Talk:Unitary executive theory/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Sifting through the references

I've cut a bunch of references out of the footnotes, either because they were dead links, or blog material, and (most of all) because material did not mention the Unitary Executive Thoery and thus falls into the category of WP:SYNTH. However, I'd like to keep as much of the remaining footnote material as possible, so we can accurately characterize it and use it in an appropriate part of this article. That will be a lot of work, but it's doable. Of course, we can get other reputable suorces as well, but I don't think it would do any harm to make some further use of the ones that we have now.

The sections on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries don't even say anything about the unitary executive, so I'm inclined to just delete all of the chronological sections without deleting the cited sources. Then we can simply describe what the cited sources say about the UET.Ferrylodge (talk) 05:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm slowly getting this done. More left to do.Ferrylodge (talk) 17:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not easy being a janitor. THF (talk) 17:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Almost done, but still some sweeping and mopping left.Ferrylodge (talk) 04:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Tags

• There's a real debate to be had about the unitary executive theory, but it's not to be found in the pages of the Huffington Post and Counterpunch. Cite to the law review articles and legitimate scholarship, and get rid of the cites to ranting blog posts.
• Even if you're going to rely heavily on the pop literature, there are several cites to The Nation and The New Yorker and magazines even further to the left; none to any conservative journals discussing the topic, or even to, say Richard Epstein in the WSJ.
• 35 footnotes citing to 60 or so sources, and exactly one of these sources, cited twice, puts forward the strongly unitary executive theory. The article reflects this wild imbalance.
• Meanwhile, the fringe "Carl Schmitt" synthesis put forward by an idiosyncratic editor that theorizes that conservatives are secretly emulating Nazi Germany (a set of edits that arguably violates BLP in a number of articles, such as John Yoo) gets ten.
• I mean, really, Dana Milbank, who writes snarky op-eds in the Washington Post, gets more play in this article than Christopher Yoo, a law professor who's written widely on the topic.
• "conservative legal thought" and "members of the Federalist Society" is redundant. There aren't any 21st century conservative legal scholars who aren't members of the Federalist Society. And anyone who's seen Richard Epstein on the topic knows that Federalist Society members don't hold a unitary view of the unitary executive theory.

Some cites if you want to balance the article:

• Calabresi and Yoo's book
• "The Presidency and Congress: Constitutionally Separated and Shared Powers," 68 Wash. U. L.Q. 485 (1990), is a symposium with several points of view.
• Lee S. Liberman, "Morrison v. Olson: A Formalistic Perspective on Why the Court Was Wrong," 38 Am. U. L. Rev. 313 (1989).
• Steven G. Calabresi & Saikrishna B. Prakash, "The President's Power to Execute the Law," 104 Yale L.J. 541 (1994).
• Steven G. Calabresi, "Some Normative Arguments for a Unitary Executive," 48 Ark. L. Rev. 23 (1995).

But the article is an incoherent mess and arguably needs to be stubbed and started over. The first paragraph and bibliography are okay, but very little else is. THF (talk) 03:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent comment. Thanks THF, and please watchlist this article so you can chime in as we try to fix it up. Thanks!Ferrylodge (talk) 04:53, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

My concerns have not been addressed, but someone removed the tags with the notation "See talk." Not kosher. And, yes, articles can have both references and original research. THF (talk) 14:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

This form of debating while ignoring the numerous refs from legal and mainstream clearly is very not helpful and makes me struggle to adhere to WP:AGF.Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 14:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The fact that the article sources some of its statements does not mean that it's not riddled with OR elsewhere. Your edit-warring to remove the tag in the face of at least three editors who believe the tag belongs violates WP:NPOVD and WP:EW. And your only talk-page comment in response to my detailed critique is a personal attack. And you have trouble assuming good faith? THF (talk) 14:56, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Quoth THF: "There aren't any 21st century conservative legal scholars who aren't members of the Federalist Society." I'm not an expert on the subject, but this seems like a wild overgeneralization. If it were in the article itself, I'd be slapping a "Citation Needed" tag onto it so fast the tag would likely ablate from air friction. Can you back up this sweeping statement?

Thanks,

206.55.188.83 (talk) 02:25, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Scrubbing the Lyndon LaRouche material

I've deleted the whole nonsense about Carl Schmitt, which was a synthesized mash of blogposts, Counterpunch rants, and unpublished original research. I'd be very curious if that Wayne State thesis on which that whole section was based was written by a Wikipedia editor, so that there would be a WP:COI violation in addition to the WP:WEIGHT violation. It seems to have found its way into several Wikipedia articles. THF (talk) 15:25, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Scott Horton anybody?Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 15:31, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Harpers isn't WP:RS for constitutional law controversies. And there's still the WP:WEIGHT issue: this is a fringe theory that doesn't belong in the article. THF (talk) 15:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Clearly we need outside input if everybody objects to the use of legal experts.Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 15:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Again, the issue is WP:WEIGHT. There is an established published literature in the subject, but there is no evidence of it in this article; instead, there are COATRACK cites to screeds in Harpers and Counterpunch and someone's unpublished thesis. I have no objection to citing the leading legal experts in the area. It's only if you want to POV-push a fringe LaRouchian theory that you need to cite to Scott Horton's blog post on the Harper's web site. THF (talk) 16:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)