User:Jerichorajninger/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Legal history

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I am interested in law and legal history. What I found most interesting on my first read was the combination of both state and religious laws across the world.

Evaluate the article
Lead:

The first sentence of this lead is clear and concise — perhaps a little bit too concise, as it does not provide much of an explanation of "legal history" beyond what is self-evident in the term. The brevity of the first sentence is followed up effectively by a detailed and specific second sentence. Still the information in the lead is rather different compared to the article, which really focuses more on specific geographical locations and categories of legal history without analyzing the study of legal history itself. Overall, I think the lead does a successful job of both defining legal history and providing the intellectual context and groundwork necessary to understand the motivations behind the field of study. It could be a little more concise and cleanly written — there are a few wordy sentences that are difficult to follow.

Content:

I think it's a little odd that this article decides to explore legal history in terms of location, because there will inevitably be places that are left out. For example, this article neglects to mention legal history in South and Central America, or of indigenous peoples in the United States — old civilizations that likely have traditions and institutions to consider. This article also has a significant focus on both Europe and Christianity, with much less space dedicated to other peoples and cultures. That is one clear place this article can be improved. It is also unclear sometimes if the article is about the legal histories of different places and cultures, or about the study of those legal histories (given that the page is in the "Academic discipline" category). That is something that, I think, can be further clarified in the content of the article.

Tone and balance:

This article seems to do a good job of maintaining a neutral perspective — it's informative without editorializing. The lead considers the analyses and theories of a spectrum of historians on the meaning and purpose of legal history. It does brush over topics of colonization rather quickly and frames events of colonization as acts that happened (passive) rather than were perpetrated (active). I think this could be read as favoring colonizer viewpoints over indigenous ones. Still, overall, the content in this article is quite straightforwardly informative.

Sources and references:

This article has an abundance of citations — almost every line is attributed to a source, which is the sign of a well-supported article. That said, there are a couple sections — for example, "Modern European Law" and "The United States — without any citations at all. This is worrying and leads me to doubt, at least in part, the authenticity and efficacy of those passages. Many of the sources the article does cite are also the same. For example, virtually all of the information in the section on East Asia is attributed to the same source. This shows a rather narrow scope of research that could be further expanded. Additionally, sentences like this — "After colonialism, the major faiths that stayed were Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism." — are not attributed, which is concerning.

Organization and Writing Quality:

Overall, the writing is clear. I am curious as to why the sections in the article were chosen. It seems like only some geographical locations and some religions and cultures are included in the discussion of legal history. Of course, one cannot include the entire world in one Wikipedia article. But the division of the article into both places and cultures — oriented at the same sub-categorical level — reads a little funny.

Images and Media:

The images on this page could be significantly improved. While it is difficult to obtain images of some of the content (given that many of the institutions and objects mentioned are thousands of years old), I think the article could include more meaningful and prominent media. The pictures of the Constitution of India, as well as the Magna Carta, are poorly placed and rather small. That said, they are well-captioned and effectively explain the significance of the scenes they depict.

Talk page discussion:

Talk page users seem concerned with similar parts of the article as I am — namely, the lack of expansive citations and also a lack of deep information on a variety of understandings of legal history. The article is rated Start-class, and is included within the scope of WikiProject Law and WikiProject History.

Overall Impressions:

I think this article requires a more expansive illumination of legal history and more expansive reference list that sites a wider breadth of reliable sources. Sentences that should have citations (but don't) should also be reevaluated. Given that the article is Start-Class, it's clear the content is lacking in many respects, particularly in scope. To improve and expand this article, information on more geographical locations and cultures — as well as more information on non-European, non-Christian legal history — will be important.