom by country -- to cite a case decided in a non-US court, as follows:

<ref>{{cite court |litigants=Black v. The Commonwealth |court=High Court of Australia |date=[[2 February]] [[1981]] |url=http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/disp.pl/au/cases/cth/HCA/1981/2.html?query=title(black+%20near+%20commonwealth }}</ref>

The results suprised me. The link to the external URL appeared as a numbered boxed external link. I would have expected the contents of the litigants= parameter to appear as a boxed link to the external URL if a URL parameter was supplied. -- Boracay Bill 02:55, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

US only

It needs to be noted that this is the correct way to cite US cases, but NOT those from the Commonwealth. To cite these, use "infobox court case" in curly brackets instead. --Matthew Proctor 22:53, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Which would be {{Infobox court case}}. However, this is entirely inappropriate for actual citations. Infoboxes would only be used for articles over the court cases, not for citing them. -- Huntster T • @ • C 23:27, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Buggy Template

It's rendering incorrectly in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School#_note-45 - for some reason the citation is bold and it's got a loose apostrophe in the beginning. Would the knowledgeable folks please address? -- Y not? 04:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I see where the bold comes from, but not the odd apostrophe. In any case, this template really should not be used, given it clearly says it is experimental. If/when I have time, I'll see about doing some proper cleanup of the template itself. -- Huntster T • @ • C 08:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Case number

I think that besides the Reporter field, there should be a Case number or Application number parameter. It makes it easier to find the judgement in an electronic database, or with a search engine (perhaps this is different in the US or UK, but if you're looking for French or ECHR judgements, it's easier to find them through their case number). Apokrif 16:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I'm trying to cite a case, but it was unpublished, so in order to reference it I need to state the case #. Case_citation states that this is acceptable when citing unpublished case dockets, because it's assumed that eventually the case will be published... Document number might also be handy, since it's unpublished, so page number only means something if you know which document it was from. Jabrwock (talk) 18:37, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Separate case number field?

For example, if an article were to cite a yet unresolved court case, then for me currently perhaps the most important part of the citation is the case number. For this I have so far been using the vol field, until something better springs up.

Another important consideration is that many U.S. courts already have separate Wikipedia pages to them.

My another proposal regarding these pages is that more of them should also have abbreviated redirects, like N.D. Cal. takes to the Wiki page of the District Court for the Northern District Court of California. -Mardus (talk) 16:17, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

As has been mentioned above several times, this template is entirely experimental, and thus should not be used right now. There are too many things wrong with it, and much discussion needs to take place to decide what formats to use and how to use them. It should never have been placed out in the open like this, but for now we just have to deal with the fallout from its use. I'm not sure that it'll ever be ready for use. -- Huntster T • @ • C 18:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Borcay Bill counted 40 pages in April above, and the count is currently about 175, so this template's use is growing. Since you seem to have definite ideas of what's wrong with it, please share them with us. I'm happy to work on improving it and getting it to the point where it's appropriate to use. RossPatterson (talk) 19:12, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
It is hard for me to express those ideas since I'm by no means knowledgeable about court documents. You might take a look at Wikipedia talk:Citation templates/Archive 03#Court_cases, where there was a brief discussion. An editor expressed concern that it was entirely U.S.-centric, and others showed how it didn't cover a wide variety of types of court documents. That's probably the biggest problem aside from the centrism...court documents can be cited a variety of different ways, it seems, based on which type of court you are trying to cite. However, nothing came of it. If various types of court citations can be compiled, or a single unified format can be worked out that can accommodate all the various fields that may be needed, I can code the template without much problem. The difficulty is that the template is already in use on a number of articles, and if changes are made, all of those articles must be updated to fix their formatting. I'm simply unsure whether I have the knowledge to fix each of them individually, but if nothing is done soon, it may well grow beyond means to control. — Huntster (talk • email • contribs) 19:53, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps an optional field like style may help, which could have only a few specified values, the default being US since that is what the template does today Kevinp2 (talk) 23:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Another option, albeit involving more maintenance is to have several templates with structured names, like:
*Cite court:US Federal
*Cite court:US State California
*Cite court:AU Federal
*Cite court:AU State Tasmania
*Cite court:CA Province Alberta
They could all have the same set of fields, differing in just their style and the destination of the links. This would allow new styles to be constructed without risking the old ones. Kevinp2 (talk) 23:53, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
This is certainly a valid option. In this situation, I'd probably go with a call to various subpages rather than a completely different set of templates, similar to how {{Convert}} is designed. However, I don't think there would be a problem to simply come up with a standardized appearance for court cites on Wikipedia that are dependent only on the country in question, rather than each individual state.
As has been noted here and elsewhere, this template is very U.S.-centric, and since I know nothing about court cases worldwide, I'd need a number of different specific citations from various locations to even begin to code up something that works for most or all of them. And then, the current instances of use here will each have to be fixed. I sincerely wish this template hadn't been created as it was, and am currently quite tempted to remove all instances from articles and have it locked until something more permanent can be designed. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 23:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Requests for enhancements

I would like a request a field named quote, with the same usage as in the rest of the citation templates, such as Template:Cite_web. I don't know anything about creating templates, or I would try my hand at it. I did provide an example here. Huntster, it looks like we are all asking for an encore ;-) Kevinp2 (talk) 22:51, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

 Done I've also completely redone the documentation and moved it to a subpage. If you notice anything amiss, just leave a message here or enact a fix yourself :) — Huntster (t • @ • c) 23:02, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Cool, thanks! I added an example for the quote field to the example. It works well Kevinp2 (talk) 05:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

usefulness

I would like to use this Cite court template in an article. Is it okay to use this template. If I can't use this template yet then what template should I use for now. QuackGuru 02:25, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Here are the two refs I want to format. QuackGuru 02:30, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

As the template says on the main page, it is not ready for use. Just include exactly what you have above in the article, though it would be useful if you could locate additional information for the second, so it is as complete as the first. There's some additional info on page 44 of the second PDF that will help, but it doesn't include enough for a proper legal citation. Still, better than nothing, and providing the link means that researchers won't necessarily need to locate the actual annum. I'm retracting this...best to locate the full citation if humanly possible. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 02:43, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I want to format the refs. What template may I use instead of the Cite court template. QuackGuru 02:50, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Susan Getzendanner United States District Judge August 27, 1987
Permanent Injunction Order against AMA
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
CHESTER A. WILK, et al., Plaintiffs, v.
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, et al., Defendants.
No. 76 C 3777
Here is from page 44. I'm not sure exactly what should I add to the ref. QuackGuru 02:58, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Don't use a template...it isn't necessary. The first one you have is already formatted properly. As for the second, I located the information in the relevant article regarding the case. So, just use the lines below as your two citations, wherever it is you need to place them:
Where are you intending to use these? I'll help with their placement if you need it. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 03:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm working on my sandbox. I will add the improved refs without the link to Wilk v. AMA article. Thanks for everything. QuackGuru 04:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Gotcha, didn't know where it was going so tossed in the link to be safe. If this template ever gets off the ground, I'll try and remember to apply it to this article. Good luck. — Huntster (t • @ • c) 04:09, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Request / suggestion

This looks like it could develop into a highly useful template. At present, it seems to assume that the source being cited is the opinion of the court; but that limits its utility.

