Template talk:Infobox SCC/doc

Court membership (SCC parameter)

I have changed the new instructions to the documentation (thanks to Unavoidable for putting the initial comprehensive version together). The initial version said that the membership should be based on when the case was decided, not when it was heard. I have changed it to the other way around, for the following reasons:

Judges who joined the court after the case was heard but before the decision was released not only never participate in the decision, the judgment would not even list them as being involved in the case.
Judges who were members of the court when the case was heard, but leave the court before the decision is released are sometimes still listed on the judgment, especially when that judge helped with working out some of the reasoning before leaving the court.
When a chief justice is present at the time of the hearing, but retires before the decision is released, the judgement not only includes that judge in the decision, but will still list that judge as "C.J." (with an asterik indicating that they were the chief justice at the time the decision was heard). The new chief justice will still be listed as just "J.".

Therefore, the court membership is based on when the case was heard, not the date the decision was released. Singularity42 (talk) 15:00, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Was probably an oversight copying over from SCOTUS since they have somewhat different rules. For the most part I think the existing uses of the SCC template do what is already described above. --Unavoidable (talk) 19:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added a few minor adjustments, including SCC=present to avoid having to update the date range every time a new year begins without the court composition having changed. (It will still have to be changed on every page when the composition changes, but at least that's 1 mass edit rather than 1 each year.) TheFeds 01:33, 18 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]