Wikipedia:Peer review/John Marshall Harlan II/archive2

John Marshall Harlan II

Previous peer review

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for September 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it recently survived GAR and I want to known now what is necessary in order to make it a featured article. I am not a lawyer, so any ideas from people with a background in law are wellcome.

Thanks, Ruslik (talk) 13:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: My initial comments relate to the following areas:-

• Referencing
  • There are about 25 standard footnote references, and around 40 direct links to US Supreme Court judgements. These latter are generally in the form of parenthetical references as described in WP:CITE. However, according to WP:CITE, articles should employ the same citation method throughout. The USSC links could easily become footnotes in the format <ref>US Supreme Court {{uscc|details|year}}</ref>, (admittedly, tedious to do so)
  • The judgements are typically around 15-20,000 words in length, undifferentiated into sections, and do not therefore give an easy means of verifying what's in the article. It's like a book citation to 40 or 50 pages of text. I'm not sure what the answer is to the problem of making these references more accessible.
  • Even so, I believe the article is under-referenced by FA standards. There are statements and views ascribed to JMH that are uncited, and which should be, and other facts which should be given a source. A few examples (there are others):-
    • In the Supreme Court career section, details concerning the Senate's confirmaton vote.
    • In the same section, [7] covers Harlan's friendship with Hugo Black, but not details of the issues on which they disagreed
    • Tn the Incorporation section, "Judge Harlan was strongly opposed to the theory that the 14th amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights..." etc
    • Same section: "Judge Harlan believed that the 14th amendment's due process clause only protected fundamental rights..." etc

• Early life
  • While not wishing to quibble, I feel that the material in ths section extends well beyond Harlan's "early life", since it takes him to 52 years of age. Maybe the section could be divided between "Early life" (first 2 paras) and "Lawyer and soldier" or some such (last 3 paras). Or rename the section, possibly "Early life and career" - still not very good.

• Quotes about Harlan
  • It seems odd to have a whole section devoted to this topic, containing a single (bullet-pointed!) quote. Unless you can find some others, I suggest you drop this section and find somewhere else to use the quote, if you think it worthwhile.

The article seems fluently written, although I haven't done a close prose reading for punctuation, typos etc. Before I do so, perhaps you would respond to the above. Brianboulton (talk) 13:48, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the review. I agree with the most of your points. I need to note that citations generally are to Harlan's opinions, not to whole judgements. These opinions are not necessary long. You are right that converting {{ussc}} template style references to inline citations is a tedious, but probably necessary work. I would apreciate furher comments regarding 1(a) FA criterion. Ruslik (talk) 15:05, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments on prose

As indicated earlier, I think this article is well-written, with few major prose issues. The following are mainly suggestions for improving the flow, losing redundancies, etc. One significant problem is raised in the "Civil rights" section.

• Lead
  • The first para would flow better if the first two (short) sentences were combined: "...an American jurist who served..."

• Early life
  • This sentence: "Harlan's family had, historically, been a politically active one" could, I think, be improved to "Historically, Harlan's family ad been politically active"
  • - And later, to avoid repetitions, you might say say "He (not Harlan) later attended two boarding schools in or near Toronto, Canada: Upper Canada College and Appleby College".
  • "reaching the rank of partner" could be shortened to "becoming a partner"
  • "he long served as chief assistant for Emory Buckner" - sounds archaic and clumsy. Also, I think you serve as assistant to, not for. How about: "...he acted for many years as chief assistant to Emory Buckner"?
  • In my experience, "Croix de Guerre" might be written thus, or as "Croix de guerre", but never as "croix de guerre".
  • In this context, "soon after the end of the war" is redundant - you've mentioned 1946.

• Supreme Court career
  • "for about one year" could (given the dates) be "for a year"
  • Shouldn't the nomination be to the United States Supreme Court, not just the "Supreme Court"?

• • Due process
  • I suggest the following, as a means of smoothing out the last pragraph: "Harlan's interpretation of the Due Process Clause attracted the criticism of Justice Black, who rejected the idea that the Clause included a "substantive" component, considering this interpretation unjustifiably broad and historically unsound".

• • Incorporation
  • "almost all..."? You list seven exceptions out of 26 (?) amendments. 19 out of 26 isn't really almost all.

• Criminal procedure
  • "...The court's moderate wing" - who defined this group as "moderate", on what basis?
  • "Harlan was the author of..." What does this mean? That he wrote the Court's opinion? If so, better clarify
  • I found the last paragraph unclear, especially "the test for determining whether governmemt conduct constituted a search" What kind of "search" are we suddenly talkng about? Unfortunately, I found Harlan's comments in the next sentence equally obscure.

• Civil rights
  • "...similar to his namesake" - would that be his grandfather?
  • This sentence is POV and non-encyclopedic (it reads as though imported from somewhere else): "He was a monumental judge during the civil righs movement, and if it hadn't been for his decisions of justice and equality, many rights given to minorities today would most likely be hard to imagine".
  • "He joined in..." Is this the same as "concurred"?

• Voting rights
  • "justiciable" - is there a more familiar word that could be used?

I've done a bit of comma work while reading through, and fixed the odd typo. My feeling expressed earlier, about the need to incease the number of references, was reinforced.

I hope you find these comments helpful. Please don't hesitate to contact me if any of my comments need clarification. Brianboulton (talk) 22:29, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, you review was extremly helpful. Ruslik (talk) 13:22, 29 September 2008 (UTC)