Talk:Kenneth R. Miller

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[edit] Cobb county decision

Why did someone remove "That decision was reversed on appeal, and the case is still pending in 2006." The article describes an opinion from a lower court, when in fact the decision has been thrown out. It misleads the reader about the outcome of the case. Roger 00:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Duncharris has removed my statement about the current status of the Cobb case a second time, and replaced it with an out-of-date statement that "the decision is currently being appealed" and a link to a similarly out-of-date web site. The decision is not being appealed. The decision has already been appealed, and in May 2006, the decision was "vacated and remanded", in the court's words. The article gives the false impression that the lower court decision has some effect. It doesn't. The case is still pending, and we don't know what the outcome will be. Roger 00:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

User:JoshuaZ has now compounded the error with this comment: "add a correct clarification of the current state of the case. it was remanded to establish certain pertinent facts. does anyone actually both to read the opinions? jeeze".

The sentence now reads, "In 2005, the judge ruled that the stickers violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution[2] – the decision is currently being appealed[3] and has most recently been remanded back to the lower court for determination of certain facts." I recommend that the sentence be removed.

The decision is not being appealed. It has already been nullified -- "vacated", in the court's terminology. It is misleading to say it was "remanded back to the lower court for determination of certain facts." These details are not too relevant to Miller's biography anyway. If there is any more detail on the case, it should be to describe what Miller said in his testimony, not what the judge said. Roger 19:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I see that User:JoshuaZ now concedes that the case is no longer under appeal. Since he insists on saying that the remand was to determines certain facts, I added a clause on how at least one of those determinations pertains directly to Miller. After all, Miller is the subject of this article. Roger 17:21, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Schlafly, it would help if you could point to where it says that it was "vacated" in the decision. JoshuaZ 04:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is how you can verify that the decision was vacated. Click on the "article" above, and then click on Selman v. Cobb County, which has its own WP article. Then click on "11th circuit appeal decision" to download the appellate opinion in pdf format. Open the pdf file in Acrobat, and then search for the term "vacated". You'll find the last sentence, which is "VACATED and REMANDED for further factfindings consistent with this opinion." Your earlier edit was with the comment, ": Here is how you can verify that the decision was vacated. Click on the "article" above, and then click on [Selman v. Cobb County], which has its own WP article. Then click on "11th circuit appeal decision" to download the appellate opinion in pdf format. Open the pdf file in Acrobat, and then search for the term "vacated". You'll find the last sentence, which is "VACATED and REMANDED for further factfindings consistent with this opinion." Your earlier edit had the comment, "does anyone actually both to read the opinions? jeeze", so I don't know how you missed it. Roger 05:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah ok, here is the issue at hand. The word "vacated" as I understand it can have different meanings. Now I'm not a lawyer, but whenever a case is remanded it is vacated as a matter of procedure. There are other ways a case can be vacated (I think) but what really happened here is remanding which happens to include vacating (if someone here is a lawyer who knows more about this could comment it might be helpful). JoshuaZ 05:58, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

No, a case can be remanded without the entire decision being vacated. But regardless, I have proved to you that the court used the "vacated", so you should be satisfied that the term is correct. Roger 07:39, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I put the word "vacated" back in, and I removed the out-of-date link. Roger 07:41, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh look Rog, gee what a surprise. Selman has been settled out of court. Cobb County finally realised it had not a snowball's chance in hell? The King of Spain's beard 13:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)