Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Supreme Court decisions considered the worst

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's

talk page or in a deletion review

). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was draftify‎. There is a clear consensus below not to retain the article in mainspace right now. There was enough support for Draftify (with a couple of dissenting voices) that I have chosen that, both as an ATD and acknowledging this was AfD'ed pretty soon after creation. Make no mistake, this will be a challenge to get it to mainspace-worthy per the consensus below, but a small chance is enough here to go draftify rather than delete. Daniel (talk) 10:20, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

List of United States Supreme Court decisions considered the worst

List of United States Supreme Court decisions considered the worst (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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There are no definitive criteria to determine which are the "worst" Supreme Court decisions, and thus it fails

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Law, Politics, Lists, and United States of America. 49ersBelongInSanFrancisco (talk) 05:18, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: Pointless list that, even if we were to try and improve it, would be so needlessly warred over it isn't worth it (especially since it's basically clickbait in Wikipedia article form). Why? I Ask (talk) 05:24, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Draftify/Userfy. There were less than 30 minutes between creation and AfD here, so AfD is premature. This pretty clearly doesn't belong in mainspace yet though. —siroχo 05:46, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: "Considered" by whom? What are the political, moral, legal, and spiritual list inclusion criteria for making such an evaluation? The case is plainly hopeless, Democrats and Republicans would never agree on any of it. The material is hopelessly unencyclopedic, and will remain so because "considered" and "worst" aren't definable in any general way in this context. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:16, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Userfy Looks like a subject the user might want to research. No sources are listed. — Maile (talk) 11:27, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Unlike films (List of films considered the worst), there is nobody out there ranking court decisions. Even renaming it List of controversial United States Supreme Court decisions would be ... controversial, since so many were controversial in their time. Clarityfiend (talk) 12:14, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Quite subjective and different sources undoubtedly include different decisions and have quite different criteria. Not neutral or notable. Bookworm857158367 (talk) 13:04, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - The article is completely unsourced. And yes, in due time one could probably find citations with this in draftspace, but there's always going to be too much controversy surrounding an article like this. estar8806 (talk) ★ 17:37, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete by title alone will inevitably be
  WP:OR. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 22:33, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Draftify/Userfy. I agree with Siroxo:
  • This AfD is premature seeing as it came 30 minutes after the article was created
  • This article isn't ready for main space.

Beyond that, Wikipedia cannot put forth any opinion of its own on these decisions. As others have pointed out, there's no limit to decisions that could be added to this article. Americans won't agree on many of them.

I think the article's creator, Oeoi, is on to something, though. I suggest Oeoi take a look at our Historical rankings of presidents of the United States article. Doing something similar with American Supreme Court decisions would be much appreciated. I suggest they leave a message at Talk:Supreme Court of the United States asking if there are any reputable historical rankings that have been compiled by historians.

If quality lists of best and worst decisions aren't out there, perhaps Oeoi could start an article on rankings of the most consequential decisions.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:11, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very positive about the article that this may become in draft space. I added some WikiProjects to the article's talk page to hopefully get some attention. In particular, I noticed there is a WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases; User:Oeoi, I encourage you to reach out to them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases as you continue working on this.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 23:13, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: yeah, essentially my motivation with the article was that I'd keep opening up wikipedia pages about SCOTUS decisions, and one of the sentences in the lead section would say something like "The decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court's history" or "The case is often cited as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time". These seem to me like reasonably sourced, decently verifiable claims, so I decided to compile them into one consistent list. Oeoi (talk) 01:42, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Draftify as excessive
  WP:NORUSH) per Siroxo. I would argue to Oeoi that there is a better article here than there is a list. It would take far more work, but there is a large body of a SCOTUS scholarship with a wide swath of reasons that one or another ruling is 'worse' than others. Three of the four starting entries are about race, but who's to say whether Plessey was in fact worse overall that Bowers or Bakke, or that either had worse reasoning (and impact) than Citizens United? You also then have latitude to explore worst-written, -reasoned, -argued, as well as most misused, misquoted, etc. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 15:41, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Keep. Now that I am an administrator, I don't have to care about my AfD ratio :^) Anyway, this seems like a clearly notable subject. I don't think it was quite ready for mainspace − mostly because something like this was going to happen — but that's not a good reason for deletion. It's
  WP:GNG. All you need: A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. jp×g🗯️ 09:18, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  Off-topic: glad you're an admin now. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 14:23, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I think it may be possible to develop an article in a similar manner to List of films considered the worst, but it will take a lot of thinking about scope and curating. The lede in the list of films should provide a good way of developing the list. That all said, this page should not live in mainspace in the state it is in. --Enos733 (talk) 22:51, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  It's inappropriate to compare this to the films list. There's longstanding, reliably sourced elements (eg