I suggest adding a field named, for example "document," which would identify the document being linked to. It should default to "opinion," but should allow other documents as well.

The document as expressed in the template expansion should be the clickable link.

For example, this template is being used in Pearson v. Chung, to identify:

  • one appellate court opinion;
  • a trial court's finding of fact and conclusions of law;
  • a joint pre-trial statement; and
  • a plaintiff's motion for reconsideration.

Right now, this is being effected with a kludge, by specifying the document title as "reporter."

Also, there seems to be some inconsistency on whether the "litigants" field is bolded. In three of the invocations, bolding was automatically applied, but had to be expressly added to the appellate opinion. TJRC (talk) 02:32, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Litigants

{{editprotected}} Is there any way we can get some wiki-markup italics around the litigants field? Foofighter20x (talk) 02:02, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:30, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Bold

Sas there been resolution on the bold formating? According to MOS:BOLDTITLE it only needs to be done during the title's first instance in the article so I assume it isn't needed. Cptnono (talk) 11:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Date param and AWB

As a heads-up, the last few versions of AWB have replaced any uses of "date=" that only has a year with "year=" in all cite templates. Since changing date to year for this template breaks the template, {{{year}}} should probably be added as an alias for {{{date}}}. – TMF 17:57, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

I attempted to do just that; please correct if needed. – TMF 18:05, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggested extension

Example:

\{\{cite |litigants=R (Smith) v Parole Board |vol= |reporter= |opinion= |pinpoint= |court=UK House of Lords |date=27 Jan 2005 |neutral-citation= [2005] UKHL 1 |other-citations= [2005] 1 WLR 350 |judge=Bingham LJ |quote=the predominant purpose of a sentence will be punishment |url=www.bailii.org/eu/cases/UKHL/2005/1.html \}\} Additional fields in bold. The neutral citation applies to EU, UK, AU, CAN law.

-)Oliver Low (talk) 20:21, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
How should these arguments be displayed by the template? I got from your note on my talk page that you wanted me to add these arguments, but what I need to how is how they are to be added. Where in the citation does this information go? Hersfold (t/a/c) 20:41, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
There is no need for a "neutral citation" argument in so far as you can put the three elements in the vol/reporter/opinion fields of the current template. I agree that an "other-citations" parameter (listing them after the first given citation, with comma separation) would be useful, though. Circéus (talk) 21:56, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

No accessdate parameter?!

There doesn't appear to be support for an accessdate parameter. Is this omission intentional? Richwales (talk · contribs) 05:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

The date you access a published US court decision should theoretically be irrelevant. A legal decision doesn't change after it's been published (except, incredibly rarely, for clerical error). If the decision is later modified, overturned, or changed, then there will be a new legal decision, with a new citation. The old citation remains valid (even if the contents of the decision are no longer good law). Antipodean Equanimity (talk) 22:07, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

It's mostly interesting as a matter of "This URL is broken, when was it last known to work?" jbailey (talk) 21:16, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

i agree with Jbailey. it would be useful in that it would let a reader know if the link was still good, or, if not, when it last was. as of today, this parameter is not working.Colbey84 (talk) 21:38, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

The URL link given by the "url" parameter is currently appended to the end of the citation and given a generic "Text" title. This is ugly and significantly different from similar templates. It should probably be embedded in the "opinion" component, or alternatively, in the "litigants" component text. The similar legal templates can give guidance on a preferred method of discerning which parameter component to link, as it could possibly be more complex than this, and I am unsure which parameters are mandatory. Int21h (talk) 08:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I propose the following changes, which also solves formatting problems and bugs related to non-mandatory parameters.

<cite>{{#ifexist:{{{litigants|}}}| {{#ifeq: {{{litigants|}}} | {{PAGENAME}} | ''{{{litigants|}}}'' | ''[[{{{litigants}}}]]'' }} |''{{{litigants|}}}''}}</cite>{{#if:{{{litigants|}}}|{{#if:{{{vol|}}}{{{reporter|}}}{{{opinion|}}}|, }}}}{{#if:{{{url|}}}|{{#if:{{{vol|}}}{{{reporter|}}}{{{opinion|}}}|[{{{url}}} {{#if:{{{vol|}}}|{{{vol}}}}}{{#if:{{{reporter|}}}| {{{reporter}}}}}{{#if:{{{opinion|}}}| {{{opinion}}}}}]}}|{{#if:{{{vol|}}}|{{{vol}}}}}{{#if:{{{reporter|}}}| {{{reporter}}}}}{{#if:{{{opinion|}}}| {{{opinion}}}}}}}{{#if:{{{pinpoint|}}}|, {{{pinpoint}}}}}{{#if:{{{court|}}}{{{date|}}}{{{year|}}}| ({{#if:{{{court|}}}|{{{court}}}}}{{#if:{{{date|{{{year|}}}}}}|{{#if:{{{court|}}}| }}{{{date|{{{year}}}}}}}})}}{{#if:{{{quote|}}}| (“{{{quote}}}”)|}}. {{#if:{{{url|}}}|{{#if:{{{vol|}}}{{{reporter|}}}{{{opinion|}}}||[{{{url}}} Text]}}}}

I have examples of use cases at the top of my User:Int21h/Sandbox (which will get removed sooner or later...) It keeps the "Text" link if there is a URL but no volume, reporter, or opinion. Int21h (talk) 11:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry no one has responded to this yet. Could you please put the exact code required on Template:Cite court/sandbox and then reactivate the request? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:43, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Just so people will know, some issues with {{Cite court}} have come up in the currently open Featured Article candidate review for United States v. Wong Kim Ark. In addition to the placement of the embedded link, there's also the fact that this template currently puts parens around quote= material, in contrast to other templates such as "Cite journal". Richwales (talk · contribs) 20:17, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I have edited the aforementioned sandbox page with the above code. I tried to keep the edits as low as possible and tried to only fix things I thought absolutely needed to be fixed, like the fact the current template will not display the court if a date is not given, or puts a comma after the litigants even though there is no more data, etc. The parenthesis around the quote should probably go, as well as the space after the last period (which is before the "Text" link.) Int21h (talk) 21:51, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Your changes were superseded by Gadget850's tests. And I'm not sure what the status of those are. Please clarify what changes are needed to this template. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:36, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I have checked the changelog, and no other changes have superseded these requested changes. I am aware of the Gadget850 discussion below, which last I saw, was suffixed by the caveat "then I will move on". I would hardly consider that a superceding change. As for the tests, Gadget850's tests are irrelevant to the proposed changes. Int21h (talk) 21:06, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 implemented — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Update to citation/core

{{Cite court/sandbox}} has been updated to use {{citation/core}}. This should resolve the issues outlined above and elsewhere, making it compliant with Citation Style 1 (cite book, journal, web, etc.).

