GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Article (
|
visual edit |
history) ·
Article talk (
|
history) ·
Watch
Reviewer: Display name 99 ( talk · contribs) 23:31, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
I am relatively inexperienced in reviewing good articles, but will do my best to help take care of this article. Anyone else who would like to join in is welcome to do so. I believe that the article can soon be made a good article, but there are several minor issues that I would like to see fixed prior to this occurring.
1. The section of the article recounting the decisions of lower-level courts that eventually led to the Supreme Court decision were rather long and, in my opinion, somewhat confusing. Section 3 of the GA Criteria, requiring that the article does not go into unnecessary detail, may mandate that this section of the article be revisited and shortened. There may need to be another article created from this to exclusively contain state and local-level decisions leading up to the Supreme Court decision. As it stands, I believe that this section is too long and confusing.
2. In the "Merits beliefs" section, the two questions that the Supreme Court was supposedly trying to address are unsourced.
3. I am somewhat confused about a statement under "Dissenting Opinions," in which the article states that certain justices wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by other justices. However, I was under the impression that each of the dissenting justices wrote their own opinions. The confusion may simply stem from a lack of knowledge on my part about how Supreme Court decisions work, but would someone please clarify this, either in the review or in the article?
4. Under the "Support section," there is an image of the White House being illuminated in rainbow colors, but there is nothing about that in the body of the text. I would recommend adding a bit about that with a source.
Please consider these revisions and notify me here once your work is complete. Display name 99 ( talk) 14:49, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you and I agree. I am also somewhat concerned about this section of "Majority opinion:"
"The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach," the Court declared, "a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity." [source] Citing Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court affirmed that the fundamental rights found in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause "extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices that define personal identity and beliefs," but the "identification and protection" of these fundamental rights "has not been reduced to any formula." As the Supreme Court has found in cases such as Loving v. Virginia, Zablocki v. Redhail, and Turner v. Safley, this extension includes a fundamental right to marry."
I am concerned that the final sentence could give the impression that the article is endorsing the Court's decision, and thereby violating the policy of neutrality. Perhaps it could be reworded to say that the Court came to the conclusion that the right of same-sex couples to marry was a part of the extension, rather than "realized" it, as is implied in the current version. Display name 99 ( talk) 22:56, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your response. However, I encourage you to take a closer look. The statement reads "As the Supreme Court has found..." Whenever someone says "As he said" or "As she said," it's generally presumed that the person will follow it with a statement agreeing with whatever that person said. It then reads, "this extension includes...," thereby indicating agreement with the Court's findings regarding the 14th Amendment. Even with the word "found" meaning what it does, the sentence does not seem neutral enough to me. Here is what I would suggest:
"The Court found, as it did in Loving v. Virginia, Zablocki v. Redhail, and Turner v. Safley, that this extension includes a fundamental right to marry."
I would also like to hear from the nominator. I have left a note on his/her talk page yesterday informing the user that the article was under review, but so far have heard nothing. Display name 99 ( talk) 00:00, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
You may alter slightly what I had written above if you choose. However, the Court did do some finding in Obergefell v. Hodges by determining that the right to marry applied to same-sex couples as well as other groups. Regardless, I will not pass the article should the current version stand. Display name 99 ( talk) 22:19, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
"Applying these established tenets, the Court has long held the right to marry is protected by the Constitution."The Court then cites Loving, Zablocki, and Turner as examples of cases in which the Court affirmed the principle that the right to marry is protected by the Constitution. As it is written now, the the sentence is a perfectly accurate description of the Court's ruling. The introductory clause of the sentence ("As the Supreme Court has found ...") is simply used to make a comparison -- a comparison that the Supreme Court made in its opinion, not one that Wikipedia would be making in its own voice (see Merriam-Webster's definition of the word "as"). Also, one quick note about the GA nominator: they have not been an active contributor to this article, and I believe they have only made a handful of edits. Antinoos69 has been the primary editor here since last July. -- Notecardforfree ( talk) 22:59, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for the note about the nominator. I am perfectly willing to work with whomever has been contributing the most to the article in order to improve it. In most cases, that is the GA nominator, but in this case it does not seem to be so. Regarding the sentence in question, I will quote it once more:
"As the Supreme Court has found in cases such as Loving v. Virginia, Zablocki v. Redhail, and Turner v. Safley, this extension includes a fundamental right to marry."
"This extension" is not referring to the Court's decisions in previous rulings, rather the 14th Amendment. Prior to this statement, the article quotes a ruling from another Court case in which the Court made a ruling regarding what the rights given in the Amendment "extend to." In then says, "as the Court has found," that the rights given by the Amendment include the right to marry, implicitly applying that to same-sex couples. It's basically saying:
"As the Supreme Court has found in cases such as Loving v. Virginia, Zablocki v. Redhail, and Turner v. Safley, the 14th Amendment gives gay people the right to marry."
If we can't agree on this, I can close the review and either you or Antinoos69 can renominate it immediately afterward and give someone else a chance to look at it, or invite someone else in now to mediate or, perhaps, finish the review himself. Display name 99 ( talk) 00:14, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
"The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations."(388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967)).
"More recent decisions have established that the right to marry is part of the fundamental "right of privacy" implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause."(434 U.S. 374, 384 (1978)).
"[T]he decision to marry is a fundamental right under Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U. S. 374 (1978), and Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967)"(482 U.S. 78, 95 (1987)).
With all respect, I have decided to withdraw myself from the review process of this article. I have placed the failed good article template on the talk page. I encourage you to renominate it and work with whomever else will review it to see what should and should not be done. I placed the failed template on the talk page so that another reviewer would not pass this article by on the nominations page, believing that it was already being reviewed. Thank you for your efforts to improve this article. Display name 99 ( talk) 22:30, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
I apologize for failing to take into account dates of seniority when I marked the article as having "Failed." I was simply concerned that someone reviewing it might pass it by, thinking that it was already under review when it actually was not. I'm sorry for the confusion. Display name 99 ( talk) 01:21, 17 January 2016 (UTC)