Talk:Shadow docket/GA1

GA Review

The following successful Good Article review is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on Talk:Shadow docket. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Cerebellum (talk · contribs) 17:20, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello, I'll take this one. Goal is to have it done tomorrow (Monday). --Cerebellum (talk) 17:20, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Wonderful news, thank you. There's no rush: I won't have the requisite time to be available to respond to comments until Wednesday, unfortunately. Sorry about that. Sdrqaz (talk) 17:24, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

No problem, I'll be travelling Tues-Sat anyway and probably won't be online. Just one quick note before I start – according to this source last week's ruling on the vaccine mandate was a use of the shadow docket, but it also involved oral argument. I think this article will have to be updated accordingly. --Cerebellum (talk) 17:51, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm a little leery of that source: it was taken from a law firm's "client alert" – is it reliable? I'll have a dig elsewhere and if you think it's important to highlight, I'll add it in. Sdrqaz (talk) 18:12, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

You're right! Other sourses say the case was not on the shadow docket ([1], [2]). --Cerebellum (talk) 19:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Ok I'm all done, this was an engaging, timely, and well-written article and I enjoyed reviewing it :) Comments are below, I'll place the article on hold until you can respond to them. Feel free to disagree with any of my suggestions. I'm bringing my laptop on my trip so hopefully I'll be able to find WiFi and close out the review expeditiously. --Cerebellum (talk) 19:14, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough review (and kind comments), Cerebellum. I've interleaved my responses to your comments below, as there seems to be a tolerance of that practice at GAN and I think it makes things clearer (no need to keep scrolling up and down). I've learned a lot from this process. Please let me know any further thoughts. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Awesome, you've addressed all my concerns :) Happy to pass as GA. --Cerebellum (talk) 16:18, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your hard work, Cerebellum (and for dealing with this during your travels). I'm confident the article is in far better shape because of it! Sdrqaz (talk) 16:47, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Criteria

• Prose: Prose is excellent! One minor comment below.
• References: Article is thoroughly referenced to high-quality sources. In a few years maybe it could be written entirely with law review articles, but since it's a current events topic it makes sense to use newspapers.
• Coverage: Pretty good, comments below. Since this a live issue I expect the article will need to be updated every year or two, but that doesn't mean it can't be a GA.
• Neutral: I don't think so, but I'm open to being proved wrong.
• Stable: Yes.
• Illustrated: Yes, images are correctly licensed and captioned. One comment below on image selection. --Cerebellum (talk) 19:14, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
  • For what it's worth, I completely agree with "Since this a live issue I expect the article will need to be updated every year or two". Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Comments

• Neutrality: I think the article needs to include the views of those who don't see the shadow docket as a problem. It does mention Alito’s criticism of the term, but I found a couple other sources:
  • Josh Blackman in Reason says that, “I think after this term, criticism of the shadow docket will fade" ([3]).
  • Someone named Mark Rienzi writes in the National Review that, "'shadow docket' is a fun term...but it is actually somewhat misleading," and claims that most of these cases are emergency death penalty appeals.
• What do you think? Are these fringe views or are they worth including in the article? According to this media bias chart Reason and the National Review are both right-wing outlets, but this article already cites Slate and Vox which are left-wing.
• Not sure. I had originally focused on the criticism of the shadow docket because the reception in reliable sources was pretty uniform, especially from non-politicians, fearing that doing otherwise would be undue.  Added some more from Justice Alito in the "Increased use" section, in the "Rigor" section, and some from politicians defending the practice. I haven't added the National Review source as there seems to be no consensus on its reliability and having read the Reason source, it doesn't actually seem like a defence of the practice, more that from Blackman's view, the shadow docket was running out of steam or out of fashion. Interested to hear your thoughts. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Makes sense, I'm happy with the changes you made. I agree that the reception seems uniform, I read in one of the sources that criticism came from "across the ideological spectrum." But I think including the (minority) views in defense of the shadow docket helps with neutrality. --Cerebellum (talk) 16:18, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Coverage: A couple of the sources mention a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the shadow docket in February 2021, do you think it is worth mentioning the hearing in "History"?
  •  Question: Do you mean the House hearing in February? There appears to have been a Senate hearing in September.  Added some defences of the shadow docket from that hearing to various sections (see above) and both chambers' hearings to the "History" section (please note in the same edit I also mentioned Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson, since that was a major case involving the shadow docket; previously touched on in the "Terminology" section). Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
    • My mistake, I didn't realize there were two separate hearings. Thank you for adding them. --Cerebellum (talk) 16:18, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Layout: I recommend moving "Procedure" above "History", the history section is hard to understand without the background info from "Procedure".
  •  Implemented here – good point, thanks. I had made an overhaul of the structure before it appeared on DYK, but still wasn't very confident it flowed. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• References: I think it would help to add a page number for ref #4, looks to me like you are citing page 2.
  •  Implemented here (reference #4 at Special:Permalink/1063366175 has now changed numbers due to the recommended layout change above). Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Prose It is dealt with on an accelerated time frame It's not clear what "it" means, maybe replace with a more specific word.
  •  Implemented here – "It is" changed to "Applications are". Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Images: I don't think you need two Cambodia images, I'd remove one or replace it with one of the Rosenbergs or something else.
  •  Implemented here – File:Bomb craters in Cambodia.jpg replaced with File:U.S. vs. Julius & Ethel Rosenberg and Martin Sobell, Government Exhibit 3, photograph of Mike and Anne Sidorovich - NARA - 278748.tif (and moved above the Nixon photo). It was a holdover from the DYK process, when I was trying to keep my image options open for the hook. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Procedure: (there were 150 shadow docket cases in total). This confused me since the article says above that there are 7-8,000 petitions for certiorari per term, and Vladeck in ref #4 p. 1 says, "the 'shadow' docket comprises the thousands of other decisions the Justices hand down each Term". Shouldn't there be more than 150 of these cases per term?
  •  Fixed here, I think. The "150" refers to the emergency applications made to the Court, while the shadow docket is made up of emergency applications and petitions for certiorari. The Reuters refers to the number as being "emergency applications" at the start, but changes that to "shadow docket cases" later on in the article. I've attempted to clarify what the number refers to, and have mildly restructured to make the distinction clearer. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Precedential effect: Is there another source saying courts are using these cases as precedent? The only source supporting the idea is Vladeck in Slate, and he makes the claim a bit weakly, saying "these orders tend to receive...far less attention and precedential weight from lower courts" and then "they’re also starting to be cited as precedent by lower-court judges". He doesn't give any examples or statistics to back up the claim. --Cerebellum (talk) 19:14, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Not sure. I was at the point of removing the section, but after a longer search I found a POLITICO source (touching on the issue briefly and without statistics too) and a law journal article written by Trevor N. McFadden, a federal district court judge that goes into the issue in more detail.  Added here. Sdrqaz (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

The successful Good Article review above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on Talk:Shadow docket. No further edits should be made to this discussion.