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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hugo Black/archive1

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Hugo Black

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Self-nomination. It's a little long, but I think that this level of detail is necessary. - Emsworth 16:16, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Still support but prefer the lead portrait you had a couple of hours ago! Giano | talk 21:33, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Looks good to me. Well written, well laid out, references... all in order. Fieari 19:49, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Very good detail, left out nothing important. I suppose a couple more pictures might make it more attractive, but they're not essential and the article is it stands is complete and well-written. All our articles on Supreme Court Justices should be this complete. Andrew Levine 20:19, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Detailed and informative Nickhk
  • Conditional support. I went through and did a lot of prose polishing, but it still needs a little work. Too many sentences still begin with something like "For example ...," "Moreover ...," "Also ..." or something like "Justice Black ..." or "Hugo Black ...". It gets a little monotonous and an article about a judge cannot afford to be monotonous. The sentences need to flow from each other better still.
And I also think something could be done about the frequent "See ..." references. One, "(For more details about the trial, see the article on James Coyle)" is particularly egregious. We usually don't do things that way, and here you have a link to the Coyle article a few sentences above. It's completely unnecessary.
I put in a lot more links ... there were a great deal more the article could take advantage of which it didn't. Still, more of those redlinked SCOTUS decisions (particularly Torcaso, which I can't believe we don't have) should be turned blue. And especially Winship if it's that important to understanding the incorporation theory.
Lastly, I know finding pictures for a bio like this is difficult, but wouldn't it be better to illustrate his Senate career with a picture of Black as a senator, speaking or campaigning or something like that? As it is, FDR is only tangentially related and I get the feeling it was included mainly because someone wanted to put a picture there.
But get this fixed and we have a very valuable article about an important 20th century American. Daniel Case 05:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, did this go to peer review? Daniel Case 05:58, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you for your comments. I've done what I could to polish the article's prose; if any more is necessary, please say so. Moreover, I've removed most of the "See ..." references, replacing them with links; however, I thought that a few had to be retained. I'll see what I can do about the red links. There is a new picture in the "Senate career" section; although it does not show him actually speaking or campaigning, it does reflect his age at the time. And lastly, no, this article did not go to peer review. -- Emsworth
Looking better. It's too late for PR now but, for future reference, this would have helped work the kinks of the article before the FA nomination. Daniel Case 19:41, 19 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any article about Hugo Black which does not mention Gideon v. Wainwright is only pretending to be his biography, he carried the day on no more important case on SCOTUS.
  • The discussion of federalism is incoherent because no one involved in writing the article understood the distinction between cases involving the reach of federal power, as in the Commerce Clause cases like Wickard, and cases involving federalism, the balance between federal and state power.
  • The commentary on incorporation is often incorrect, since the Sixth Amendment has not been incorporated unless cases like Apodaca v. Oregon which differentiate constitutional limits on state and federal criminal procedure were reversed without being noticed by the legal community.
  • The discussion of substantive due process is utterly inept and unsurprisingly cites no sources beyond quoting Black opinions on points they hardly support
  • Most of the discussion of Black's jurisprudence is forbidden original research, no legal commentaries are cited and the references are almost all general biographies, not technical works, instead the authors give their own interpretations of Court decisions and Justices' opinions
  • If "most members" of the Court rejected Black's view that defamation laws were unconstitutional for abridging "freedom of speech," how do the authors explain NY Times v Sullivan, where the Court gutted defamation laws as abridging freedoms of speech/press, Black's view generally shared, though most others not so absolutist as he was -- as in related areas.
  • The idea that Black and Harlan were ideological opponents is ungodly silly, they had philosophical differences but shared core values
  • Black's contributions are discussed only to constitutional law, but he was influential in other important areas like antitrust law, which are ignored. Judge Magney
Hmm. I had some reservations about the jurisprudence section when I looked it over and copyedited it. I wondered about the absence of some of those cases myself. I wanted to ask the editors if they'd had someone with a legal background look this over; it seemed to draw entirely from the court cases he wrote opinions in. But since I was looking it over from a biographical perspective, I didn't think too closely (having written one legal article myself (Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.), I'm all too aware of the pitfalls).
I totally concur with Judge Magney's implication that the interpretations of Black's jurisprudence ought to be dependent on reliable legal sources like law review articles and books by law professors. Given the length of time he was on the court there ought to be tons. Certainly you can find someone who says what you want to say and put it on them. Or you might find something else to add to the article.
He's also right when he points out that, like every other Supreme Court Justice, Black's interpretations were hardly limited to constitutional law, and this is utterly ignored.
I will go further than my learned colleague the Judge and suggest, given these issues with this section, that a daughter article, something like Jurisprudence of Hugo Black, be spun off. If you adequately address the subject given these new concerns, the jurisprudence section will swallow the rest of the article. And if you compress that section to a summary in the current article with a "See ..." to the daughter article, you'll not only shorten up an article that still tells me it's too long when I open up the edit window, you can defer most of the issues Judge Magney raises to the daughter article and have a stronger FA candidate here.
Again, this is the sort of thing that could and should be taken care of at the peer-review level.
In light of these new issues I must join the Judge and change my vote to object for now. Daniel Case 05:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In response to some of the above objections:
There is no real distinction between the scope of federal power, and the balance between federal and state power. The two are, in essence, one and the same. Both boil down to one and the same issue: how much power does the federal government have? To suggest that the two need to be divided into separate sections strikes me as pedantic.
As to incorporation, the Sixth Amendment has at least been partly incorporated. That is to say, all of the underlying principles of that amendment (right to trial by an impartial jury, right to compulsory process, and so forth) have all become applicable to the states. Only a few specific limitations (that are mentioned nowhere in the amendment itself) are unincorporated, but I see nothing in the article which contradicts this view.
Obviously, the due process section only cites Black's own words. I would have imagined that his own words best explain his own positions.
The sentences are, "He rejected the idea that the government was entitled to punish "obscene" speech. Likewise, he argued that defamation laws abridged the freedom of speech and were therefore unconstitutional. Most members of the Supreme Court rejected both of these views." It is clear that most members of the Supreme Court rejected the view that "defamation laws ... were ... unconstitutional." NY Times v. Sullivan, as everyone knows, was decided on the principle that an actual malice standard was necessary, not on the principle that all libel laws were unconstitutional.
Do you suggest "philosophical opponents"?
I would oppose the idea that this article should be divided into two articles, one on biography and another on jurisprudence. If there are problems with the section, then they should be addressed here, not covered up by being sent off to another article. -- Emsworth
Comment. The editor who objected above that Black and Harlan were not ideological opponents is, very strictly speaking, correct. They were, however, jurisprudential or philosophical opponents. Their methods of interpreting the Constitution could not have been less alike. Black was an extreme textualist, and Harlan used a much less text-bound method of interpretation that relied on, for example, a "flexible" notion of due process. Hydriotaphia 15:22, 25 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • In any event, as I agree that this article concentrates solely on constitutional law, and not on statutory law, I withdraw the nomination. -- Emsworth
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