  The Razzies) that provide the basis for that list - there's simply nothing comparable that has any scholarly consensus in the law. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 00:15, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Except that the list of films is not based on any one source (such as the Razzies). The films list starts with this sentence "The films listed below have been cited by a variety of notable critics in varying media sources as being among the worst films ever made." There are scholars who make the claim that a particular case (or cases) is the worst decision by the US Supreme Court, with many scholars pointing to Dred Scott, Plessy, and Korematsu as the worst (and the justices themselves make claims as well). See https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1237&context=mhlr I think it would be a challenge to develop an objective standard for decisions by the Court, perhaps a difficult challenge, but possible. - Enos733 (talk) 17:24, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  "develop an objective standard" ... and who is developing that standard? That's the nub of the problem, this will inevitably be OR/SYNTH. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 20:17, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I disagree. There could be a poll of legal scholars. There could be books or articles cataloguing the worst decisions (https://time.com/4056051/worst-supreme-court-decisions/). I am not suggesting it would be easy, and the criteria would be subject to debate - but the same exists for list of the worst films. In that article, there is no one source or survey, nor reliance on aggregation (such as Rotten Tomato scores). - Enos733 (talk) 06:13, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Exactly. This list (technically all lists, but no one seems to remember that) needs a firm and explicit

  WP:SELCRIT that specifies the threshold of RS to be included. My suggestion would be a fairly high bar: (1) two or more secondary or tertiary sources (2) that are either peer-reviewed or used as mainstream textbooks and (3) that specifically used the term 'worst' and (4) explain specifically why a given case is or is not worst. It just is not hard to find good sources for this. Shake the gScholar tree and 41k fall out for Scott v Sandford alone. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 13:31, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

• Comment I went ahead and AFD'd it quickly as I continue to believe that there is no amount of effort that could save the article. Some
  Washington Post editorial board has listed as the worst? I continue to believe that the only way to accomplish this task would be to list "Decisions considered the worst by The Washington Post", "Decisions considered the worst by the New York Times", etc. Otherwise almost every important case has supporters and detractors. We don't have a "Worst Elections Ever" page for similar reasons; it's simply too subjective.49ersBelongInSanFrancisco (talk) 06:51, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  Well, why not list both of them? We aren't Conservapedia (or Libipedia for that matter); it seems to me perfectly easy to reconcile that some people consider anti-abortion rulings terrible and some other people consider pro-abortion rulings terrible. An article like this could easily be written to be more than a sortable table, and have a section that went into more depth on polarizing decisions like these; some discretion would be necessary, sure, but I don't think that's a reason to prevent it from being tried at all. jp×g🗯️ 10:57, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Because there are hundreds of potentially "worst" cases; every politically-interesting case has a winner and a loser. Guns, abortion, voting, class actions, water, endangered species, border disputes between states, immigration, administrative deference, judicial review... every decision has someone who thinks it was the "worst." It's the same as for

