Talk:Samuel Alito

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ethical issues are professional, not personal[edit]

@GuardianH: In my judgment, ethical issues are professional issues, especially for the US Supreme Court. The court's only enforcement mechanism is the willingness of the body politic to support its decisions. I therefore support reverting your move.

If you still believe this should belong under "personal", please explain. Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:00, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Also, please explain the deletion of ""The exception only covers food, lodging and entertainment," she told ProPublica. "He's trying to move away from the plain language of the statute and the regulation."<ref name="ethics" /> That deletion looks like POV editing to me. DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:06, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@DavidMCEddy Supreme Court Justices' Supreme Court section is usually reserved for jurisprudential information — not a Justice's personal editorial publications. As @Die Kunst Der Fuge pointed out, a similar article to look would be Thomas'. The section you added is not only too long, but it reads like an editorial too. Statements such as "However, the particulars of those and other charges went far beyond that" and "However, that plane ride would have cost $100,000 had Alito chartered the plane by himself." is primetime editorializing, and will need to be rewritten. Take a look at MOS:EDITORIALIZING, which prohibits such writing.
I removed Canter's comment because she is both a minor figure and stating her opinion; she seems only to have been used in that particular article for a brief comment. She isn't a legal scholar and hasn't had a big influence on this particular field or even Alito. "He’s trying to move away from the plain language of the statute and the regulation." is her opinion, and there's no reason we should give a WP:SOAPBOX to her particular comment. GuardianH (talk) 19:31, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. You wrote "who had also hosted Justice Anthony Scalia on an similar junket in 2005". It's spelled Antonin Scalia; you wrote a misspelling. I previously corrected the term, but you reverted that correction. GuardianH (talk) 19:37, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can't speak to the rationale, but the section for nondisclosure of gifts on Clarence Thomas's page lies under his personal life section. Die Kunst Der Fuge (talk) 18:25, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Facts vs. subjective opinions[edit]

"He has called himself a 'practical originalist' and applies originalism flexibly, reliably arriving at conservative outcomes."

Applies flexibly, arriving reliably... These are subjective evaluations, not facts and we are not informed whose evaluations these are. The statement sounds a bit like a characterization of a used car by its seller.

Are these kind of subjective opinions really necessary in a Wikipedia entry? Many would without a doubt disagree with these characterizations. A Wikipedia entry is not an opinion text. Kukkis75 (talk) 22:10, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The term "practical originalist" appears in a reference cited.
I just revised that part of the lede to be more consistent with the references.
These may be "subjective opinions", but they clearly reflect what others have published and seem appropriate as long as the citations are there -- and I think are described in ways that it's clear that they aren't "truth" but reflect what the sources have said.
I hope you like my suggested alternative text. DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:04, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Kukkis75 and GuardianH: On 2022-05-18 the University of Chicago Law School published an article with a subtitle "Samuel Alito: One Angry Man".[1] Then less than four months later, a seemingly independent article in The New Yorker says, "Justice Alito’s Crusade Against a Secular America Isn’t Over," asking in a subtitle, "What drives his anger?"[2] These look like fairly careful mainstream publications that generally avoid inflammatory rhetoric. If they are discussing "anger", I think that should be reflected in this Wikipedia article. DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:58, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@DavidMCEddy No, because those are opinion articles — actually, this is just that: inflammatory rhetoric. The labels "anger" and rhetorical questions such as "what drives his anger?" are supplements used by the writers for their opinions (flourishes). We have no more reason to put those in the article as we should for other WP:RS that say Alito is a champion of freedom and legal reasoning. For example, I'm sure there is a WSJ opinion out there framing liberal justices as angry and unsound too, but it's not our job to reflect that (that is, assuming most sources don't characterize them as such), much less put those labels prominently in the lede. GuardianH (talk) 00:24, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Huq, Aziz (May 18, 2022). "Aziz Huq Writes About How to Understand Justice Alito". law.uchicago.edu. Archived from the original on October 18, 2022. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  2. ^ Talbot, Margaret (August 28, 2022). "Justice Alito's Crusade Against a Secular America Isn't Over". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on February 9, 2023. Retrieved February 12, 2023.