Comparing {{cite court}} to {{cite book}}, there are several issues.

  • The date is in a different location
  • The court (publisher) is in parenthesis
  • The quote is in parenthesis and uses typographic quote marks
  • The URL has a separate link as Text
  • No support for |accessdate=
{{cite court |litigants=Parker v. District of Columbia |vol=478 |reporter=F.3d |opinion=370 |pinpoint=401 |court=D.C. Cir. |date=2007 |url=http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200703/04-7041a.pdf |quote=As such, we hold it unconstitutional.}}

Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370, 401 (D.C. Cir. 2007) ("As such, we hold it unconstitutional.").

Cite book 

{{cite book |title=[[Parker v. District of Columbia]] |id=[http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200703/04-7041a.pdf 478 F.3d 370 401] |publisher=[[D.C. Circuit]] |year=2007 |quote=As such, we hold it unconstitutional.}}


Parker v. District of Columbia. D.C. Circuit. 2007. 478 F.3d 370 401. As such, we hold it unconstitutional.

Cite court/sandbox 

{{Cite court/sandbox |litigants=Parker v. District of Columbia |vol=478 |reporter=F.3d |opinion=370 |pinpoint=401 |court=[[D.C. Circuit]] |year=2007 |url=http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200703/04-7041a.pdf |quote=As such, we hold it unconstitutional.}}

Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370, 401 (D.C. Circuit 2007) ("As such, we hold it unconstitutional.").

---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Issues

I don't think a reusing of {{citation/core}} will ever be possible. The conventions for legal citations are simply too fundamentally different, but a thorough reworking of the template is definitely necessary. Circéus (talk)

What issues do you see? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 20:49, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I definitely agree with the changes to use the citation/core template. The only thing I think needs changed are the court (publisher) and date should be in parenthesis as in the current revision, and the vol/reporter/opinion should be before it. It is a typical court citation format AFAIK. Is this possible when using the citation/core template? Int21h (talk) 22:59, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Adding the parenthesis is going to be a pain. The only way I can see to add it will result in an invalid date format and will create an invalid anchor if that feature is used. I'm looking at it.
The template documentation doesn't give any indication of the source for the format, but the Bluebook was mentioned in discussion. Looking at some Bluebook citation guides, it covers more than just case law, it covers all other types of citations. If an article uses Bluebook style court citations, then it should use the style for all others. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:20, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure what that means. Using Bluebook for all others is a different issue that should be raised elsewhere (where it will likely be ignored). Using Bluebook for court citations is dependent on the Bluebook style(s), for which even Wikipedia is mute and hence the documentation is lacking; therefore I find it a sub-standard choice, even if it is the root source for the style used here. IOW I think we should just keep it simple and try and adapt the citation/core to the current style. This may mean committing changes to citation/core. If this is what is inevitably needed, so be it. Int21h (talk) 04:36, 1 September 2011 (UTC)


This boils down to style: Bluebook or Citation Style 1 (cite book, web, journal, etc.). If the consensus is Bluebook, then I will move on. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 22:40, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

IMO, {{Cite court}} has no real choice but to go with the Bluebook, because if it doesn't, the legal writing crowd simply will not accept it. AFAIK, everyone in the US legal profession follows the Bluebook citation style, with only minor variations on small details such as the exact way to abbreviate the names of federal appeals courts. In matters such as the order of components (volume number, reporter series, and page number) placement of the year (in parens at the end), and court name (within the parens surrounding the year), I'm not aware of any variance being tolerated. If anyone out there who is actively involved in the legal profession has any observations to make on this, I hope they'll speak up; I may go put a note on one or two relevant wikiproject talk pages inviting people to come over here. Richwales (talk · contribs) 22:58, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
+1. It is completely unacceptable to force legal citations into the meat grinder just so they look like citations to other nonlegal materials, and we would be making up our own case law citation form by doing so. Though there is some minor variance among state court usage (date after the case name, brackets instead of parentheses), the basic Bluebook format is the standard and the only reason to not use it is the proverbial foolish consistency. It makes no more sense to impose a cite book format on case law citations than it would statutory citations. The court is not the publisher, for one thing; the court is the author (unless we're talking about an individual justice's opinion such as a dissent, in which case the court isn't even that). The publisher doesn't get listed because it's particular to the case law reporter, of which it adds no clarity and would serve no use to further list the United States Government Printing Office in every citation to the United States Reports, or Westlaw in every citation to the Federal Reporter. Again, by doing so, you would not be establishing any kind of reasonable citation consistency on Wikipedia; you'd just be making shit up. Using a cite book format would also preclude the use of parallel citations, which some editors might choose to use. postdlf (talk) 23:33, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
That depends on what the Bluebook citation style is. Until it is defined, it cannot be decided upon. I say option #3 is the best: the most common legal citation style, which must be chosen. If Bluebook defines this, then Bluebook is the best choice. Int21h (talk) 03:40, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Bluebook style it is then for articles that consistently use if for each and every citation in the article. I will create a new template compliant with Citation Style 1. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 05:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Uhhh, is this a restatement of your earlier suggestion that "If an article uses Bluebook style court citations, then it should use the style for all others"? Richwales (talk · contribs) 05:48, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it is a closing summary. The guidelines are clear— you can use any citation style in an article as long as you use the same style throughout. This template uses a style that is not consistent with Citation Style 1 and should not be mixed with it. There is no consensus to change this template so I am creating {{cite legal}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:50, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Just because we use Bluebook for court case citations doesn't mean we have to use it for book citations. The consistency within an article should be for each particular kind of citation, so that all court cases are cited the same way, all books are cited the same way, all journal articles are cited the same way. Your interpretation--that we have to follow the same authority for completely different types of cited materials within an article--doesn't make any sense. postdlf (talk) 14:54, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
...and why exactly are you creating Template:Cite legal when this template already exists? postdlf (talk) 15:25, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
WP:CITEVAR states "Citations within each Wikipedia article should follow a consistent style." I interpret that as all citations within the article, else we could mix numeric in-text citations with parenthetical (Harvard), {{cite book}} with {{vcite news}} or any of the other myriad of styles.
I don't have a problem with Bluebook style, but it is one well defined style that covers legal citations, journals and books. If someone wants to develop a series of templates to cover Bluebook, then do so. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 19:18, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Gadget850, with all due respect, you're simply not getting it, and it seems that it's because you're just unfamiliar with the subject. The citation format you proposed for court cases above, based on how book citations are formatted, is simply not appropriate because court opinions are a different kind of material entirely, and as far as I know your format is completely made up and not actually used anywhere. It's just not a valid way to represent a citation to a case reporter. Think of a case citation as like a Bible cite, with reporter volume and page equivalent to chapter and verse, such that the format is integral to the content and nature of the document itself. You would cite to 1 Samuel 5:6 (KJV), not to God, et al. (1990). "Samuel", Vol. 1, in King James Bible. Indianapolis: Indiana Bible Press, p. 560. Even online databases have the reporter volumes and pagination embedded in their documents. Bluebook is proper for case law citations not just because it's widely observed but because it fits the material. And even if we didn't adhere to Bluebook for case law, all other valid case reporter citations are similar, varying only in small ways such as the placement of the year or whether brackets are used. None that I have ever seen (and I am a lawyer, btw) are formatted as if a case opinion were a book.

