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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by SandyGeorgia 00:26, 31 January 2009 [1].

Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937

[edit]
Nominator(s): Foofighter20x (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article because...

  • It's an important event in U.S. history, both in respect to government and law.
  • Its anniversary it approaching soon (Feb 5).
  • It would be nice if people understood this event better, as the conventional account most people learn in high school is grossly oversimplified and inaccurate. Foofighter20x (talk) 22:26, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note This was not submitted at WP:FAC until 22 January, in this edit. Maralia (talk) 06:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah... Sorry about that. Sort of dropped the ball there. :o Foofighter20x (talk) 11:02, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -

  • You've mixed using the Template:Citation with the templates that start with Cite such as Template:Cite journal or Template:Cite news. They shouldn't be mixed per WP:CITE#Citation templates.
  • Current note 26 (National Industrial Recovery...) is lacking a publisher
  • Current ref 95 is lacking a publisher (Fireside chats isn't really the publisher, it's the FDR library that's publishing it.)
  • Current ref 84 (Kammen...) is lacking a page number
  • Decide if you want last names firt or first names first on the refs, you have some of both (although most are last names).
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. I'll note that given our backlog it's extremely unlikely this will pass by 5 Feb. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed the ones I could. Eusebeus added the Kammen cite, so he'll need to grab the page numbers for that. Also, publisher is not a parameter of the {{cite episode}} template, but I put it in there anyway... fixed the few others that use citation instead of cite <whatever>. However, I'm not sure if you meant those, or the aligned cites Eusebeus added. From that confusion, I changed all the aligned cites I found to match the rest of the article, which are one-line wrapped. Foofighter20x (talk) 21:20, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed the last stray {[tl|citation}} and it's clean now. Just awaiting the last page number. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:24, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I dug up the Kammen work on Google books. Some of the pages are not included (only of the latter page numbers cited), so I put a page range upon the likely spots where I think Eusebeus got the cite. Foofighter20x (talk) 22:04, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Biggest MOS issue I see is WP:DASH, court decisions should use en dashes, not hyphens, e.g. 5–4, not 5-4. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:31, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Interesting article, but there are some issues that need to be addressed:

  1. Ironically, a minor aspect of Roosevelt's New Deal agenda itself may have directly precipitated the showdown between the Roosevelt administration and the Supreme Court. Redundant sentence, which adds nothing to the article. Ironically is a peacock word.
    Not so important. Ruslik (talk) 15:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  2. I noticed that you do not use 3 level headings. What is the reason for this? I suggest changing 4 level headings to 3 level.
  3. The first paragraph in Roosevelt's Justice Department subsection' is redundant as well. It conveys no information and sounds just as a legal commentary. I suggest removing it.
    I restructured this section my self. Ruslik (talk) 15:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  4. The challenges to Roosevelt's New Deal legislation and the administration's court-packing measures implicated this larger debate, the undercurrents of which extended back to the early years of the 20th century. Another redundant sentence.
  5. This debate spilled over into the realm of constitutional law, raising the issue of the so-called Living Constitution, a judicial and ideological disagreement which persists to the present day. This sentence probably needs to be moved to the next paragraph. Please, clarify the relationship between the Living constitution concept and view of constitutional jurisprudence which sees the U.S. Constitution as a static, universal, and general document which was not designed to change over time. The article needs better summary of this important debate.
    Done myself. Ruslik (talk) 15:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Please, add the date when Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan was decided (the date is in the table, but should be mentioned in the text as well).
  7. Hughes believed the primary objection of the Supreme Court to New Deal legislation was its poorly drafted legislation. (in the caption). I think the first legislation should be removed, because the sentence sounds strange to me.
  8. Hughes also renewed an old line of cases concerning the "stream of commerce" and the direct/indirect effect doctrine of analysis for determining whether transactions were within the reach of congressional commerce authority. You should either remove this sentence or clarify what it means.
  9. Cummings's omission of preventing the proposal of poorly drafted New Deal legislation authored by the administration is considered his greatest failure as Attorney General.(caption) Very complicated sentence. I suggest 'The greatest failure of Cumming was poorly drafted New Deal legislation'.
  10. I think the description of every case should contain at least a year when it was decide and the vote (see 6 above).
  11. with Roosevelt inquiring about both the rate at which the Supreme Court denied certiorari and the case of Ex parte McCardle, which limited the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. You should clarify why the rate at which the Supreme Court denied certiorari was so important.
  12. Still confident that he could win the public's backing despite opinion polls that indicated majority opposition, Roosevelt ignored much of the criticism. Please, provide a citation to this statement.
  13. 'Hughes letter' is a short stubby subsection that should be merged with its parent section.
  14. Further, the decision worked to hinder Roosevelt's push for the court reform bill, decreasing the desire in the public to change in the Supreme Court. This is a strange statement. The article just said the court packing plan had no support of public, did not it? It now claims that the decision decreased the desire in the public. You should clarify here what was the public opinion.
  15. On June 14, the committee issued a scathing report that called FDR's plan "a needless, futile and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle... without precedent or justification". Please, provide a citation for this statement.
  16. The first paragraph in 'Floor debate' subsection needs a citation as well.
  17. The general problem of the article is overuse of peacock terms (blunder, scathing, humiliating political defeat). The use of such words makes the article look like political manifesto, not as an encyclopedic article.
  18. Weasel words like also are also (!) overabundant, and the prose needs polishing.

