Wikipedia:Peer review/Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1863/archive1

Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1863

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I've listed this article for peer review because I might be missing things with regard to completeness, my citation styles might be wrong, and I can always use help when it comes to writing style.

Thanks, RJC ^Talk_Contribs 05:31, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The prose looks great; didn't spot any glaring typos or grammar errors.
I would feel more comfortable with the "Provisions" section if it had a citation or citations to a plain-English summary of the bill, since legalese is hard to decipher for me (and I presume a good portion of the general public), not to mention 19th-century legalese.
The "Subsequent case law" section could also use a citation or two.
In general, it would be nice to include some online-available sources, or even book sources, as these will be more accessible to the general public.
That's just a few comments after a quick read. Let me know if you have any questions -RunningOnBrains^(talk) 00:01, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: I agree with all of the comments above. Thanks for you work on this interesting article, and here are some additional suggestions for improvement.

A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. There are many FAs at Category:FA-Class legal articles, some of which seem like they would be useful model articles for this one.
Biggest problem I see with this article is a lack of references and the fact that the references used are all essentially primary sources (from the 37th COngress that passed the act).
Article needs more references, for example the whole first paragraph of the Background section has no refs (but needs them) and the whole Subsequent case law section is also without refs. Presumably some standard histories of the Civil War would be useful here.
I would cite the Provisions section to the online text of the law itself.
I would avoid short (one or two sentence) paragraphs where possible, by combining them with others or perhaps expanding them. So Provisions could see several short paragraphs combined.
My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
References should wherever possible be from reliable independent thid-party sources. See WP:CITE and WP:V and WP:RS
I think for completeness there should be more examples of how the law was used. My recollection is that habeas corpus was suspended in Kentucky, for example.
The lead should be a complete summary of the whole article - the law no longer being in effect with the end of the war should be in there, for example.
I would try to include some free images in the article - there are many of Lincoln, for example.
WP:See also says in general not to repeat links in See also which are already linked in the article itself.
Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:12, 6 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]