Talk:Preamble to the United States Constitution

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Preamble to the United States Constitution is part of WikiProject U.S. Congress, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to the United States Congress.
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Contents

[edit] The Flipsyde Album

Is it really necessary to put the link to the Flipsyde album "We The People" at the top of this article? it's prefit

[edit] Headline text

First of all, I've never heard of the band, second, no body looking for the article about that album would search for "Preamble to the US Constitution"; they would just search "We The People" or "Flipsyde" or something like that.

I didn't remove it, but if anyone else agrees with me, somebody please take it off.

EDIT: ok i just noticed that "We the People" actually redirects to this article...but i still don't think the Album link should be on there.

[edit] "all are equal before the law"

In the Justice section, we write "The Constitution makes no distinction as to the wealth or status of persons; all are equal before the law." Should we have an aside comment or link regarding the three-fifths rule in the Constitution as a grievous exception? Chrisvls 20:29, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually, we didn't write it. See the section below. — Mateo SA | talk 01:16, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
That reference has since been deleted. See the section NPOV below. Mateo SA | talk 17:52, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

This article as written is not a description of the history and nature of the preamble. It is actually a text dump User:Lord Emsworth made from An Outline of American Government, by Richard C. Schroeder (specifically, see pages 9 and 10). This is a publication of the U.S. Information Agency, so it is not a copyright violation, but is also not appropriate for Wikipedia. The original document from An Outline is not an article about the preamble, but a persuasive essay about American constitutional history that uses the words of the preamble as a framework. It is certainly does not meet the Wikipedia criteria for an encyclopedic article (not to mention the inappropriateness of text dumping an article into Wikipedia).

In a week, if no one objects, I will delete everything in the article after the first paragraph and the text of the preamble. The article can then be restarted from scratch. — Mateo SA | talk 01:16, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Since a week has passed, and no one has posted an objection, I've deleted the inappropriate portions of the article, and listed it as a stub. Please start this article anew. — Mateo SA | talk 17:52, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Transcripts regarding "defence" vs. "defense"

There is a note regarding the spelling of "defence"/"defense" in official transcriptions of the document. It appears that the National Archives' transcript has since changed to reflect the spelling used on the original document. The note should probably be removed. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 02:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)poop

[edit] Merge with Constitution

By itself, this is currently just a stub, and since an amount of information held WITHIN this article also appears within the main article United_States_Constitution, the articles should be merged together.

  • I disagree with the merge. There are cases where the Supreme Court has referenced the preamble in its decisions; these cases could in the future be added and discussed in this article. In addition, the history of the sentence could be discussed, such as who penned it and any prior documents that some of the phrases in the sentence are derived from (if any). If one looks way back to the first edits of this article, one can see that it was much longer with more detail. This information was later deleted due to POV, but could in the future be reintroduced in a NPOV manner. Thus, the merge makes no sense at all. --CapitalR 11:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Was the Preamble a part of the original document, or added at the printer's shop?

I have heard (anecdotal) stories that the Preamble wasn't a part of the finished product turned out by the Const. Convention. That it was added, as a header, at the print shop by folks who thought such an august document needed the introduction and lead-in. Sorry, I have no hard references. Like I say, all verbal. Anyone else hear similarly? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.228.82.130 (talk • contribs) 2007-12-07T11:47:35

You heard wrong. [1] Robert K S (talk) 15:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The "text"

Since the text section is vandalized so often. A thought - create a separate page for just the text of the Preamble, and protect that. Then include that safe and secure page via transclusion (ala templates). Granted it won't stop the other vandalisms, or removing of the template - but at least we know the text will be secure - permanently. Thoughts? --ShakataGaNai (talk) 19:08, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I see from the history that this page is vandalized very frequently, but I can't tell how often the text itself is vandalized. Is the vandalism predominantly to the text? If not, then possibly a better alternative might be protection, which I would be glad to do if there is a consensus. COGDEN 03:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, I'm not a big fan of the transclusion idea. And semiprotection shouldn't be used much as a preventative measure. If the vandalism gets really out of hand, then short-term semiprotection might be an option, but I would rather it be open, and we just keep reverting the vandalism. I think we have a couple of us watching this page, and it tends to be reverted rather quickly. Mahalo. --Ali'i 13:51, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
@COGDEN - I'd guess about half the time. @Ali'i - well I was thinking more of a hard protection on the transcluded text (after all the preamble hasn't changed recently). But you are correct that the vandalism has been kept at bay for the most part. --ShakataGaNai Talk 07:50, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I think some sort of protection is needed. The vandalism seems almost constant. MrArticleOne (talk) 03:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Many anonymous editors insist on changing "defence" to "defense." This probably happens because of spell check and because these anonymous editors don't read the warning not to make such an edit. Since the warning doesn't seem to be working, I agree a greater level of protection is needed for the text portion of the article. --SMP0328. (talk) 03:37, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I have again moved the footnote in the text section next to the word "defence." I have done this so that there would be a greater chance that a person who may believe that a spelling error has taken place will read that footnote regarding the word "defence." Otherwise, if the footnote is at the end of the text of the Preamble, such a person may believe that the footnote is about the Preamble in general and so irrelevant to the defense/defence issue. --SMP0328. (talk) 00:50, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "The Preamble"