But outside of case law, statutes, regulations, and other primary legal sources, we have no need to use Bluebook citation formats. We already have well established citation formats for books, journals, etc. A reasonable consistency is that we cite all books the same way within an article, all court opinions the same way within an article, etc. Your interpretation of CITEVAR makes no sense and has no practical use here. So please stop trying to "fix" something that doesn't need fixing. postdlf (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

...and a little quick online research shows that even other style guides follow Bluebook (or its general form) for case citations, statutes, and other primary legal materials, and treat such materials as different than books or periodicals: APA Style ("The APA style of citing legal materials is based on The Bluebook...[However] The Bluebook style is not used to cite legal periodical articles or books. Use the regular APA style."); AMA Style, Chicago Style... postdlf (talk) 20:36, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Postdlf et al. on this issue. WP:CITE and its subsections are a guideline — and, as stated in the standard boilerplate for Wikipedia guidelines, "occasional exceptions may apply." This is one of those cases where the "occasional exception" requires us to treat citations to court rulings as a special case, with generally accepted conventions that are unique to this specific professional field — even if the non-court-case source references in an article do conform to User:Gadget850/Citation Style 1 as implemented in {{Citation/core}}. Richwales (talk · contribs) 20:51, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Say what you want. It has been mixed, it is mixed, it will be mixed, and it makes sense. The use of this citation template, or Bluebook, will have absolutely little or no effect on other sensible citation templates used in an article. Any attempt to convert other citations from book to court or from book to Bluebook etc., simply because Bluebook citations were used, will likely be reverted on sight. Int21h (talk) 21:00, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

ABANDONED ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 21:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Template is buggy, needs work

This template has some important formatting problems, as described in the preceding section of the talk page. An effort to fix the template last month floundered because of disagreements over whether court case citations should follow the Bluebook standard even though cites to other sorts of material in the same article do not. Until this issue is resolved, it may be better to avoid using {{Cite court}} entirely. Richwales (talk) 19:23, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Since most major manual of style (APA, AMA, MLA, CHicago) essentially say that legal cites should use the legal format (i.e. mostly Bluebook), this is hardly an issue. Circéus (talk)
The policy question might or might not really be an issue (and BTW, I started a discussion at WT:CITE about exactly what the recommendation for a "consistent style" means in this regard) — but the fact remains that the existing {{Cite court}} template does have bugs and needs to be fixed before (IMO) it can be relied upon to produce high-quality output. Richwales (talk) 20:51, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Could you list those bugs? I just reread the previous thread and I didn't find any mentioned. But I'm especially confused by your comments here now because that issue was clearly resolved in the previous thread, and you expressly agreed with its resolution. postdlf (talk) 20:56, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
As best I can recollect things, the bugs I reported (see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/United States v. Wong Kim Ark/archive1) were these:
  • The {{Cite court}} template insisted on putting a period after quoted text from the case.
  • Quoted text was put in parentheses (in contrast to what {{Cite journal}} does).
  • The external web link was attached to an added word "Text" instead of being linked to the case name or page number.
Gadget850 (who I understand is a key player in the WP:CS1 project) addressed these issues in a sandbox version of {{Cite court}}, but this work introduced new problems by making court case cites look like other Citation Style 1 cites (e.g., placement of the year of a decision, lack of parentheses around the year). I tentatively agreed to the sandbox version; however, there was an extended discussion over (1) whether the cites produced by the sandbox template were acceptable per legal research norms, and (2) whether having case cites in Bluebook-like format (together with other cites that were in CS1 style) violated the recommendation in WP:CITEVAR that all cites in an article should be in a consistent style. In the end, Gadget850 abandoned his entire work rather than expend effort producing a citation template that was intentionally at variance with CS1. Since all the improvements were in the discarded sandbox copy and were (as far as I'm aware) never ported back into production, I believe the issues I originally brought up all remain unresolved. I ended up removing all instances of {{Cite court}} from the Wong Kim Ark article, BTW, so what you'll see if you look at the footnotes in that article now are not representative of what {{Cite court}} does. Richwales (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
The external link issues was fixed separately (the link is now made to the citation by default, but I think that can be improved). So, the current wishlist:
  1. Remove parentheses around the quote and period after the quote mark.  Done
  2. Add an "accessdate"  Done
  3. Improve linking (if no article, url should go to case name)  Done
  4. remove automatic linking (this is now done via a caselink parameter)  Done
  5. add a non-specific citation (citation parameter)  Done
Anything else? Circéus (talk) 02:16, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
The only thing I couldn't "fix" is that the elements of the citation (vol, reporter, page, citation) are defined as allowing URLs, and if a separate url parameter is used, the template breaks, but that is more about documentation. The only things that "break" when replacing are (afaict) that the quote may lack final punctuation and the case is no longer linked automatically. Circéus (talk) 03:08, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Access date is not useful for case law citations and is instead even misleading. Any online source, such as Findlaw, Justia, etc., is merely providing a courtesy copy of the opinion, it isn't itself any authority for what the opinion says or doesn't say. Put another way, we are not citing to Findlaw; we are citing to the opinion, and merely telling the reader that Findlaw gives free and easy access to that opinion. So there's no merit in trying to identify a particular "version" of an online posting of the opinion text, or to record reliance on a page that is no longer working, which are the only reasons I can think of for providing accessdate in web citations. If the URL stops working, then we just remove the link. If we discover that a particular online source is unstable or inaccurate, then we'll just stop using that source and provide a URL to a reliable source.