  WP:OR). 49ersBelongInSanFrancisco (talk) 14:41, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  That implies that 'worst' means 'least popular'. There are legitimate, scholarly reasons in RS why a court decision is considered 'bad', usually based on deeply disingenuous legal reasoning. Examples like Plessy, Adkins and Gobitis were so egregious that they became symbols of bad decision-making and eventually were overturned by the court itself. Dred Scott and others led to legal or even constitutional changes to overcome them. There are wide bodies of work on exactly why those are just plain awful from the POV of the law itself, even if at the time they were popular (Plessy, in particular, was revered -- in fact, it is usually popular decisions that produce abysmal jurisprudence). Those are the cases (and RS) that I think belong in an article with this title. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 19:16, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  There's a great deal of opinion being expressed here, but no reliable source analysis. That's instructive precisely because the inherent nature of this subject makes it impossible to reconcile reliable sources without entering into SYNTH/OR territory. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 23:58, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  It's entirely possible to construct a list of SCOTUS decisions that only reliable academic sources have described as "the worst" or as "considered the worst". I think Last1in is describing some steps editors might undertake to write such an article from RS without synthesis, using likely examples to illustrate, not directly suggesting that we synthesize such conclusions ourselves. There would be no need to insert any OR or non-NPOV opinion into the list itself as part of this process. —siroχo 05:30, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  How Did They Get It So Wrong? ... or to put it another way, why this will always be a rabbit hole of OR. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 12:47, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  That is, quite literally, the opposite of what I proposed and what siroxo wrote. Neither OR nor SYNTH is required to quote reliable, secondary or tertiary, mainstream-scholarly sources that discuss deeply flawed decisions by SCOTUS. As an example, sources as wide-ranging as Levinson (Yale), Gräber (UNC), Farber (Berkeley), the Journal of Politics, and plenty of constitutional law textbooks argue whether Scott v Sandford is really and truly worst or merely terrible jurisprudence. The 09-Nov-23 broadcast of Jeopardy! (US) included the following clue, The case of this enslaved man v. Sandford is often called the worst Supreme Court decision ever. And before you pounce, I am not suggesting Jeopardy! as an RS, simply as an indicator that this is a valid subject for an article supported by the academics like those mentioned in the preceding sentence. I think, given a chance, this could be an exceptional article if we include RS-driven explanations of the various ways that different cases come to be seen as the worst. There is simply no policy basis to delete this list. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 13:22, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Look at Historical rankings of presidents of the United States for an example of ways to organize a list like this. WE could have a section "Fox News rankings of Supreme Court decisions" and another for "New York Times rankings of Supreme Court decisions". Wikipedia would not be drawing a judgement - it would just present others' rankings in tabular form.

  --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 01:55, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  That there's some identifiable agreement over one or two cases as the "worst" (sic) is purely relevant for *those* cases only. It does not make a list. One cannot extrapolate a supposed consensus over one or two cases into a list. That's the funademntal problem here, to do anything more involves OR/SYNTH. Just because Fox News publishes a list of anything does not make the list in and of itself notable, it would require *secondary* sources commenting/analysising the existence of that list to make it notable. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 02:49, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  So Goldsztajn, what do you think of the Historical rankings of presidents of the United States article when you look at it? My thinking it to draftify this Supreme Court article and let its author work on it to get it towards something like the Presidents article.

  --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 05:40, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  At the outset, let me acknowledge the good faith contributions of everyone here and the tone of the discussion, I grealy appreciate everyone's efforts. Thanks @A. B. for asking me directly, I hope my reply (and all my contributions) keep with the spirit I've highlighted.

  I'm wary of comparisons with any other topics because this avoids the core problem - the question of reliable sourcing to satisfy notability criteria for this topic. Nevertheless, what I would say is that in the presidents article what stands out is the presence of multiple reliable sources that *rank* presidents - this is especially significiant in terms of the debate here. First, those sources provide us with specific heirarchy that allows us to carry our comparison without overt synthesis. Second, there's a literature which compares and critiques the systems of ranking - so not only do we have the ranking itself, but we have source analysis that provides notability for the ranking system as a class. It's both of those elements that are completely lacking here. At best we have some divergent articles commenting that different people with different ideological perspectives take different views on what are the "worst" or "less bad" or "really not good" decisions. To reinforce this point: there's a sea of qualitative difference for the construction of a comparative list when sourcing provides us with ranked items versus sourcing that is labelled with the amorphous "worst". Yes, we can possibly find reliable source agreement that there is some scholarly consensus on what is regarded at the "worst" decision, but beyond that everything is SYNTH and OR. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 20:17, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you, Goldsztajn, for your very thoughtful reply.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 01:11, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: Clear violation of
  WP:LISTCRITERIA here, as any case can be derided by a certain segment of the population. Let'srun (talk) 00:55, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Leaning delete. I think it would be impossible to get an objective and general list, rather than an incoherent lumping together of hit-pieces on opinions with impacts disfavored by specific groups. BD2412 T 19:21, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's

talk page or in a deletion review

). No further edits should be made to this page.