Talk:Lafler v. Cooper

Lafler v. Cooper has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: July 3, 2018. (Reviewed version).

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A fact from Lafler v. Cooper appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 April 2018 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that when dissenting from the US Supreme Court decision in Lafler v. Cooper, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the Court had elevated "plea bargaining from a necessary evil to a constitutional entitlement"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2018/April. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Lafler v. Cooper.

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GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Lafler v. Cooper/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Barkeep49 (talk · contribs) 15:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

Review

A sentence summarizing the reception section seems like it would help to achieve MOS:LEADREL
- Added.
Does it make sense to add in the lawyers who were part of this case, particularly for Woods?
- There's no one on this case called Woods – do you mean Anthony Cooper's lawyer, Valerie R. Newman?
Are dates of the appeals to the Michigan appeals and/or state court available? Help to give context as to the timeline of the case.
- Added.
Per MOS:NOTSEEALSO the See Also section doesn't seem necessary
- Removed.
A picture of Wood isn't necessary but if one is available would be a plus for the article.
- There's no good picture of Cooper that I've found. There are sketches of the argument available ([1]), but I don't think they'd meet NFCC.

Discussion

I'm a little backlogged at the moment (have work on my own GA nom and need to finish a long areview) but am committed to doing this review. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@L235:I have completed my read of the article and one thing jumped out perhaps because I haven't done a GA review of a Supreme Court case before. I worry about OR/NPOV given that the sourcing of this article seems heavily reliant on the Lafler decision and associated dissents (and to a lesser extent other cases like Strictland). In some places, like the Michigan Trial court section the Lafler decision is acting as a secondary source, so no problem. However I would suggest that in several other places, when not a source for a particular quote, that more secondary sources would benefit the article to avoid any OR and to ensure that both aspects of criteria 3 are met. In looking at similar articles listed as FA, a balance between the decision and secondary sources seems to be the case in most. Obviously GA is a lower standard than FA but still a useful point of comparison. I am open to response and comment on this point, which is why I'm posting it here rather than in the review section. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:51, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Barkeep49: (Just FYI I didn't get your ping.) I will go through and add more secondary sources. It seems to me that it's the "Opinion of the Court" and "Dissents" sections that are problematic under that analysis, where outside sources would be better for demonstrating what the Court said (where there might be SYNTH concerns with citing the Court directly). That shouldn't take long, and certainly many reputable secondary sources exist (the consensus of which agrees with the current article text). (Listing them for my use later: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] and the dissent, among others: [7].) One thing to consider is that many of the cites are actually providing attributions for quotes, and that it's actually fairly well-sourced otherwise.

Just want to note – law articles I think are generally are fine with using the opinions as a source, even in substance, because they tend to be quite reliable and contain lots of context. The first SCOTUS GA I saw, Abramski v. United States, is an (extreme) example of this – I wouldn't say that GA is a good example, but I'd wager Lafler is already significantly better-sourced. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 23:12, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@L235: Hopefully this pings you. Thanks for your response. I know just enough about legal sources to know how much I don't know which is why I threw this out there the way that I did. One other place where it would be nice to have a secondary source weigh in is in background; identifying that Strickland really is the right previous case (and only correct previous case) to cite. This might already be present in the Ineffective assistance of counsel article which I haven't really examined. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:31, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Barkeep49: Will do. (The Ineffective assistance of counsel also looks like it needs some work; the seven references it gives are all primary... yikes. The to-do list grows

) Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 01:55, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've added more secondary cites to the "Ineffective assistance of counsel" section, and I'm working on the rest. Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 00:01, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just noting that this is at the top of my to-do list and will be done hopefully within 24 hours. BEst, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 06:26, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've added more secondary sources and removed some quotes that haven't been cited as central in more secondary sources, rewriting them to be based only on the news sources. Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 20:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- It looks good. Thanks for your work and congrats - I am going ahead and passing the article. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:10, 3 July 2018 (UTC) P.S. I don't know why I called him Wood instead of Cooper. Sorry about the confusion[reply]