Talk:Supreme Court of the United States

No info re: appointment of chief justice?

This article does not seem to explain how/when a justice becomes chief justice of the SCOTUS. It is explained in the dedicated Chief Justice of the United States article, but it seems like it should at least be mentioned here.

Perhaps the first sentence of the "Nomination, confirmation, and appointment" section should be amended to: "Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, known as the Appointments Clause, empowers the president to nominate and, with the confirmation (advice and consent) of the United States Senate, to appoint public officials, including justices of the Supreme Court, including the position of chief justice" (with "chief justice" linking to the dedicated page.) Chconnor (talk) 20:29, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

John Roberts is the present Chief Justice. There are some who say Neil Gorsuch being appointed was a shallow manipulation or selling out of American democracy by preventing Merrick Garland from being confirmed to the Supreme Court or even getting a hearing. Source: New York University Press, 2010. 199.242.176.66 (talk) 19:09, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

All of the information on appointment of the Chief Justice is at Chief Justice of the United States. Why would we need to repeat that in two articles? BD2412 T 19:38, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Legal analysis improperly described as written evidence

In the edit of 19:43, 24 July 2024, the section titled Written evidence refers to "amicus briefs, law review articles, and other written works". These do not constitute evidence, but are the basis of legal analysis and argument. Fabrickator (talk) 20:08, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

What would you suggest? Superb Owl (talk) 20:24, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Apparent miswording

I'm not sure how to parse this text from Supreme Court of the United States#Outdated and an outlier, stating

... the court has declined in relevance in other constitutional courts ...

This was introduced in this edit of 18 March 2024. Fabrickator (talk) 09:39, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Needs rewording; what it is meant to say is that constitutional courts in other countries used to look at decisions in the U.S. Supreme Court as guidance, and used to often follow it. But more recently, this influence/relevance has declined, and constitutional courts in other countries are no longer doing so. From the article cited:

Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War.

But now American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices.

“One of our great exports used to be constitutional law,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. “We are losing one of the greatest bully pulpits we have ever had.”

From 1990 through 2002, for instance, the Canadian Supreme Court cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court about a dozen times a year, an analysis by The New York Times found. In the six years since, the annual citation rate has fallen by half, to about six. Australian state supreme courts cited American decisions 208 times in 1995, according to a recent study by Russell Smyth, an Australian economist. By 2005, the number had fallen to 72.

So it is trying to say that the court's relevance for other constitutional courts has declined. Magidin (talk) 16:05, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Bias

The “Criticism and Controversies” section could not be considered neutral. It looks, to me, to be ripped straight from a news article(s) that doesn’t like the conservative majority or the rulings they’ve made in the past couple years RestCivil (talk) 00:26, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

minor points

It strikes me that the recent edit adding a wikilink to Supreme Court is more of a distraction than a useful link. If I need to rationalize this (going against the general rule of wikilinking whatever you can), when you're already on the "Supreme Court of the United States" article, this is exactly what is implied by the words "supreme court", i.e. a court for which there is no superior court, such a wikilink is superfluous.

Then there's the edit stating that today there are nine justices ... If it's really necessary to clarify that it hasn't always consisted of nine justices, "today" is the wrong word to describe this, but I think it was quite satisfactory to just say there are nine justices, otherwise we should find it appropriate to qualify every statement of fact that is not eternally true. Fabrickator (talk) 08:25, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Did you know that the Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial level court of general jurisdiction in New York? So, no, the words "supreme court" do not, by themselves, indicate that there is no court above it. Magidin (talk) 15:51, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware that "supreme court" is used in what seem to be very misleading ways. But even for those who live in New York, "Supreme Court of the United States" refers to the highest court of the U.S., not some lower-level New York State court. The wikilink to Supreme Court does not elucidate upon the meaning of the "U.S. Supreme Court", it is what I would characterize as an unhelpful distraction. Fabrickator (talk) 16:52, 1 October 2024 (UTC)