And a minor point: I prefer the parentheses around the quotes, which is also Bluebook standard, and possibly standard for any style when citing to case law (I don't recall ever seeing it otherwise, at least). Beyond style orthodoxy, I certainly don't see how removing the parentheses is helpful or adds visual clarity; it instead obscures the fact that the quote is from the citation that immediately precedes it instead of a new sentence, and that it is in further explanation of the use of the citation. postdlf (talk) 05:25, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Regarding parens around quotes, I'll note here that the CS1-conformant citation templates do not do this. I can foresee objections over this discrepancy if and when Wong Kim Ark — an article which contains both court case cites and also book / journal / newspaper citations — comes up again for FA candidacy. Since I don't think it's likely that the people involved with WP:CS1 will agree to parenthesize all quotes in order to be uniform with Bluebook-style legal cites, I would probably end up adding parens by hand to all the quotations in the other cites for uniformity with what you're proposing to do with {{Cite court}}, and then hope no one at FAC insists that the parens are redundant clutter and need to go. Alternatively, I think I'd suggest not parenthesizing quotations in {{Cite court}}; the main issue here, after all, seems to be the formatting of the other aspects of a legal citation, and I honestly think parens around a quotation are not as important as parens around the year. Richwales (talk) 06:15, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm with Richwales here: we are trying to do a middle ground by making tiny adjustments to the Bluebook citation. From the Wikipedia PoV, the court citation stops after the court, and wikipedia essentially requires a retrieval date (OF COURSE it's not in bluebook! Bluebook has practically no provision for online sources!). Insisting to the death that this template's quote must absolutely follow Bluebook just means that people will either a) not use the parameter or b) will lead to unnecessary proliferation. (as if we didn't have that already, but this is the only template that has a "quote" parameter) Circéus (talk) 11:08, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm not going to argue about the parentheses as it's not really important. But the accessdate issue is here. Bluebook does provide for online sources, such as websites or citations to online databases such as Westlaw or LEXIS. A citation to an ordinary website as a website (i.e., the website itself is the cited authority) would obviously use accessdate. There is no authoritative text of a Huffington Post column, for example, apart from whatever is posted on the website, which may be subject to change or updates and there's nothing external to the website against which to compare its fidelity and stability. But citing to Findlaw is no different than to Westlaw or LEXIS: it's just a database that provides copies of legal documents, the content of which has independent existence and is independently verifiable. It would be like giving the date you checked a book out of a library just because that's when and where you found the book. If a Findlaw webpage presenting the full text of a SCOTUS opinion were to change after it was initially posted, it would either make it a more accurate copy of the actual opinion, in which case the previous version of the page is completely irrelevant, or to make it less accurate, in which case we shouldn't be linking to that online copy at all. The retrieval date is simply not relevant information. Why do you think it is? postdlf (talk) 16:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
You're confusing an actual bluebook citation and the information required of any sensible internet-based citation. What we do here is take the Bluebook cite to a law case, which by definition only refers to a paper document that MAY be available in electronic form, in which case that is itself in the citation (i.e. because the cited "reporter" is "WL"), and turn it into a citation for a web document that takes on the format of a legal citation. It's the same as for cite news: even if we are able to cite the paper reference, the document we (usually) genuinely looked at was the web version and we must state when it was available, regardless of the likeliness it will stop being available, the same apply to legal cases that are actually cited (if one is only referring to a case, there may be wiggle room, but that's irrelevant to whether there is a need for accessdate in the template).
As Richwales proved above, all this insistence will lead to is the template not being used in Featured Articles, which essentially makes it useless (if it is inherently deficient for FAs, then ultimately it is not good enough for use anywhere on wikipedia as a citation template). Circéus (talk) 17:26, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
"...which by definition only refers to a paper document"--that's actually incorrect. That a case citation has a volume and page number of course originates from the original printed nature of case reporters, and continues to correspond to such printed volumes, but the pagination is integrated into all online presentations as well, so that even if I were to cite to text from Roe v. Wade I found on Westlaw instead of going to the library and pulling out a physical volume of the United States Reports, I would still cite to 410 U.S. 113, not to Westlaw accessed October 9, 2011. "Page 115" of that opinion is the same block of text regardless of what hard copy, database, or online mirror (all Findlaw or Justia are) I happened to pull it from, and it doesn't matter when I read it online any more than it matters when I read a print version.
The newspaper analogy is inapt because the online versions differ from and are updated and edited independently of the print versions; note that the NYT, for example, always states that "a version of this article appeared in print on [date]". So unless we're looking at an actual scan of a printed newspaper (in which case accessdate wouldn't matter), we can't necessarily presume that the online article is a stable copy of and has 100% fidelity to the print article, nor is the online version any less authoritative than the print version if they were to vary on some point. But if an online copy of a court opinion varies from that issued by the Court, it is simply wrong and shouldn't be linked to.
I keep repeating that a better comparison is to a Bible verse, in that the case law citation is part and parcel of the very opinion itself abstracted from any particular iteration, just as a Bible quote has book, chapter, and verse that will not vary from print copy to print copy or online copy to online copy. Do you understand this comparison?
The same actually goes for citations to LEXIS or WL: a standard form would be Smith v. Smith, No. 123, 2005 WL 123456, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. June 25, 2005). The relevant part I've bolded is 1) the year the opinion was issued, 2) the online database abbreviation, 3) a string of fixed numbers representing that opinion in their database, and finally 4) the database's "page numbers" for that opinion--arbitrary breaking points to divide up the text. That information will never change. Even if it's an "unreported" opinion (i.e., not officially released for publication and so not approved for publication in an official case reporter), it has no independent existence or authority; it merely overlays Westlaw's arbitrary pagination on an accurate copy of the document issued by the court, a print version of which is accessible to the public at the courthouse even if nowhere else. When you read it, either online or in person, doesn't matter. If it did change, that would completely undermine its use as a legal citation because no one could rely upon it.
So you still haven't told me what information an accessdate could possibly provide here, given that the opinion isn't going to vary from Findlaw to Justia, or depending on when you look at their copy online. How does knowing when the WP article editor read the opinion online help a reader or other editors in any way? postdlf (talk) 19:06, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Clarification

Just clarifying a specific issue: do we agree that applying (mostly Bluebook) legal citation style to cases only does not inherently violates the "consistency" rule (which some previously have interpreted to mean that if cases are in legal format, then all other refs should be too) because most manual of styles say that court cases should be cited with legal cites anyway? If we can agree to that, it should be easy enough to make the fixes to {{Cite court/sandbox}}. Circéus (talk) 02:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with that. Of course, we need to hear from others. Richwales (talk) 02:30, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
I think my last comment at WT:CITE clarifies this best: it's nothing more than confusion to think it's a CITEVAR issue in the first place. The difference between case law and book citations is not a difference in citation style. It's instead a difference in the nature of the source being cited, and any single citation style will naturally have different rules for different kinds of sources to reflect the identifying information unique to each kind of source. WP:CITEHOW, not CITEVAR. And no one has shown that there is any actual citation style that treats case law like a book or other non-legal material; even all the nonlegal ones I found expressly import Bluebook style. postdlf (talk) 05:25, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

List of other court citation templates

For reference, here's a list of existing templates. Of all these, only {{Ussc}} is in common use.

