Talk:Carrie Campbell Severino

Did you know nomination

The following 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 Theleekycauldron (talk) 21:19, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

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• ... that legal activist Carrie Campbell Severino, who co-authored a book about Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, was once a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas? Source: [1] "“Justice on Trial” .. was co-written by Severino, a former law clerk for Thomas who runs the Judicial Crisis Network
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Gertrude Hart

Created by Publius In The 21st Century (talk) and HouseOfChange (talk). Nominated by HouseOfChange (talk) at 20:23, 5 March 2022 (UTC).

• Review is underway. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:46, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
• Article:
  1. The article meets the newness criterion.
  2. The article meets the length criterion.
  3. The article has some policy issues:
     • The article seems to be relatively neutral, though the pull-quotes from particular sources in the section that reviews her book likely doesn't give due weight across the board (the review published in WaPo is given more space than the other three reviews combined, though there isn't anything special about WaPo that makes it more weighty). Ordinarily I wouldn't hold up a DYK because of this alone, but combined with the issues below, this needs to be fixed. It's generally better to paraphrase sources and cite them with inline attribution rather than to pull an extensive amount of quotes. And, when attributing a quote to a particular entity, it's best practice to attribute it to the author of the piece rather than the publication in which the piece appeared when dealing with opinion or analysis pieces. Also, don't use scarequotes, as they appear to cast doubt in Wikipedia's voice.
     • The article does cite sources with inline citations. However, this is a WP:BLP, so the use of self-published sources such as blogs and social media pages is generally prohibited except under narrow circumstances. The Medium post by Christine Grimaldi has to go. Additionally, WP:RSP#Linkedin should only be cited as a source in a biography when they are verified accounts or if the user's identity is confirmed in some other way (i.e. by a reliable source saying that the account is indeed hers). If when you subtract the Medium post and the Linkedin page, there is no other reliable secondary source, then that detail probably deserves closer examination as to whether or not it is WP:DUE in the article. Additionally, satire is not a reliable source. On top of that, there are several claims that fail verification based on the sources currently in the article:
       1. Severino and Judicial Crisis Network enlisted support from what Severino called a "war room" of pro-Catholic and pro-business advocacy groups including the Susan B. Anthony List, Catholic Vote, America First Policies, the Club for Growth and Heritage Action is not fully supported by the cited sources. the piece in The Hill does not mention "war room", nor does the piece in Washington Examiner. Neither source mentions Catholic Vote, Club for Growth, nor Heritage Action. You need to either remove the details that fail verification or add reliable sources that support including those details.
       2. The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) is an American conservative advocacy organization closely affiliated with judicial activist Leonard Leo and with the Federalist Society is based on this Washington Post article. I'm going to push back on the use of the source for that exact sentence. I think it's a fair conclusion to reach that the two are aligned, but it's WP:OR to say that JCN' is an affiliate of FedSoc. The source gives explicit descriptions of the proximity of the two offices and the ties in leadership, but it doesn't explicitly go that far. The closest the source goes is the group that has office space on the same hall as the Federalist Society, so another source is going to be needed to support closely affiliated with... Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, especially since WaPo even notes that The ties between JCN and Leo are opaque.
       3. was widely reported and discussed appears to be WP:OR based upon the fact that the three sources mention it. If none of the sources explicitly say that the quote was widely reported (or something substantially the same), then that's WP:OR.
       4. This one might be a bit of a nitpick, but Both Severinos are conservative Roman Catholics is probably better rendered as Both Severinos are conservative Catholics. The "Roman" is generally accepted for members of the Latin Church, but is generally not used to describe Eastern Catholics (who are also Catholics). The NY Times article notes that they are conservative Catholics, but it doesn't go beyond that. Absent sources that explicitly specify that she and her husband are members of the Latin Church or refer to them as "Roman Catholics", "Roman" should be dropped.
     • The article is free of copyright violations (per Earwig's copyvio detector).
• Hook:
  1. The hook meets formatting guidelines.
  2. The hook meets content guidelines.
• Other:
  1. The nomination meets the QPQ requirement.
  2. Image guidelines are not applicable to this nomination.
• Overall: not yet. There need to be substantial fixes made before this will pass the criteria. — Mhawk10 (talk) 18:28, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

  @Mhawk10: for this detailed and helpful critique of the article! I have tried to improve the article accordingly. I re-worded the book review section, removed LinkedIn as a source, and reduced Medium to being a source for her growing up in Western Michigan, which is an acceptable use of self-published source.

  1. Oops, a NYT piece cited elsewhere in the bio was the source of details including the "war room" wording, I added it as a reference to the paragraph.[2]
  2. I re-worded and added more RS that link Leo, Federalist Society, and JCN[3]
  3. I re-worded to avoid OR, is this better? [4] The satire in WaPo is not used as as RS for any facts except its own existence as a commentary, clearly labeled "opinion," on Severino's use of the word "horseplay."
  4. I replaced [[Roman Catholic]] with [[Catholic Church|Catholic]], does this meet your objection?

  Again, thanks for your helpful suggestions, which made the article better. Let me know if the article needs further changes. HouseOfChange (talk) 03:50, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

  • Hi! I'll take another look through and let you know. — Mhawk10 (talk) 17:39, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Most of the changes look good! There are still a few issues that are holding it up:
    1. WP:BLPSPS is very specific that never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets—as sources of material about a living person except in an WP:ABOUTSELF manner. Never means never, so the Medium-published piece needs to go.
    2. I apologize for not catching this one earlier, but She was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for a year (2007–2008). She later spent time at Georgetown University Law Center with an Olin/Searle Fellowship, an award funded by the Federalist Society that "offers top young lawyers with a scholarly bent the opportunity to spend 1-2 years to write and develop their scholarship with the goal of entering the legal academy." is not supported by this page, which does not mention her. To include this content, find sources that explicitly say she had the fellowship. Also, you'll need to include a source that she clerked for Thomas.
    3. In 2022, JCN's "About" page lists Severino as its only staff member, describing her role as "chief counsel and policy director." is correct and cited, but it's to a https://judicialnetwork.com/about/ primary source]. I'm not really sure that this sort of thing is WP:DUE without a reliable secondary source describing it (previously, the Medium-published source was that source).
    4. Severino and Judicial Crisis Network pledged to spend $10 million makes it seem like Severino used her own money in the pledge. It might be better to say Severino announced that Judicial Crisis Network would commit to spending $10 million to clarify this.
    5. was reported and discussed by publications including Mother Jones, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker is true and sourced, but all of those sources are primary sources in this context. Stringing together a bunch of primary sources to make what is the prose equivalent of a novel list of publications that covered the comments is WP:OR. It's better just to say what the comments were, as well as to use reliable sources that report reactions to it, when providing coverage of the comments.
    6. The twitter account cited is not verified and is wholly redundant to the Slate piece, so it should probably be removed. That being said, the statement is reliably sourced to the Slate piece, so this won't hold up a DYK pass if it isn't fixed, but I wanted to note it.
  • — Mhawk10 (talk) 22:49, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: I believe I have fixed all the issues you mention, including reducing the number of criticisms of her horseplay comment to one. The John Olin Award is the same thing as what the FedSoc calls the Olin/Searle Award, as the RS cited for Severino's winning it makes clear. HouseOfChange (talk) 00:03, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• @HouseOfChange: looks good to me! This is ready for DYK. — Mhawk10 (talk) 00:22, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

To T:DYK/P3