Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Legal abuse

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. This discussion has morphed from delete vs. keep to keep vs. keep but not in its current state. The discussion concerning the future of the page including making it a DAB page can continue on its talkpage. J04n(talk page) 00:37, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Legal abuse

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Non-notable, unsourced and unsourceable list of unrelated topics under a Neologism "legal abuse" in violation of WP:LISTN, WP:OR and WP:SYNTH Fladrif (talk) 17:24, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Fladrif (talk) 17:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Pure WP:OR due to lack of references, seems to be hugely in violation of WP:NPOV. Also, a small trout to the genius who decided to tag each section as unreferenced, instead of just tagging the whole article as a whole as unreferenced. I can definitely see a valid article with this name, but this may as well be deleted and restarted from scratch. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 17:54, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete (by nominator). This article appears to have begun as something of a disambiguation page, where the creator, as part of a broader project to create a vast network of DABs for various uses of the word "abuse", gathered together any law-related topic that anyone ever referred to, or the editor imagined as some kind of "abuse". Initially unsourced, a number of self-published sources that fail as WP:RS had been added in an effort to prop this up, which have now been removed. It is certainly true, that if you look at the various search engine results, there are any number of sources, reliable and unreliable, which may call this or that thing or process "abuse". There is a well defined common law and statutory tort Abuse of process; there is a standard of judicial review Abuse of discretion; what there is not is a accepted category called "legal abuse" which encompasses all of the things or even any of the things being included in this article. No scholarly publication, text, or treatise does so. It is not a term of art or usage in the profession. It is not used in that sense by reliable news organizations or publications, nor in any other reliable press. What this article amounts to is WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, compiling a list of anything the editor imagines might go wrong, or result in a unfavorable outcome, by design, accident, negligence or whatever at any point in the civil or criminal legal process, and labeling it "abuse". Because no reliable secondary source does so, it violates the core policies of WP:RS and WP:V and fails the notability guideline of WP:LISTN. Fladrif (talk) 18:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just to play devil's advocate, would you have any issue with turning the page into a more traditional DAB? As for "accepted category", how about Category:Abuse_of_the_legal_system? I don't think it is too outlandish to say that judicial misconduct and SLAPP suits are abusive and I could easily see this page being a landing point for someone looking up abusive behavior in the legal system as a general subject. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 23:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep - looking at numerous google books and google scholar results, I believe that topic of "Legal abuse" is probably sufficiently notable for an article. Although it is quite likely that article needs to be rewritten.--Staberinde (talk) 19:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete without prejudice. I agree with Staberinde that there could be an article here, just that nothing presently in the article should be there. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Withdraw !vote. The present text is unsourced; we would need to find sources to see if it would violate NPOV once the RS are determined. The definition might also be OR, but, there, I'm sure something could be done to establish a consensus definition. The article would almost certainly have to be permanently semi-protected to prevent those who claim to have been unjustly treated to insert their own case as an example. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:25, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Make into a WP:Disambiguation page. This link] suggests that the term is being used elsewhere in WP and could properly be expanded or explained better in those separate articles. GeorgeLouis (talk) 01:23, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, literally thousands of results in secondary sources, including books with "legal abuse" itself in the title of the books themselves. — Cirt (talk) 02:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You have to look behind the mere numbers. There are a huge number of hits in which the term "legal abuse" isn't used at all. There is a considerable number (including some with the term in the title) which are not reliable sources. The point about the rest of them is that they are invariably all talking about completely different things with no common connection whatsoever. One source uses "legal abuse" to refer to the abuse of legal, as opposed to illegal, drugs. Another source uses "legal abuse" to refer to inconsistent laws which result in discrimination. Another uses "legal abuse" to distinguish legal techniques of "enhanced interrogation" as distinguished from illegal torture. Another uses "legal abuse" to refer to mistreatment of children which rises to the legal definition of child abuse. Another uses "legal abuse" interchangeably with "abuse of process". Another uses "legal abuse" to refer to quirks in gaming laws which permit video bingo games to proliferate while other games of chance are restricted. Another uses "legal abuse" to refer to any illegal act or denial of rights by the