Wikipedia:Peer review/Taylor v. Beckham/archive1

Taylor v. Beckham

This peer review discussion has been closed.
It's been a while since I took anything to WP:FAC, and lest my skills get rusty, I started looking back through my GAs to see if any might be ready to make the leap. I think this one might qualify. Taylor v. Beckham was a 1900 Supreme Court case to resolve the disputed 1899 Kentucky gubernatorial election. I wrote this article from scratch in order to complete a featured topic on that election. I'm listing this for peer review for a couple of reasons: first, the prose probably needs some work in places, and I'd like some help finding those places; and second, I'm not a lawyer or anything resembling one, so there may be some areas where my terminology is wrong, or there may be some additional interesting points to this case that are missing, so a review by anyone with legal experience would be especially appreciated. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 16:03, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Comments from Laser brain

Lead

• Find out of it's standard to write about cases is the past or present tense. Clicking through some other random case pages, I see a mix of "was a case", "was a decision", "is a decision", etc.
  • I'll see what I can find out. I think the difference would be whether the decision still has implications. (e.g. "Brown v. Board of Education is a decision that struck down the idea of separate but equal" but this case "was a decision" that settled a past gubernatorial election.) Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 18:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
• "In the gubernatorial election, held on November 7, 1899, Taylor received 193,714 votes" Since you already wrote "gubernatorial election" in the last sentence, maybe this would be more elegant: "In November 7, 1899 election, Taylor received 193,714 votes"
  • Good suggestion. Done. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 18:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
• "exercising the authority of the governor's office" What are the rules for when to capitalize "Governor"? I would think here you are directly referring to the office and so it would be caps.
  • I'd consider it the same as "president". If it's a title (e.g. President Obama), it's capitalized. If it's the full name of the office (e.g. President of the United States), it's capitalized. But just in a sentence (e.g. Today, the president said blah, blah blah), it isn't. This would be an example of that last case, wouldn't it? Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 18:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
• "The suits were consolidated and heard in Jefferson County circuit court, which claimed it had no authority to interfere with the method of deciding contested elections prescribed by the state constitution, a decision that favored Beckham." Careful in your use of the term "decision" which has a very precise legal meaning. I'm not saying it isn't right, but to your point above, it would be helpful to get input from a legal person.
  • Yeah, I see where that might be problematic. I just changed it to "outcome". Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 18:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
• "Justice David J. Brewer, joined by Justice Henry B. Brown, contended that the Supreme Court did have jurisdiction, but concurred as to the result in favor of Beckham." How about "concurred with" rather than "concurred as to"?
  • Done. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 18:59, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Back with more later. --Laser brain (talk) 14:30, 13 September 2013 (UTC)