User:APG2000/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Randy Barnett
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.

Barnett is a legal scholar and author who has been covered in some of the classes I've taken at UAlbany. I've also read some of his works on my own and have found him to be quite influential on my thinking.

Lead

 * Guiding questions

The article has a somewhat concise introductory sentence - it is very brief, stating only that "Randy Evan Barnett (born February 5, 1952) is an American legal scholar and lawyer." I could envision it saying in addition to this "...who has appeared multiple times before the Supreme Court and has written several books on constitutional theory and history. All descriptions of major sections are included, and nothing appears that is not present in the article. I think, overall, it's sufficiently concise: it describes Barnett's biography and his major academic contributions.

Content

 * Guiding questions

The article's content appears directly relevant to the topic - it focuses exclusively on Barnett's life and work. It seems a little unbalanced in certain spots, however. It devotes a ton of space to one of Barnett's projects, the "Bill of Federalism", of which I was not even aware before engaging with this article. It does not engage to nearly the same extent some of Barnett's other work outside of constitutional theory, which strikes me as just as important. This might just be subjective and nit-picky on my part, however. In terms of it being up to date, it's not perfect. One thing that sticks out to me is that it does not include in the bibliography Barnett's latest book, "An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know", which came out in 2019. This would be something that I'd say the article is missing, along with some other articles Barnett has written which do not appear in the bibliography section. Especially given that "Contract theory" is one of the article's headings, I think it should include some of Barnett's work on this.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions

The article is basically neutral; the criticism section, however, is pretty sparse, mentioning criticism from only one other fellow libertarian theorist. I would be surprised if there was not some criticism from the Left out there which could be included in this section, which might make it a little more balanced overall. Nothing that is written appears heavily biased towards one particular section, but I think some of what is omitted could reasonably give an impression of bias. Including criticism from elsewhere might give the article a more rounded appearance.

Even given this, I don't think the article appears to persuade the reader in favor of any particular position. It presents Barnett's ideas in as neutral a fashion as can be expected.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?

Not all facts are backed up. The section on "Contract theory" does not cite any of Barnett's articles when referencing his views. Neither does the article cite any sources when it comes to Barnett's family info - though I'm not sure as though there would really be anything out there about this, or that a citation is even really that essential here.

The sources that the article does provide, though, seem to address a sufficiently wide range of literature. Again, given that this is an article about an individual, we might expect that the truth of a good deal of the information isn't contested. The sources aren't very current; I don't see much from the past 10 years. However, I'm not sure as though this is really a problem, as this is a page about an individual, not a topic on which new literature is being produced with frequency - say, a cutting edge scientific topic.

All the links appear functional - I clicked on ten or so.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?

I think the article is well-written - there isn't any language that particularly confused me, and I like how the author(s) wove in block quotes at several strategic points. No grammatical or spelling errors. In terms of organization, it makes quite a long discursion into a topic that I wouldn't have expected, but I don't know as though this really detracts from the article as a whole. At worst, it draws some attention away from the other topics, but the relative importance of these topics is open for debate.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions

There are no images included in the article, besides a picture of Barnett himself. I can think of a few that might be inserted and would enhance the article: a picture of the cover of one of Barnett's books, or a picture of Barnett outside the Supreme Court (I recall my professor showing us this image two semesters ago.) The one image that is included is not captioned with the year it is from, and to be honest, it looks a little outdated. This image seems to adhere to copyright rules, as clicking on it reveals that it comes from the Wikimedia Commons.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions

Three things stuck out from the talk pages. First, one person was quite frank: "This guy is not *that* important to warrant an article of this length and depth. This reeks of self-promotion." I don't know as though I entirely agree with this; it doesn't appear to be that much longer than other articles talking about people of similar academic stature.

Second, someone wrote concerning the balance of the article that it is "also VERY one sided....there is ONLY a discussion of libertarian vs federalist/conservative....inside baseball stuff." I would have to agree with this; there is no mention of libertarian versus left. Whatever the authors of the articles think of the merits of that side, I think it would be useful to contextualize some of Barnett's ideas within a wider landscape.

Third, someone argued that the section on the Bill of Federalism deserved its own article. I would probably agree with this as well - I mentioned earlier in this post that its length seemed kind of out of place.

The article seems to indicate that it is part of a series on "Libertarianism in the United States." I found it through a WikiProject search of libertarian legal theorists.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions

I think the article overall is sufficient for what it needs to do - namely, give background on an academic who works mainly on libertarian legal theory and constitutional jurisprudence. I think it could be improved by beefing up Barnett's bibliography a little bit, along with rounding out the criticism section, and perhaps also by trimming down one of the lengthy sections in the middle that appears to go too in depth on one particular project of Barnett.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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 * Link to feedback: Talk:Randy Barnett

I added the heading titled "Bibliography?"