With mandatory external links
With mandatory wikilink(s)
No litigants

Requested revision - anchor reference label

The citation template has a ref parameter where a label is named, and then sfn template creates an in-line citation using the citation label. It seems like this template lacks such functionality. I have no idea how to program a template, but maybe somebody could tell me if this is a difficult idea to implement, or if I'm being clear in describing this idea? Xaxafrad (talk) 07:46, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Requested revision: terminal punctuation

Could we add the postscript parameter to control the terminal punctuation? Or is there some other way to remove the terminal period and space to allow the citation to be used within a sentence? I'm rather new at this. Thanks, Kjtobo (talk) 16:22, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 22 December 2013

As you can see here (where it is used with the call {{cite court|litigants = | opinion=In the matter of Jonathan Zizmor M.D., Consent order 04-97| court=New York State Board of Health, State Board for Professional Medical Conduct |url=http://w3.health.state.ny.us/opmc/factions.nsf/cd901a6816701d94852568c0004e3fb7/5d033a959e6093ae85256c3a006c62a0/$FILE/lc106081.pdf |date= May 4, 2004}}, the template seems to occasionally bold the entire citation. This was probably caused by litigants being specified but no value being given. The template should check if the {{{litigants}}} parameter is blank first (using #if) before putting it in a <cite> tag. APerson (talk!) 20:54, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 21:27, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation issue.

Where the template is used to refer to the case that is the subject of the article, the addition of the litigants makes a self-referential redirect. However, where the case name is ambiguous, this creates a disambiguation link which can not be fixed without making the link intentionally self-referential (which bots do not like). bd2412 T 04:10, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

That's alot to take in.. Do you have an example? Int21h (talk) 21:54, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Here is one. Before I fixed it, the template as used in Cleveland v. United States (1946) (in the external links section) generated a link to the disambiguation page, Cleveland v. United States. Attempting to fix this by piping the link to link to the article was quickly reverted by another editor who apparently doesn't understand how disambiguation links work. Currently, I have made a patchwork fix by piping the link through a redirect to the page, but the template should not create this situation in the first place. bd2412 T 22:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Is an unambiguous self-referential link not the correct solution? I see error in AsteriskStarSplat's revert which replaced an unambiguous self-referential wikilink with an ambiguous self-referential wikilink. I don't see a need for changes to this template because of such an erroneous revert. Int21h (talk) 01:18, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
It would be nice if the addition of the names of the parties on a disambiguated page would not make a link to the disambiguation page, but I can continue working around it as I find them. bd2412 T 01:33, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Why cascade-protected?

Why is this template cascade-protected? It doesn't fit within the definition of "a few very highly used templates" and the only effect of cascade protection on this template is to prevent template editors from editing it. --RexxS (talk) 19:51, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Misuse in references

This template is apparently designed to produce a link to a Wikipedia article in all cases where it is used. However, such links should never be used as part of the contents of a ref tag. This template is being so used in several articles, such as Island Trees School District v. Pico, and the result clearly violates WP:CIRCULAR. Moreover, the name of the template, being similar to {{cite web}}, {{cite book}}, {{cite news}}, etc, suggests this use to anyone familiar with Wikipedia citation practices and templates, but not with this specific template.

Either, 1) a parameter to suppress the link to a Wikipedia article should be implemented (and always used if in a ref tag), or 2) the name should be changed to something that does not begin with "cite" and the documentation changed to make it clear that this is not suitable for use in ref tags, or 3) this template should be deleted. I would favor choice 1). DES (talk) 18:18, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone object to my adding a parameter as in 1) above? @Redrose64, MSGJ, Savidan, R'n'B, Zzuuzz, Huntster, Kevinp2, Jsgoodrich, Tloc, Bd2412, and APerson: DES (talk) 00:42, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Also important for that article, this citation template doesn't seem to support short form cites. It's absurd (and incorrect) to keep repeating "Board of Educ., Island Trees Union Free School Dist. No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982)" every time you cite to a different page in that same opinion. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/6-500.htm for guidance. postdlf (talk) 01:05, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
Postdlf, you can avoid that issue by creating a redirect for the short-form case title. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:03, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
Huh? I'm not talking about wikilinking the short form case title, which would be madness to ever do because it's often just someone's last name...and if you're using short form that means you've already cited to the case once, and only that first cite should have a wikilink (if at all). I'm talking about the fact that this template does not support short form citation at all. An example of a short form cite would be Pico, 457 U.S. at 854. See the law.cornell.edu link I provided above if you're still not clear on what I'm talking about. postdlf (talk) 22:36, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
I have no objections. If the template can be improved, go for it. — Huntster (t @ c) 01:25, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, I see you've one some fairly recent work in the template sandbox. How close to finished was that? DES (talk) 02:46, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
I'll have to go look; I do so much template coding, I forgot. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:26, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
I agree with the gist of the complaint here, but not its specifics. It's routine for our citation templates to produce on-WP links (e.g. with |author-link=). What we don't do is use them to link in a misleading way that suggests our own article on the source is the source we're citing, and that's what this template does to the case name. Such a link, as a supplementary one, would not be a problem if a URL to an external source were present. And we also do not necessarily have an article on every case we might mention, so it should not be linking automatically anyway without testing for the page's existence, but only with a parameter, e.g. |case-link=. So the best solution may be to make it so that the case name is linked only when both of the following are true: |case-link= (alias |caselink= is used, and |url= is also used (or |archive-url= alias |archiveurl= if it's possible to use that without also using |url=).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:39, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I probably phrased the above poorly. But in a ref, i think the case name or main citation should link to the outside url, and any case link should be in a clearly secondary position. In any case, this business of creating circular self-refs needs to be fixed. DES (talk) 11:48, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Overhaul

Update: The code was a mess. I've started cleaning it up in Template:Cite court/sandbox, and improving the documentation in Template:Cite court/sandbox/doc, but am developing a headache and will put it down for the night.

Fixed:

  • To prevent WP self-citations, the |case-link= (a.k.a. |caselink=) parameter will not wikilink the case name (|litigants=) unless both of the following are true: 1: an external |url= is provided; and 2: a case citation (in the legal sense - either A: |vol= plus |reporter= plus |opinion=; or B: |citation=) is also provided, for the URL to link from.
  • Will no longer generate an empty "Retrieved" under some conditions
  • Won't run any text together, which was possible under some conditions.
  • Will throw errors if no WP-usable citation is provided at all. To not throw an error, it must have one of: A or B (as described above) or C: |litigants=.
  • No longer stacks two parentheticals one right after the other.
  • Correctly uses <cite>...</cite> as defined in modern HTML5.
  • Supports |access-date= (the present standard across the citation templates) as well as the old |accessdate=.
  • If given with a URL, will do the following:
    • With |litigants= but no legal citation (forms A or B, as specified above): links the litigants
    • With a legal citation but no litigants: links the citation
    • With both: links the citation.
  • Code logic pared down, and code styled consistently so it can be parsed without contemplating suicide.
  • Documentation partially updated and clarified (e.g. with regard to parameters that should not be wikilinked manually or will break URLs).