police. Another uses "legal abuse" to refer to any legal intervention, as opposed to theraputic treatment, for any form of mental illness. Another uses "legal abuse" to refer to any application of criminal law to juveniles. Thousands use "legal abuse" simply as a shorthand for whatever they may happen to be writing about that involves government and has a undesired outcome. The point is that these sources, whether in the hundreds or thousands, simply do not support the notion that there is such a thing as "legal abuse" which would encompass the things contemplated by this article. As I noted on the talk page, you can't make an article out of People named John who have a Wikipedia BLP - this is no different. What none of these sources do is gather together all these things and call them collectively "legal abuse", meaning that the whole thing is original research, synthesis and a violation of the LISTN notability guideline. Fladrif (talk) 03:37, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The present version looks to me like a useful and reasonable summary of obviously verifiable info, supported by internal links to other articles with good sources. I don't see obvious OR or neutrality problems beyond possible quibbles over a phrase or two, pretty minor on the scale of things, and fixable if anyone cares to bother. Typing "legal abuse" into books.google.com establishes solidly that the concept has significant coverage, and (contra Fladrif) pulling the disparate treatments of it together and summarizing them is what we are supposed to do. 50.0.136.106 (talk) 06:51, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - there's definitely a valid article in there, but I don't think the current unsourced mess is that article. Legal abuse is definitely a widely covered subject, but it needs to be built 100% around WP:RS (not even using non-RS for trivial things), and that's what this article is not. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 08:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't see anything controversial enough in the article to say that type of treatment is required. It's not like a contentious BLP or political article. Adding some direct references would be useful, but the basic Wikipedia standard is straightforward verifiability and I think the current version mostly achieves that, or at least comes close enough that deletion (rather than tweaking) isn't appropriate. The article is in something like WP:summary style and as such, some of the supporting sources are accessible through the internal links. 50.0.136.106 (talk) 08:30, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's because there's basically nothing of use in the article, other than a bunch of terms linked together without any references at all - pure WP:SYNTH and/or WP:OR, and internal links make no difference to this at the moment - they don't prove that these terms are all linked together under this heading. If it was done properly, then we'd have to make sure that people didn't try to add in garbage reported by tabloids and blogs as "legal abuse". Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 09:51, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I found the article useful and the different sections to clearly be facets of the same concept, warranting an article. 50.0.136.106 (talk) 15:54, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They may be facets of the same concept, but unless there's reliable sources tying them together (in this case, there isn't even a Facebook page as a source...), the article as it stands is not valid. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 18:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In many cases the words are being used not as different facets of the same concept, but to have precisely the opposite meaning. One source may use "legal abuse" to refer to something that is legal because it violates no statutory or judicial "legal" standard of "abuse"; another source may use "legal abuse" to refer to something that is illegal because it meets the statutory or judicial "legal" definition of "abuse". Fladrif (talk) 00:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and make into a disambiguation page — It's not clear that the term "legal abuse" exists as a distinct conceptual entity, as Fladrif clearly articulates. Just because this juxtaposition of words often occurs doesn't mean that it's a discrete topic. A disambiguation page would be a good solution. TimidGuy (talk) 10:59, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think it might be possible to turn this into a disambiguation page. I think that it is fairly obvious that this term is an alternative name or plausible misnomer for (a) abuse, of whatever form, that is not technically illegal and (b) abuse of legal process (which is technically illegal). James500 (talk) 14:21, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Four of the comments suggest that a traditional DAB page is probably the best we can do with this. I'd have no problem with deleting this article and having a plain old ordinary DAB page, provided that (i) there are actually sources for the articles linked to and (ii) it has some defined scope and page protection to keep it in reasonable bounds. Fladrif (talk) 01:50, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to point out that citing sources on DABs is a "don't" -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 04:53, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. Which is why I wrote that the articles linked to need to have actual sources. Fladrif (talk) 13:05, 24 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah.. I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 21:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disambig Cursory review of Google Books shows that this often refers to police misconduct but obviously it can also refer vexatious litigation. II | (t - c) 21:40, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.