Template:Did you know nominations/Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:44, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District

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... that the U.S. Supreme Court held in Givhan v. Western Line Consol. Sch. Dist. that what her principal called a schoolteacher's "petty and unreasonable demands" of him were protected by the First Amendment?

Reviewed: Edward L. Moyers

Created by Daniel Case (talk). Self nominated at 17:35, 1 March 2014 (UTC).

QPQ done. Article new and long enough. As for the hook, Ii can't see the sentence "petty and unreasonable demands" in the Supreme Court section. This seems to be an allegation by the school and not necessarily a statement the Supreme court agreed with. As for sources, it's mainly an interview with Bessie Givhan which includes some legal commentary, plus court papers from the case and other cases. Court papers are, I believe, primary sources so I what I miss is more secondary sources; legal literature, media reports from the case. At least, I would like to see some comments on this. Also, I don't find that the "underlying dispute" is perfectly summarized in the lede. The lede for instance says she complained sometimes "angrily and bitterly", without citations. The section about the underlying dispute mainly points out that the two parties held different views: Givhan portrais her complaints as reasonable (and the label as "hostile" as unfair), while the school portrays her as unreasonable and hostile. Regards, Iselilja (talk) 23:48, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I still haven't finished the article, and I have recognized that the description of the underlying dispute may need a little more work. As for extra sources, yes, I will be getting to some law review articles soon.

As for the primary sources issue, I believe that we have so far only made it policy (in somewhat confusing language, to be sure) that trial transcripts can't be used as sources for BLP information (however, as had been noted in discussions, that doesn't seem to apply to the final decisions of courts—if they're good enough for at least some governments to rely on to forcibly deprive people of their money, freedom and sometimes their lives, they certainly should be good enough for us to use as sources). But this isn't a BLP article here ...

The use of legal documents as sources in our articles is discussed here, although only as an essay, and this observation is also worth reading. I strongly believe in an article about a case itself, we should be given greater latitude when using the case as a source because, as one of those essays points out in a footnote, there is a difference in the degree to which trial and appellate court opinions (when both are available) are primary sources by our terms. Daniel Case (talk) 00:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I have reworded the hook slightly to make the source of the wording clear. Daniel Case (talk) 16:11, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for being late. Thanks for your information and links. I will look into it a bit and come back shortly (within a day) to either finish the review or hand it over for new review if it is too complicated for me. You absolutely seem to know what you are doing. Regards, Iselilja (talk) 14:15, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the article looks very fine and of high quality. But I'll hand it over to someone else for review since I am still a bit unsure about how the policy about WP:OR and use of primary versus secondary sources applies to articles on law cases. Sorry for delaying and complicating this review; hopefully I can learn something to later. Regards, Iselilja (talk) 17:49, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I think this article and the sourcing for the hook fact are acceptable for DYK, but I am sympathetic to User:Iselilja's concern. I think this is acceptable largely because the synopses of U.S. Supreme Court cases and decisions are written so as to be widely understood, so they are less problematic as sources than the typical court document would be. Additionally, I think the findings of fact in court decisions are generally reliable sources for the facts behind a court case. Accordingly, I see reasonable support for the hook content. However, it is also true that articles about court decisions generally are based far more on secondary sources than is this article -- particularly when the articles comment on the broader implications of the decision. There doesn't seem to have been as much published about this decision than is typical, but in my online explorations I did find http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/885 , several books (e.g., [1]), and a couple of NY Times articles from 1978 and 1979. I'm sure there's more to be found in law reviews, etc. The article would benefit from citations to those kinds of secondary sources.

Additionally, I find the hook wording to be unwieldy, and I don't like the abbreviations in the title. I recommend rewording (as well as adding that the decision was unanimous):

ALT1 ... that, in a unanimous decision in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court held that complaints by a teacher that her principal described as "petty and unreasonable demands" were protected under the First Amendment?
ALT1A ... that, in a unanimous decision in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court held that complaints by a teacher that her principal described as "petty and unreasonable demands" were protected free speech? --Orlady (talk) 02:49, 17 March 2014 (UTC)