Talk:SEC v. Jarkesy

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Masem in topic Lead section

Issues with original research edit

@LawStudent2023: I know you feel that news stories covering thus are perhaps simplifying too much, but you are cresting too many problems with sourcing and original research. We cannot write this like a law journal analysis unless we have reluable secondary sources specifically analyzing the case.

  • You cannot pull from case law or even earlier journals before the case was decided to justify a point. That's original research that we as editors cannot do.
  • You cannot pull directly from the decisions outside of fundament results (who wrote the opinion and dissent, what the case resolution is, etc.) Any other parts of the current decisions should be used if third party sources discuss it, since we as editors cannot judge the relative importance of parts of the decision without engaging in original research.
  • There's also a problem with you changes in the lede; there are standard ways we write lefe sections including for court cases, and your preferred version does not follow. It is closer to an intro to a law journal article rather than an encyclopedia

I know you are trying to expand beyond what sloppy or inaccurate details that media pieces give but you have to remember that Wikipedia works on what can be verified, not the truth. Thats generally why our articles on court cases tend not to get into the specific legal concept weeds unless that is part of an established analysis.--Masem (t) 22:45, 25 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Again, I followed the citation perameters set out by every other major court case on WP. Here's just a start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.L.A._Schechter_Poultry_Corp._v._United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_v._Carter_Coal_Co.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Curtiss-Wright_Export_Corp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Lopez
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Darby_Lumber_Co.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Hotel_Co._v._Parrish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Morrison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seminole_Tribe_of_Florida_v._Florida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Atlanta_Motel,_Inc._v._United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcia_v._San_Antonio_Metropolitan_Transit_Authority
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_Athletic_Association