Why did you delete a non-primary source saying it was needed?[edit]

@GuardianH: I'm confused. On 2023-06-30T16:04:40, you deleted the following:

The CEO and President of Elliott Investment Management, Singer was involved in the 2014 Supreme Court case Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, Ltd., about a default on Argentinian government debt, purchased by NML Capital, Ltd., a division of Elliott Investment Management; the court ruled 7–1 in favor of NML Capital.[1] Legal ethics experts quoted in ProPublica called Alito's behavior "unacceptable".[2]

You justified this saying, "non-primary source needed; WP:NOR". That rule says we should avoid "material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist." Both of the sources cited, Justia and The Guardian, seem to be quite reliable and respectable sources.

Are you whitewashing? DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:00, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@DavidMCEddy The second sentence should stay, I only meant to delete the first sentence. The section addresses Alito's publication in WSJ against ProPublica, and neither the NML Capital case nor the court's ruling in that case is mentioned in any sentence citations regarding Alito and ProPublica. An editor added that detail about Singer's connection as supplementary information to support the Singer's connection to the Supreme Court, but the problem is that we can't just add any information to reinforce a certain POV outside of what the secondary sources say, per WP:SYNTH. GuardianH (talk) 17:57, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:00, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Judicial philosophy[edit]

Should we mention in the article Alito’s unique judicial philosophy in relation to constitutional rights? Alito uses the “deeply rooted” doctrines found in Timbs v. Indiana and Washington v. Glucksberg. They can be found in both his majorities (such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and dissents (such as Obergefell v. Hodges). Dancingtudorqueen (talk) 17:14, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That generally falls under his being a proponent of originalism, which is already in the lede. GuardianH (talk) 19:02, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The “deeply rooted” doctrine is pretty unique to Alito though. The two primary court originalists, Thomas and Alito, have proven to differ on their views of originalism. Alito often cites Glucksburg and argues about tradition and roots in re to constitutional protection, whereas Thomas is more in favor of original meanings of the words and the two have disagreed before on certain rulings where originalists take the majority (such as in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski). Dancingtudorqueen (talk) 23:08, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ethical questions[edit]

@GuardianH: Are you saying that members of the US Supreme Court cannot be impeached or only that Alito's statement to that effect should not be labeled as controversial?

The Wikipedia article on "List of impeachment investigations of United States federal judges" says, "As of December 2019, there have been 66 federal judges or Supreme Court Justices investigated for impeachment." In 1969 Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigned under allegations similar to those currently against Alito. The Wikipedia article on Fortas says that then US President "Nixon was unsure if an investigation or prosecution was legal, but was convinced by then-Assistant Attorney General and future Chief Justice William Rehnquist that it would be." In 1970 then-House Minority Leader and future President Gerald R. Ford tried to initiate similar proceedings against Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. In 1841 US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase was officially impeached by the US House but acquitted in the Senate the following year.

In my judgment, it's POV editing to cite without rebuttal Alito's claim that "No provision in the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period." The Wikipedia article on "Wikipedia:POV and OR from editors, sources, and fields" says, "Having a strong POV is fine and you can report it from a source, but also other POVs may be reported from sourcing." That's particularly true for anything as controversial as Alito's denial of the authority of the US Congress to regulate the Supreme Court.

Accordingly, I'm reverting your edit. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia:Prime objective to create "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." DavidMCEddy (talk) 16:32, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@DavidMCEddy It's POV editing to cite without rebuttal Alito's claim — Ironically, you have it backwards. In this case, it's actually POV editing to input rebuttals to every one of Alito's claims, per WP:UNDUE. The constitutional aspect of whether or not Congress has the authority to regulate the Supreme Court is open to debate, and were focusing on Alito's espousals on the subject, so WP:ASPECT applies. By the way, none of the first paragraph you wrote in Ethical Questions has any of this kind of "rebuttals" on his view. I removed the sentence also because it made the lackluster mistake of directly citing Wikipedia articles as a source, which is prohibited per WP:CIRCULAR. GuardianH (talk) 19:31, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]