Ruslik (talk) 15:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  1. It's not redundant. The sentence right before that is a photo caption.
  2. I've changed these, but I used lvl 4 headers as the lvl 3s appear a little overwhelming.
  3. I disagree. This is vital to why this entire episode happened. What test cases are brought up through the lower courts can greatly influence how the SCOTUS will rule on constitutional matters. It wasn't just that the New Deal was poorly written, it was also that the lawyers responsible for its advocacy in Court were either incompetent or ideologically opposed to it, or both.
  4. Agreed.
  5. Moved the sentence, but didn't thoroughly rewrite. How about you try to tackle this one, as you seem to have something particular in mind? Just be careful not to add details which the sources don't support. Hit me up on my talk page if you have questions.
  6. Done.
  7. Done.
  8. Comment tagged it until I can revise this.
    Fixed this.
  9. Reworded this. Your suggested caption won't do as it implies Cummings wrote the legislation instead of merely failing to stop its going to Congress.
  10. Done.
  11. Done.
  12. Eusebeus added this one. He'll need to tackle it.
  13. Done, sort of. Removed heading; the rest is unchanged.
  14. Done.
  15. Will get back to you on this one. It was from either Leuchtenburg or McKenna, I think.
    Fixed this.
  16. Ditto.
  17. Sorry you feel that way about this, but this is how the stark majority of historical scholarship portrays this event. Damned historiographers. :p :)
  18. Tweak it. Dive in. Be Bold!

Foofighter20x (talk) 17:28, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the quick answer, I will review your fixes tomorrow when I have more time. Ruslik (talk) 12:57, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Two last issues still remain. The language should be encyclopedic. Ruslik (talk) 15:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is all that's left going to hold up the FA status? I wouldn't think it needs to be absolutely perfect. One or two very minor issues shouldn't hold this up, you know? Foofighter20x (talk) 07:13, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose I think this is an excellent article and I salute Foofighter's solid and extensive work to provide outstanding sourcing. I have checked the source material closely and some of my initial skepticism about the points made in the article were quickly eroded as I discovered that the scholarly consensus from ca. 1970 has changed substantially over the last decades. Moreover, this is an important topic in America history and one that speaks very directly to how modern US society took shape in the wake of the New Deal. It thus is richly deserving of a strong article. I therefore started in on a detailed copy-edit (http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=en&wikifam=.wikipedia.org&grouped=on&page=Judiciary+Reorganization+Bill+of+1937) to improve the prose quality & organisation. I got through roughly the first third before time constraints kicked in. My oppose vote is explained by the prose quality of the remaining text, which as it stands needs to be improved before this is ready for FA. When I have more time, I will be happy to continue the copy-editing I started, but even the first third took me many hours and I am unable to provide the kind of detailed attention that this needs to be brought up to encyclopedic quality. I would refer editors also to the comments (point #9) about the sources used. McKenna is an ok source, but as editors will note the small number of reviews (2) spawned by her book suggest it is on the slighter side of scholarship (as opposed to Leuchtenberg - links to reviews at JSTOR in the archived comments). (As just one example, the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government was not discussed in McKenna, a serious elision). This means that the article may need some additional sourcing, even if that requires no more than going back ad fontes for some of McKenna's assertions (e.g. the line about Roosevelt's subterfuge). I added in some of these additional refs for the first third, but more would be salutary throughout.
  • For the TLDR crowd: prose needs more work and additional sources could be adduced given the current reliance on a work that is fairly slight in the prevailing scholarship. Foofighter has done an outstanding job, but this is not quite FA quality yet. Eusebeus (talk) 15:05, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Cool beans, dude. Maybe next year. :) Foofighter20x (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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