Talk:Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution/GA1

GA Review

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Initial thoughts

This is generally well written, clearly structured and interesting. Two main issues are:

• Lead needs to be a summary of the complete article; and no information should appear in the lead that does not also occur in the body text of the article.
• There are a range of important facts and views expressed in the article that lack in-line citations. I have attempted to tag these in the article itself.
• The in-line citations are not all following a consistent style, and retrieval dates are missing for some online material.
• "Controversy over ratification" section is odd. It has one long quote, followed by an isolated (and unsourced) sentence about a separate ratification dispute. This needs to be better integrated into the ratification section in general, and there needs to be a check on the balance / POV here. Is it the case that the Utah court's concerns are aberrant and lacking in legal substance? What do commentators say about this? The first sentence also seems unclear: what is meant by "...diverged from the habeas corpus issue in a case ..."? Finally, if these remarks by the court had no legal effect, and are isolated in the overall picture of american constitutional law, the most appropriate way to deal with them and keep the article balanced, may be to omit this altogether. i will leave that to the judgement of those with expertise in this area.

I will re-read it in coming days and add other points if i think other things need addressing. hamiltonstone (talk) 23:54, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

The lead

The issue I raised a couple of weeks ago still stands. I think the article in general actually needs an introduction to the topic as its first section AFTER the lead. That would comprise essentially what is currently the first and third paras of the lead. ie. The introduction section would read something like:

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution is one of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments that was first intended to secure the rights of former slaves. It was proposed on June 13, 1866 and ratified on July 9, 1868.

The other two Reconstruction Amendments are the Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery) and the Fifteenth Amendment (banning race-based voting qualifications). In The Slaughterhouse Cases (1872), dissenting Supreme Court Justice Swayne wrote, "Fairly construed, these amendments may be said to rise to the dignity of a new Magna Carta."

This would then be followed by the text of the amendment. Incidentally, the Justice Swayne quote needs a source. Once this intro to the main text is written, the lead then needs a slight re-write to be a summary of all major points in the article (max. 4 paras). hamiltonstone (talk) 04:45, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Not sure about how to wrap this up

• Having seen some work go on here, I am reluctant to fail this, and it has been improved. There remains insufficient references for statements, though it is nowhere near as bad as most of the US case law articles, some of which seem to cite nothing at all. The worst para for reference problems is the last - the one covering the fifth section of the Amendment.
• I also realised I missed something in my earlier review comments, which is my fault. The case law list at the end covers only cases relating to the first clause of the Amendment. If the list is to be there, it should be consistent, and cover all clauses. I will have a go at fixing it, but perhaps someone else could tidy up on this?

I will drop a note at main editors' pages. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:25, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Failing at GA

I'm going to fail this for now, since a fair amount of time has elapsed without the citation issue being addressed. I would be a willing GA reviewer for this article again if an editor wanted to ping me at my talk page when they wanted to put it forward once again, indicating that appropriate secondary sources had been founded and cited to deal with unsourced statements. I think it is a good article apart from this issue. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:45, 11 May 2009 (UTC)