Not fixed yet:

  • Need to integrate the auto-detection of existing articles (which should only work under the same circumstances as |case-link=). This feature works in the live template but not the sandbox version.
  • Need to integrate the |postscript= (a.k.a. |ps=) parameter of other citation templates, which can be used to add a note, or more importantly here, to suppress the terminal period/stop/dot (for use inline, and for citation styles that do not end cites with dots, and to avoid double-dots when a quote ends with a dot).
  • Should document |citation= (and prefer it over the three-parameter version), |case-link=, and the error message conditions.
  • Add a |no-url= parameter to suppress |url= if it is provided, and override the wikilink processing, allowing use of wikilinking on the litigants no matter what. This would be documented as only for inline, short-form use (where we do not want URLs, per WP:EL), not for inside reference citations.
  • Should provide examples of differing usage in different contexts (e.g. short form in article text, vs. long form in a <ref>...</ref> or Harvard cite).
  • Add (and document) some obvious parameter aliases like |title= and |parties= for |litigants=; and |work= and |cite= for |citation=.
  • Add (and document) some CS1 parameters (see Template:Cite journal for details), like |archive-url=, |archive-date=, |lay-url=, |registration=, |subscription=, etc. Most of them are citation data that doesn't apply to legal cites (|editor-last=, etc.), but several like the ones I mentioned are WP citation metadata that we need to support.
  • Check legal citation style guides to see if any other citation details should be accounted for (can be deferred).
  • Check other citation styles to see if they expect any additional info, or different ordering/punctuation, with legal cites (can be deferred).
  • Try to get the Help:CS1 team to convert this to a Lua-based CS1 module (can be deferred).

If someone else is competent and willing, go for it, otherwise I'll get to this in ca. 12-18 hours. If I don't, ping me. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:07, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:07, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Too much going on right now in prep for WikiConference 2015, but I might be able to actually finish this up during lulls in the conference. Just not from now until some time after 9 Oct.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:29, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
A tracking category to go with the error messages would be helpful as well. I can try to add it in a manner similar to {{Death date and age}} if SMcCandlish can't get to it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:44, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Have at it. I have too much real-life work going on to devote any time to this any time soon.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:12, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

accessdate not working

@SMcCandlish: Thanks very much for your efforts to clean up the code. At the moment, the access(-)date parameter doesn't seem to be working, e.g., for the first citation in the article Fair use. Great if you can take a quick look? —Patrug (talk) 15:39, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

@Patrug: In the actual template, or the Template:Cite court/sandbox version I was working on?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:14, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: Thanks for the quick reply. It's the actual live template. Have a look at the first citation in the Fair use article. —Patrug (talk) 14:00, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Try the sandbox version. All the work I did above remains in the sandbox, as far as I know.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:36, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
The sandbox version would indeed fix the problem. What's the timeframe for moving it into production? (days? weeks? months?) Or could it be pushed out as an "interim" version while the overhaul continues? —Patrug (talk) 20:12, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
As of today, the accessdate parameter is still not working. (i mistakenly noted this in a prior section.) i'll see if i can find/figure out how to use the 'sandbox version.'
nope; i've no idea what's going on there. it looks exactly the same as what i copied off the Template page. well, if this ever gets working, and someone wants to update where i used it (because deity knows i probably won't remember to check it again), it's twice in the 'United States Circuit Judge' section of this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_BorkColbey84 (talk) 21:40, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

pinpoint

okay, i'm probably just being an idiot here. i've never cited a Court Opinion before/tried to link to an online location. i read thru the template page, and read thru the citation page about it (trying to figure it out on my own instead of just being a whiny PIA). i've used it, and it works okay (except for the accessdate parameter, which i see has been brought up here a couple times--and i commented there).

but, the text first mentions the case, and i put the 'cite court' with link there. a couple sentences later, the text talks about a particular portion of the Opinion...which, i think, is found mostly in 1 paragraph of the Opinion, and so, i think, that would be a 'pinpoint.' i tried to put the reference in again, but add the pinpoint parameter–but there seems to be no way to do this.

(note: space dash space added to the beginning of the 3 attempts so they would display here. and left out the first { in the first and third attempts' 'pinpoint parameter' for the same reason.)

i tried: < - ref name="Dronenburg" {pinpoint=27}} /> and then: < - ref name="Dronenburg" {{|pinpoint=27}} />

neither of which did anything. so i tried: < - ref name="Dronenburg" /> {pinpoint=27}} which seemed idiotic, and, yep, it didn't work.

then i tried copying the whole reference again at the 2nd location, but adding the pinpoint parameter. which, also (of course) didn't work because then i had 2 references with the same name.

i'm sure i appear to be a complete fool now, but i just try different things in the html 'cause sometimes i get lucky and something works. anyway, maybe the whole point is moot because i shouldn't try to 'pinpoint' a part of an Opinion when that part is mentioned??

my use of this template is in the 'United States Circuit Judge' section of this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork Colbey84 (talk) 22:15, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Difficult to use

It's rather difficult for editors unfamiliar with court citations to know how to populate the {{{vol}}} and {{{reporter}}} parameters. (I'm struggling to work out how to cite this judgement, in particular.) It would be very useful for someone to expand the documentation to make it easier to use. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 22:08, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

OwenBlacker, as best I can tell, this is how you'd cite that one:
Connection Distributing Co., et al. v. Keisler, 2d N.E. 06-3822 (6th Cir. October 23, 2007).
But yes, it is a very difficult template to use, mostly because of a disparate array of formats and such, and because it's one template trying to do everything...note that it renders the North Eastern Register 2nd as "2d N.E." instead of "N.E.2d", and I don't know why. I've thought about trying to make things more comprehensive, but I'm not in any way a student of law, so I wouldn't want to inadvertently make an error and create further problems. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:17, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
No. Note that the North Eastern Reporter (N.E.2d) is not a court publication, but it is printed, quite amusingly, by a Canadian nobleman. There is no volume "2d" of the reporter called "N.E.2d". The volume numbers of that reporter are natural numbers. Likewise, there is no page "06-3822" in that reporter either, as, again, the page numbers are natural numbers. "2d" is a book edition and "06-3822" is a case number assigned by the court. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 22:43, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Int21h, okay, how would you cite OwenBlacker's case...is there a place to look up its "case citation"? I know that those reporters are private, but I was under the impression that the National Reporter System was the standard. Do you have a link to what we should be using in terms of reporters? Or, as I'm beginning to realise, perhaps this template should be deprecated as trying to do too much with too little and too much complication. There is no defined scope, and so users don't know what its limitations are. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:21, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
It's for use when the case citation is known. The reporters are indeed private, and they are indeed the standard. Google really is the only way to go. A cursory Google search gives "Connection Distributing Co. v. Keisler, 505 F.3d 545 (6th Cir. 2007)" as the likely citation. And deprecated in favor of what--what is better than this template for case citation? int21h (talk · contribs · email) 23:30, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Since you are familiar with this, would you mind writing up some kind of documentation on best practices, perhaps some examples and general source of information? Anything would be better than what we have now, which is generic to the point of useless. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:36, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I will do my best to gather best practices and update the documentation. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 01:38, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