I have removed a section with the above name. The text of that section was:

The ABC educational television series, Schoolhouse Rock! had a segment on the Constitution, and put the preamble to song. As a result, many Americans became more familiar with the lyrics of this musical version which took poetic license with its beginning, "We the People, in Order to form a more perfect Union."

This section had no citations or references and was clearly a piece of trivia. For those reasons I felt it did not belonged in the article. If you disagree, please state why. --SMP0328. (talk) 03:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ellis

It's quite obvious that the Preamble doesn't have concrete doctrine surrounding it like, say, the Establishment Clause or something. Frankly, I think that it is as much as anything a way for a judge or justice to inject his or her notions of normative political goals of a society into constitutional discussion; in a lot of ways, I think the Preamble is what you want it to be. As a result, the article's generalizations I think are somewhat confusing or at least difficult to follow. I have added what I feel is a very strong example of the way the Preamble gets used on the "front lines" of adjudicating cases where it is invoked, Ellis. However, I recognize that this may not be uniformly well-received, so I was hoping to have some discussion here. MrArticleOne (talk) 22:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hans & "the people"

I agree that "We the People" are the ultimate sovereigns of this land, but the People had no say in the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment. The States advocated for such an amendment. If the Hans court was referring to the People, then such a reference was in error. It's also possible that the Hans court was referring to the State Legislatures' role within Article V, which is superior to any single legislature. I'm not saying that the Hans court wasn't referring to the People; only that it may have been referring to something else. So putting "[i.e. the people]" in footnote #10 is a POV, because it's an interpretation of quoted material that is subject to alternate and reasonable interpretations. --SMP0328. (talk) 20:24, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

This would be true if the Supreme Court had not already rejected competing interpretations. The cases cited to in footnote 10 document that history. MrArticleOne (talk) 20:55, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
You are proving my point. Your desire to include "[i.e. the people]" is based on your POV of what the Hans court meant. If it meant that, why didn't it simply say "the people"? The Court could have meant the Constitution (certainly superior to any legislature), specifically Article V. You are wrong when you claim that the Hans court could only have been referring to "the people." --SMP0328. (talk) 21:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
It's somewhat redundant to have this discussion both here and on our respective talk pages; where shall we settle on it? MrArticleOne (talk) 21:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I want other editors to be able to express themselves on this issue, so I place my comments here. When you post on my talk page, I will post on yours.
Additionally, you violated the Three-revert rule and I continue to believe, for the reasons expressed here and on your talk page, that "[i.e. the people]]" violates Wikipedia's NPOV policy. --SMP0328. (talk) 21:27, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
This is somewhat circular; your edit removing the parenthetical is a revert of my having added it, so we could just as easily say that you violated the three-revert rule the 3rd time you eliminated it before the 3rd time I added it back; this is not productive. MrArticleOne (talk) 21:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Incorrect. The first time I made the edit I was not reverting you. Under your logic, every edit is a reversion. A reversion is when you specifically undo someone's edit, not merely if your edit changes what someone did long ago. You reverted me thrice, I reverted you twice. Sorry to have intruded on your article. [2] --SMP0328. (talk) 22:03, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 2 Column notes?

What's the standard for having 2-column notes? I see someone has made it like that. I preferred it the old way. MrArticleOne (talk) 17:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

It was done by ONEder Boy. I also liked it the old way. Do you want it returned to the old way? --SMP0328. (talk) 01:43, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I can fix it myself, I just didn't want to arbitrarily change it if there was some underlying logic to it. MrArticleOne (talk) 11:30, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Fixed. I have seen the 2-column format on several articles and it is the rare circumstance where I think it is an improvement over a 1-column presentation. MrArticleOne (talk) 11:33, 11 March 2008 (UTC)