Lead section edit

Regardless of the outcome from above, the first section needs to be redone to use actual paragraphs. It doesn't need to be as lengthy as the first section of Roe v. Wade but that's obviously the USSC case that has had the most editors chisel each other over style issues and can be used as a good gauge for how to introduce the case, the parties and circumstances, the terse version of the findings (which should be done at length later), and the potential legislative future and societal impact of the ruling. Obviously this isn't nonpartisan but Jon Stewart and the women from Strict Scrutiny lay out at least the left's understanding and fears w/r/t this case, which could be helpful for finding actual points and counterpoints in more WP:RELIABLESOURCES. — LlywelynII 06:59, 12 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the input.The only reason the lead looks that way is because admin converted the lead section into bullet points.
The background facts were extensive because, without the context of the nuanced legal issues, the background of the statutory delegation and the seven year disposition to the document disclosure issues, the issues don't make any sense to the average reader, unlike Roe. Most American non-lawyers would believe that the jury right already applied.
The Fifth Circuit section its short because, at the time it was published on WP, few "secondary sources" had analyzed the actual opinion in depth without glossing over the actual opinion but instead resorted to pure clickbait and hyperbole. Admin would delete/revert the whole article and would instead write that the whole case was about the sixth amendment, misspelled half the words, etc..Now there appears to be thousands of articles. Anyone is free to add those and change anything. LawStudent2023 (talk) 01:29, 17 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
I have rewritten the lede to be more what to expect for a case article. The 3 bullets of the decision can be explains as bullet points in the body, but the lede should not do that. --Masem (t) 02:58, 17 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Ok. The format you used is fine. Everything you said was wrong again though. I'll change what you wrote to what the actual holding was, but I'll leave the format to a normal paragraph.
1, "the Take Care Clause of the Article II's that required ALJs to be able to removed by the President for for-cause reasons": --- the Take Care Clause, as the Supreme Court explained in Free Enterprise, requires that the president have some level of discretion to appoint and get rid of officers who are tasked with carrying out functions in the executive branch. "For cause" removal protection means that someone can only. get removed from office "for cause," meaning malfeasance of duty. The problem is that the Commissioners (the multimember heads of the SEC) have "for cause" protection from removal by the President. Their ALJs, meanwhile, can only get removed "for cause" by the Commissioners, who, themselves, can only be removed by the President "for cause". The Court in Lucia held that the SEC's ALJs are "officers." The Court in Free Enterprise held that the two layers of for-cause protection from removal for an officer is unconstitutional. The SEC was arguing that the ALJs are performing "adjudicative" functions, but the 5th Circuit didn't buy it.
2, "investigate and recommend a civil penalties action" --- The ALJ's do not investigate, while their orders become final unless the defendant appeals
3 "that Congress did not give the SEC the discretion to use administrative procedures over jury trials,"--- The issue was actually that Congress did give the agency absolute discretion to choose whether the enforcement action was a "public right" meaning they get to choose the venue and whether the defendant gets a jury trial for the same claims. The non-delegation doctrine is the idea that there is a limit to the amount of decision making power that Congress can delegate to the Executive Branch (including agencies) before it becomes "legislative power" under article I. Congress has to give an agency some "intelligible principle" that can guide an agency's discretion. The SEC argued here rolled the dice and argued there was no intelligible principle because they wanted the choice of forum to be considered unfettered, absolute prosecutorial discretion, which would mean that nobody could ever challenge that discretion. There hasn't been any case that has held that the "choice of forum" or "whether a defendant gets a jury trial" is prosecutorial discretion. It would actually give SEC enforcement more unfettered discretion over defendants than the actual federal prosecutors at the department of justice.
4 "if upheld by parallel cases that are to be heard during the 2022–2023 Supreme Court term"--- they aren't about the same issue. The other cases are about whether the defendants can sue the SEC during the administrative proceedings.
5 "would affect over 30 federal agencies which use ALJs in similar adminstrative procedures."--- That was pure speculation from political pundits. Jarkesy only impacts the SEC in the Fifth Circuit. First, there are not that many agencies with ALJs that have been held to be inferior officers. Second, the seventh amendment issue was about common law fraud, and most of the other agencies adjudicate issues that are completely unknown (e.g., Social Security, CMS with Medicare, etc.) to the "common law", unlike fraud. People have been getting jury trials for fraud for almost a thousand years, long before the Seventh Amendment was passed. For it to impact another agency, someone would have get sued by an agency in front of an ALJ, raise it in the administrative proceedings in that agency for several years and then raise it on appeal. The vast majority of them settle or don't exhaust the administrative appeals process because the litigation itself is a financial nightmare. Even then, other agencies that use formal adjudication w/ ALJs to impose civil penalties do not deal with claims that are anywhere near as close to common law claims as SEC's fraud provisions. For non-delegation, I certainly can't imagine any other agency would tell a court that there is no intelligible principle. That's also an issue Congress could fix with the stroke of a pen.
6. "to apply civil penalties to security fraud" It's securities fraud. Plural.
7. "the Nondelegation Doctrine of the Article One of the United States Constitution"--- you don't need a "the" before "Article One" because of English. Also, the "non delegation doctrine" is that the Constitution says "All Legislative Power" is vested in Congress, and Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to the executive branch. The Supreme Court has “repeatedly said” that whenever Congress “confers decision-making authority upon agencies Congress must ‘lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized to [act] is directed to conform.'" Whitman. That's the non-delegation doctrine in a nutshell. The SEC took the shocking position that Congress did not provide an "intelligible principle", so it backed itself into that corner. Like I said above, Congress can fix the issue overnight. LawStudent2023 (talk) 04:58, 19 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
The lede is far too complex with those changes. The details of the three points can go into the body, but the lede should be a general audience summary of the case so that they can get a quick idea why it is important. The changes do not help that. I have zero issues with you fixing legal term mistakes, but you don't need to go into that much detail in the lede at all. All of that is good for the body. Masem (t) 05:31, 19 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
I understand that. This is the problem. There were three constitutional holdings. Most big cases only have one. Each issue is complex. I summarized each holding in one sentence each. That's as narrow as it can get. The whole lede is just five sentences. I feel like the average American reader will understand it. LawStudent2023 (talk) 05:45, 19 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Take, for example, Free Enterprise. There was one constitutional holding in that case, and the lede has four sentences explaining it.
In Jarkesy, there are three major holdings, and only one sentence explains each.
The importance of it is the holding. LawStudent2023 (talk) 05:56, 19 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
But what you changed it too is too much legalese and doesn't explain why the case is important. Yes, it is necessary to identify that there were three specific parts of the ruling and I'm not saying you can spell that out, but you need to be using more layman's terms in the lede. Why is each holding important? I'm not saying to strip the legal basis the holdings had but at the lede level you definitely don't need that much specificity. Masem (t) 12:22, 19 July 2022 (UTC)Reply