If you don't know the case citation, you obviously cannot populate the parameters, there is no easy way around it. When the New York State Reporter reports and publishes a New York court opinion, it comes with a case citation, so you're never dumbfounded; however, while Congress allowed for a Supreme Court reporter (see 28 U.S.C. ch. 45), in the same breath they refused it for the circuit courts of appeals (see 28 U.S.C. ch. 47)... So you're left to try and find it on your own. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 22:33, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Quotation marks

I'm wondering why this template uses typographic quotation marks for the quoted text (quote=), deviating from MOS:STRAIGHT which mandates straight quotation marks across the English Wikipedia. Is there a specific reason? Otherwise I think it should be changed in favor of consistency. BlaueBlüte (talk) 14:50, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

For the record, noting that this has been fixed.―BlaueBlüte (talk) 06:35, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

JSON syntax error?

I attempted to update the external source URL for court abbreviations in the doc file to https://web.archive.org/web/20171118125409/http://www.alwd.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/pdf/CM2_Appendix4.pdf since the original link is broken, and encountered a "Syntax error in JSON" notice which prevents a save of the edit. I verified that I had changed nothing except the URL. Past doc versions are apparently flagged as well. Any ideas on getting beyond this issue? —ADavidB 19:51, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@Adavidb:  fixed with Special:Diff/907142757 (I think it was the removal of the comma after the quote --DannyS712 (talk) 20:07, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

US citation - what does it mean?

I see US citations such as 1997 WLNR 1826684. What does it mean? How can I find the case online? John of Cromer in Philippines (talk) mytime= Wed 12:02, wikitime= 04:02, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The short answer is "you may not be able to," especially if Google and Google Scholar do not help you (without paying several hundred dollars a year for access). "WLNR" is not even a law reporter, I think it is Westlaw's proprietary index for news and research purposes, and it covers non-legal sources like The New York Times and more obscure stuff like CQ-Rollcall Pol. Transcriptions. But in any case, it's not a question about this template, both because "WLNR" citations are not for law cases, and because this template is for citation, it's not its job to tell you how to retrieve those citations. jhawkinson (talk) 00:51, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Multiple citations for the same case, including post-trial affirmations, etc. on appeal

While trying to figure out how to refer to a cite like "Keith v. Volpe, 352 F.Supp. 1324 (C.D.Cal.1972), aff'd en banc sub nom., Keith v. California Highway Commission, 506 F.2d 696 (9th Cir.1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 908, 95 S.Ct. 826, 42 L.Ed.2d 837 (1975)" it became apparent that this template was great for court decisions which were finally decided at a single level of court, but did not well serve those complex decisions that were appealed, perhaps to more than one level of appellate court.

While the original decision remains substantive, and should be the primary reference, the affirmations and/or denial of certiorari is significant. Also, while in the US, citations to the SCOTUS should always include the primary official citation, (420 U.S. 908 in this case), the unofficial citations have become so common as to be obligatory for most, and are often the best online resources, since the post-Reaganite effort to privatize government, including access to our own laws, has made use of the official reports expensive in many states.

I am not competent to mess with templates, and appreciate the effort others put into creating them, and I hope someone who is able will improve on this one.

Tloc (talk) 19:44, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

If you're still curious, Tloc, if you were to use this template, you would invoke it once for each separate case. We don't use it for the language characterizing the citation ("aff'd en banc"), so you would put that between the template invocations. Once for the 1972 district court decision, once for the 9th circuit decision. Bluebook doesn't use cert. denied more than two years in the past (we can assume it!), so you wouldn't include that part if you were writing after 1976. (Also, in today' sworld of electronic citation lookup, there's little point in multiple parallel cites. If the U.S. reporter is available (it lags by several years), use it, otherwise use S.Ct., otherwise use L.Ed.2d.) jhawkinson (talk) 00:57, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Edit request: Delete extra period

Greetings and felicitations. There's an extra period in the template just before the second to last "if" statement (after the quote variables) that needs to be removed. —DocWatson42 (talk) 05:43, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Although I don't think it's an error, there needs to be a way to suppress the terminal period in this template. Has anyone given thought to that? jhawkinson (talk) 21:09, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
{{cite report}} has a parameter |postscript= which can be set to |postscript=none which implements this. --▸₷truthious Ⓑandersnatch◂ 10:31, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
@Jhawkinson and Andersnatch: So...is it fixed? <hopeful> —DocWatson42 (talk) 11:49, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 1 January 2021

As discussed above (somewhat languishing), I've implemented "postscript=none" support in the sandbox. Could a template editor please sync the sandbox to the template?

That is, change 

}}. {{#if:{{{url|}}}

to 

}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{postscript|}}}|<!--
  -->{{#ifeq:{{{postscript}}}|none||{{{postscript}}}}}<!--
  -->|.<!--
-->}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{url|}}}

There are test cases at Template:Cite court/testcases#postscript tests.

Thanks! jhawkinson (talk) 00:52, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I've coded it a bit better with a switch. Does that look okay? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:27, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks, MSGJ. Personally, I don't find the #switch to be clearer than the #if/#ifeq pair, and I think maybe that is because of the semantic dissonances. It seems especially confusing to have a "#default" that does not actually reflect the default for the template, which is a period (".")—rather it reflects the default for the #switch, which is the parameter's value, and similarly that "none" doesn't mean "no parameter specified" (but this is the interface we're stuck with from CS1 so we should maintain it):
}}{{#switch:{{{postscript|}}}
 |none=
 |<!--blank-->=.
 |#default={{{postscript}}}
}}{{#if:{{{url|}}}
(I'm not sure if this would be helped by omitting the optional "#default=" syntax, as 
|{{{postscript}}}
…probably not?)
But I am not an experienced template editor, so my idea what is clear should not govern. In any event, your implementation does the job and passes the tests so it looks good to me! Thanks for your prompt attention and also for making this a ===subsection===; I waffled back and forth about whether that was appropriate. jhawkinson (talk) 12:25, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
 Deployed. I removed the "#default" as requested. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:28, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks. I have updated the template's documentation. jhawkinson (talk) 16:33, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
@MSGJ and Jhawkinson: Thank you! ^_^ —DocWatson42 (talk) 10:05, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
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