5 May 2012
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| The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it. |
This deletion occurred while I was busy with final exams, and I was not notified. This category was intended to include U.S. Supreme Court cases that explicitly overrule a prior decision of that court. Every category member was included on List of overruled U.S. Supreme Court decisions, which the nominator appeared to have discovered and not seen fit to list for deletion. The discussion was based on two misconceptions that could have been easily corrected had I been notified. First, several commenters were under the mistaken impression that something other than a prior decision of the same court could be "overruled" ("the preponderance of cases decided are likely to overrule something, be it a legislative or congressional enactment, an executive or administrative decision, a ruling by a lower court, or an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court itself"; " Virtually every Supreme Court decision can be said to either overrule or uphold something"; "too many possible interpretations"; "non-defining"). This is flatly incorrect. A court does "overrule" a statute or regulation when it declares that statute or regulation unconstitutional, and it does not "overrule" a regulation when it sets it aside as inconsistent with a statute. Nor does the Supreme Court "overrule" lower court decisions. It reverses (or vacates) them on direct appeal or abrogates them in later cases. Even if there were any ambiguity in this term (which there is not), that would only have been grounds for renaming, not deletion. Second, one commenter took issue with the inclusion criteria, claiming it was too difficult to determine whether one Supreme Court decision overrules another. While there is room for some debate at the margins, both the list and category were limited to explicit overrules, i.e. situations where the Court uses the magic words "Today we overrule [decision1]" or similar. In the example given by the commenter (whether Employment Division v. Smith overruled Wisconsin v. Yoder), the answer is clearly no. Smith distinguished Yoder. While some commentators argue that there is tension between Smith and Yoder, all reasonable legal writers would concede that Smith did not explicitly overrule Yoder. The fact that some Supreme Court decisions are regarded as in tension with earlier, un-overruled decisions of that Court is insufficient reason to delete this highly useful category for the vast majority of overrules which inarguable and unambiguous (e.g. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce with the unmistakeable language "[Austin] should be and now is overruled."). Further, if it is contended that overrules are irreducibly subjective, the proper move would have been to delete the list itself (and, dare I mention, its other category), not the delete the category which helpfully leads readers to the list and similar cases. Savidan 18:32, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
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| The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it. |
5 May 2012
|
|---|
| The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it. |
This deletion occurred while I was busy with final exams, and I was not notified. This category was intended to include U.S. Supreme Court cases that explicitly overrule a prior decision of that court. Every category member was included on List of overruled U.S. Supreme Court decisions, which the nominator appeared to have discovered and not seen fit to list for deletion. The discussion was based on two misconceptions that could have been easily corrected had I been notified. First, several commenters were under the mistaken impression that something other than a prior decision of the same court could be "overruled" ("the preponderance of cases decided are likely to overrule something, be it a legislative or congressional enactment, an executive or administrative decision, a ruling by a lower court, or an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court itself"; " Virtually every Supreme Court decision can be said to either overrule or uphold something"; "too many possible interpretations"; "non-defining"). This is flatly incorrect. A court does "overrule" a statute or regulation when it declares that statute or regulation unconstitutional, and it does not "overrule" a regulation when it sets it aside as inconsistent with a statute. Nor does the Supreme Court "overrule" lower court decisions. It reverses (or vacates) them on direct appeal or abrogates them in later cases. Even if there were any ambiguity in this term (which there is not), that would only have been grounds for renaming, not deletion. Second, one commenter took issue with the inclusion criteria, claiming it was too difficult to determine whether one Supreme Court decision overrules another. While there is room for some debate at the margins, both the list and category were limited to explicit overrules, i.e. situations where the Court uses the magic words "Today we overrule [decision1]" or similar. In the example given by the commenter (whether Employment Division v. Smith overruled Wisconsin v. Yoder), the answer is clearly no. Smith distinguished Yoder. While some commentators argue that there is tension between Smith and Yoder, all reasonable legal writers would concede that Smith did not explicitly overrule Yoder. The fact that some Supreme Court decisions are regarded as in tension with earlier, un-overruled decisions of that Court is insufficient reason to delete this highly useful category for the vast majority of overrules which inarguable and unambiguous (e.g. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce with the unmistakeable language "[Austin] should be and now is overruled."). Further, if it is contended that overrules are irreducibly subjective, the proper move would have been to delete the list itself (and, dare I mention, its other category), not the delete the category which helpfully leads readers to the list and similar cases. Savidan 18:32, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
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| The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it. |