Your monthly support provides voters the knowledge they need to make confident decisions at the polls. Donate today.

Ballotpedia:Trial Court Judges project

From Ballotpedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Ballotpedia:Project Directory This project has been archived. For ongoing projects on Ballotpedia, see our scope.


About the project

This project is intended to improve the pages of the judges that serve on the state trial courts. In doing so, we will advance the overall content presented on the wiki, while providing more information to citizens about their judges.

The companion project for this is Wikiproject Trial Courts.

Courts by state

The state trial courts encompass a number of levels of courts, which vary by state. They may be referred to as:

Many states have more than one level of trial court. Trial courts may be divided by jurisdiction as well, such as Family Court, Juvenile Court, or Probate Court.

Project goals

This project will always be ongoing, since new judges are appointed and elected regularly across the nation.

The goals of this project are similar whether a judge is newly appointed/elected or already serving in office.

Ultimately, every trial court judge in the nation should have a page that follows this format: Ballotpedia:How to create a judge page.

Newly appointed/elected judges

  • Goal: Create pages for the judges, following these guidelines.
    • For additional assistance regarding tone and other conventions, visit: Ballotpedia:How to write articles about judges.

Judges already in office

  • Goal: If biographical information has already been added to a page, add infobox template and appropriate categories to pages. See below for an explanation.
    If there is no biographical information, find it, then treat page as if it is a new judge.

Judge page additions

Infobox template

This infobox will appear in the top left hand portion of each judge's page on the wiki. It allows a user to quickly and easily access critical information.

This template will fill in all information that is included and exclude any categories of information that are not included. The only required categories are Name and Court. In the example, responses in capital letters indicate that the response must match the exact name of the page to which it will link. The lines formatted to link are: Court, Preceded, and Home. The entire template (minus the example responses and "nowiki" tags) should be copied and pasted into every judge page so that future additions can be made with ease.

The code for the infobox is:

{{Judge infobox
|Length =
|Firstname = First name
|Lastname = Last name
|Court = FULL NAME OF COURT
|Image = OHaraFL.jpg
|Imagesize = (default is 150px - no need to include line unless changing)
<!--Current Court Information-->
|Title = Judge or Former Judge
|Position =
|Station =
|Alternative court =
<!--Service Information-->
|Appointed = [[Name of Governor]]
|Approval =
|Active = Year-Year OR Year-Present, if the end of the current term is unknown
|Chief =
|Senior =
|Preceded = NAME
|Succeeded = NAME
|Previous =
|Previous chief =
|Past term =
|Previous 2 =
|Previous chief 2 =
|Past term 2 =
<!-- Personal Information-->
|Born = Month, date, year
|Gender = Male or Female - if not known, leave blank
|Home = [[Name of State]]
|Deceased =
|Party = [[Democratic]], [[Republican]], etc.
|Religion =
|Bachelors =
|Law =
|Graduate =
|Military =
<!--Election Info YEAR-->
|Candidate YEAR = Yes
|Candidate for which court YEAR =
|State YEAR =
|Incumbency YEAR = Yes or no
|Confirmation YEAR =
|Election YEAR = Yes
|Primary date YEAR = MM/DD/YEAR
|Primary vote pct YEAR = ##
|Election date YEAR = MM/DD/YEAR
|Election vote pct YEAR = ##
|Retention vote pct YEAR =
}}

Biographical information

As explained in How to create a judge page, pages should have the following sections:

  • an intro that says which court the judge serves on, when she/he joined the court, and when her/his term expires
  • an education section that states where the judge received her/his degrees
  • a career section that explains the judge's legal history. If there are multiple past positions with exact dates, the information can be presented in a bullet point list.
  • a see also section that suggests other Ballotpedia links relevant to a judge
  • external links section which lists outside links relevant to a judge
  • the references section
  • a template (most often the {{State}} template.


Categories

All judge pages should include at least two categories. Those are:

The classification category, which includes the state, level of court and the specific court. Examples are:


The term expiration category, which includes the year and state. This category helps alert the staff to when a judge is eligible for re-election. Examples are:


If a judge was appointed by a governor, include the governor appointment category and the appointed judges category. Examples are:

and


If a judge has announced his or her retirement, include the retiring judges category. Examples are:


If a judge has retired, include the past tense version of the retiring judges category. Examples are:


For clarification regarding any of these additions, contact Katy Farrell.

Example pages

Retrieved from "https://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ballotpedia:Trial_Court_Judges_project&oldid=9065030"