Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/H. Candace Gorman


 * 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 keep. Black Kite (talk) 23:12, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

H. Candace Gorman

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WP:NOTINHERITED and WP:NOSALESMEN

The article is a WP:PROMO article and should be deleted per WP:NOTINHERITED and WP:NOSALESMEN. Subject does not meet notability test. I found trivial mentions of work in news searches, google searches, JSTOR, and others.

Working on high-profile litigation is not itself notable, especially when hundreds of attorneys can work on a case and perform minor supporting roles. For instance, just one nonprofit worked with at least 600 attorneys on Gitmo litigation as of 2008, but merely appearing on a legal team for a notable case does not meet notability guidelines. Many lawyers work on high-profile cases; Wikipedia does not list hundreds of thousands of lawyers merely because of that.

Additionally, fails WP:NOSALESMEN parts 4 and 5. Contributions are primarily a personal resume: the article consists solely of her relative's name, the names of her former clients, and her work filing an unsuccessful FOIA lawsuit. The only exception -- the article's statement that "Gorman and fellow habeas corpus attorney Anant Raut were two of the first people to dispute the Bush administration's charge that approximately 30 former Guantanamo detainees had returned to the battlefield, a claim later substantiated by researchers at Seton Hall Law School" -- is unsourced; the cited source (number 3) does not mention Mr. Raut's and Ms. Gorman's supposed stance. Moreover, it is not clear why disputing a Bush Administration stance (something half of Americans, if not more, did) is notable.

The article focuses on what her clients have done or been accused of, not what she has done, with the exception of an apparently losing effort to sue the government once (something hundreds of thousands of attorneys have done). Signing on to be part of a legal team is itself not notable. Yipee8f93k (talk) 14:26, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 16:04, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 16:04, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 16:04, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment Anyone searching for evidence of notability will find more searching for "Candace Gorman" than searching for "H Candace Gorman", e.g. this in-depth profile of her in Chicago Tribune. I will do some searching, and I suspect more than enough coverage will be found for GnG. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:24, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Thank you -- I will note that the Guantanamo litigation discussion was removed from the Wikipedia article after an extensive discussion from 2008 and 2009, around the time of the Tribune article mentioned. The Trib article itself focuses mainly on the activities of her clients; the most notable aspect, perhaps, is the fact that she dropped all paying work and devoted herself to pro bono Gitmo work. Certainly people devote themselves to charity in all lines of work every day; I doubt that is notable. As it pertains to Gorman, the article focuses on procedural aspects of case (getting a security clearance, flying to Cuba, how to permissibly read classified material, and talking with her client), things any lawyer involved in Gitmo would have to go through. Most of the article is devoted to her father's or other family member's previous work and activities, accusations against her clients, or what the U.S. government did in the Global War on Terror. Cheers Yipee8f93k (talk) 16:53, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep A distinguished civil rights attorney whose career has been covered in multiple RS including two in-depth articles 1) lots of biographical detail and info about her Guantanamo work and 2) focuses on her central role in uncovering secret "street files" Chicago Police withheld from defendants. Lots of RS talked about her work with Guantanamo defendants, which is featured in Ron Suskind's 2013 book The Way of the World, although I agree it's poorly supported in existing article. A third piece of her work that got lots of RS coverage including WSJ and AP was a class-action discrimination suit that she ended up arguing in the Supreme Court. So there's a lot to include, and I am working to include it per WP:HEY. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete This is a relic of our unreasonable coverage of evertything and everyone even remotely related to Guantanamo Bay, no matter how non-notable, and there is no reason to keep this article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:11, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Update WP:HEY I have improved and expanded the article from the situation where it was originally AfDed. The two in-depth Chicago Tribune articles (2009 and 2016, by two different reporters) I mentioned above are WP:SIGCOV: discussing Gorman and her work "directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." Her first big civil rights case, which she took to the Supreme Court, was covered in the NYT and WSJ. Her Guantanamo work got some wide coverage and was featured in a book by Ron Suskind. Her more recent work exposing the secret files of Chicago Police got featured in the CNN tv show Death Row Stories. Getty Images sells a photo of her with the street files. I think the "street files" story deserves its own Wikipedia article, but for a start I hope people who look at this article as it stands now can see that Gorman clearly meets WP:BASIC: "People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." HouseOfChange (talk) 01:56, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Weak delete while being in-depth, the two Chicago Tribune articles only count as a single source according to the notability guidelines. Unfortunately everything else doesn't seem to cut it either. So, there's technically only a single source that can be used for notability. That said, if someone can find another in-depth reliable secondary source I'd be willing to change my vote. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:57, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * : A third in-depth source would be the book by Ron Suskind, you can read some of what it says about her in the last third of this published excerpt. Others thought the coverage substantial enough that Observer reviewer listed her as one of Suskind's "archetypes of our time." A fourth would be Northern Express. And I just found a fifth in depth, a book review with a lot about Gorman. But per WP:BASIC, "multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability" and the coverage of Gorman's work in the 30+ RS cited in the article is far from trivial. HouseOfChange (talk) 22:08, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's all well and good. Except your miss quoting the Observing article to make it seem way more glorifying of her then it is. Not that it would matter, because notability isn't based on an author being overly fawning about someone anyway, but even less if it's being miss quoted. what it does say is "He presents the archetypes of our time." As in, every damn person he talks about in his book is an archetype of our time. So by your logic we should have articles about all of then I guess. That aside though, the article only name drops her after that. There's zero indication that she's a major player in the book from the article and she's sure as hell not a major player in the article itself. Which is the important thing if your going to use it as a claim of notability. Whatever WP:BASIC says, it doesn't mean you can take 50 random name drops, put them together, and call it notability. Otherwise, all we would have to do is find someone's name in a few phone books. "Hey it's basic, but it's multiple sources...So..." Seriously. Not to mention it's semi disingenuous to use a book that mentions someone as a source to show they are notable and then to also use an article about that book as way to prove they are notable. A book review doesn't show a character in the book is notable. It shows the book is notable. That's it. So go create an article about the book and add a brief mention of her to it. I'd be fine with that. I'm not going to comment on your other sources, because they are just more of the same. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:34, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

The brief mention in an Observer review is NOT evidence of notability, and I did not present it as evidence of notability. I mentioned 4 independent sources that talk about CG in depth, let me make it clearer what those four are:
 * 1) 2009 article in Chicago Tribune titled "Gorman vs Goliath," about her Guantanamo work. You agreed this is in-depth coverage of Gorman, including many biographical details.
 * 2) 2016 article in Chicago Tribune by a different reporter, writing 7 years later about different work by Gorman. You agreed this was also in-depth" but claimed it was essentially the same as #1 above. This second article never mentions "Guantanamo," the first article never mentions Chicago police or "street files." No sensible policy would call these two the same.
 * 3) 2008 book by Ron Suskind has in-depth coverage of Gorman. That link goes to an excerpt from the book, but even the excerpt talks about her in depth. You can search for "Candace" and "Gorman" yourself with Google books, it's there in preview mode. I mentioned the Observer review only to support Gorman's presence in Suskind's book. She is not a "source" behind Suskind's book; she and her adventures are part of the story he tells.
 * 4) A book review, published in the Chicago Bar Association Record, of a book authored by multiple Guantanamo lawyers. This 4-page book review also talks in depth about Gorman and her experiences.

Due to in-depth coverage in multiple sources, I think Candace Gorman is Wikipedia-notable. But I am asking for his advice, because he knows more about policy than I do. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:10, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:12, 12 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep – notable per the 4 sources enumerated and described by HouseOfChange. Dicklyon (talk) 05:12, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:HEY, excellent work by HouseOfChange. — Toughpigs (talk) 03:02, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep = her work on the secret police files is notable; she is known as an "expert" in her sub-field. Bearian (talk) 22:59, 13 August 2020 (UTC)


 * 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.