Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Injustice


 * 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 (Non-admin closure) --Regards, MrScorch6200 (talk · contribs)  17:38, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Injustice

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A dictionary definition (WP:DICDEF) that isn't even entirely correct or complete with some largely unrelated ramblings / OR attached. Delete it and move Injustice (disambiguation) to this page, and then prominently link to justice in the opening sentence of the disambig, which covers the actual encyclopedic topic.

Longer version: Someone is probably going to say "Hey, the current article might be bad, but there's a ton of Google hits for the term." Well, yes, it's a word in English, it gets used a bunch, so a terrible quote farm article of "someone mentioned the word injustice somewhere" could be made. However, it makes no sense to treat injustice & justice differently; they are different sides of the same coin. We have the article validity, but invalid is a disambiguation page that points back to validity and validity (statistics). In the same way, everything substantial to say is in the justice article - you want to talk about Legal injustice? See Justice and law. Economic injustice? Justice and Justice (economics). Injustice in theology? Justice, etc. To the extent that spinoff articles should be made, it should clearly be on subtopics (e.g. Justice (economics) inherently describes both just & unjust outcomes in economics), not on "social injustice & divine injustice lumped together in one article, social justice & divine justice in another article." SnowFire (talk) 05:05, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * delete per WP:DICDEF, and replace with the DAB page. Any encyclopaedic content should be covered at Justice, so add that to the DAB page (I actually thought along these lines a few days ago but never got round to nominating, so am happy to support it now).-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 06:00, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think this satisfies GNG. See, for example, chapter 14, titled "The Concept of Injustice", of the Second Edition of Textbook on Jurisprudence by McCoubrey and White (Blackstone Press Limited, 1996, ISBN 1-85431-582-X). The authors argue, at page 286, that justice and injustice are "distinctly different concepts" which serve different purposes. They devote a twelve page chapter to to "injustice". It contains a further reading section that cites another three books and an article in the Modern Law Review. James500 (talk) 09:29, 7 February 2014 (UTC) I should point out, by way of analogy, that we have a separate article for Evil, presumably for reasons that are very similar to what I am suggesting (ie to explain the difference between Christianity and Manichean religions in respect of this). James500 (talk) 09:52, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. James500 (talk) 10:08, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. James500 (talk) 10:18, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * See also The Concept of Injustice by Professor Heinze (Routledge, 2012) another book written from a jurisprudential point of view. James500 (talk) 10:43, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment. As noted before, the fact that the word "injustice" will get a ton of Google / GBooks / GScholar hits is not under dispute, and these 2 books are surely only the tip of the iceberg.  The question is why whatever these & many other books have to offer shouldn't be covered in justice or in appropriate spin-off articles, e.g. "Justice in law" for your two examples.  I can't read McCoubrey & White, and it doesn't appear to be used as a major source in the current injustice article anyway, but even if they do say that injustice & justice are totally distinct, there's a metric ton of other sources which confirm the standard dictionary definition: that injustice is defined by the lack or perversion of justice. SnowFire (talk) 16:49, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I should add that analogous articles come under WP:OTHERSTUFF, i.e. are very rarely a good guide to deletion. And evil is hardly analogous; from antiquity every religion has had something to say about it, with many personifying it or treating it as a very real thing, while its modern secular meaning is far from fixed. But even if it were analogous in deletion discussions each article is considered on its own merits.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 19:03, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Redirect to justice. This could be interesting as a collection of trivia, but that's not what Wikipedia is for. As for James500 argument: the article currently doesn't do a very good job of explaining how injustice is a different concept than justice. I'm not convinced the source listed is a prevalent definition of justice. There is a reason this is almost just a stub and has remained so all these years. --Ysangkok (talk) 18:46, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep - This concept and term is clearly so much more than a dictionary definition. Some source examples are listed below, along with descriptions quoted from Gbooks, when available.
 * The Concept of Injustice. "The Concept of Injustice challenges traditional Western justice theory. Thinkers from Plato and Aristotle through to Kant, Hegel, Marx and Rawls have subordinated the idea of injustice to the idea of justice. Misled by the word’s etymology, political theorists have assumed injustice to be the sheer, logical opposite of justice. Heinze summons ancient and early modern texts, philosophical and literary, with special attention to Shakespeare, to argue that injustice is not primarily the negation, failure or absence of justice. It is the constant product of regimes and norms of justice. Justice is not always the cure for injustice, and is often its cause."
 * Injustice and Rectification. "This book aims to help answer two questions that Western philosophy has paid relatively little attention to - what is injustice and what does justice require when injustice occurs? ..."
 * Injustice and Restitution: The Ordinance of Time.
 * Dissent, Injustice, and the Meanings of America. "Throughout the book, Shiffrin emphasizes the social functions of dissent: its role in combating injustice and its place in cultural struggles over the meanings of America..."
 * Enduring Injustice. "Governments today often apologize for past injustices and scholars increasingly debate the issue, with many calling for apologies and reparations. Others suggest that what matters is victims of injustice today, not injustices in the past. Spinner-Halev argues that the problem facing some peoples is not only the injustice of the past, but that they still suffer from injustice today. They experience what he calls enduring injustices, and it is likely that these will persist without action to address them. The history of these injustices matters, not as a way to assign responsibility or because we need to remember more, but in order to understand the nature of the injustice and to help us think of possible ways to overcome it."
 * Kant's Theory of Justice. p. 17.
 * Rethinking Historical Injustice And Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience. "...Using examples of injustice from the colonial and the Second World War period, the Korean civil War, the current stage of Korean transitional justice and broader regional and global perspectives, the book concludes with a section on forward-looking approaches for arriving at reconciliation in the Asian region. This is a significant book that will be of huge interest to anyone studying East Asian politics, history or society."
 * Kant's Ethics: the Clavis to an Index: Including Extracts from Several Oriental Sacred Scriptures, and from Certain Greek and Roman Philosophical Writings. pp. 458-459.
 * – Of course, many more sources that specifically focus upon the concept and term of injustice are available. Northamerica1000(talk) 23:45, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment. As noted before, injustice is a frequent word in English.  This isn't a notability debate, this is "how to cover the concept;" I get millions of GBooks hits on "invalid" and "invalidity," and even throwing out the hits that are related to illness, I could easily generate a similar list of hits to argue that Wikipedia should cover validity & invalidity in two separate articles.  But isn't it more meaningful to separate it out by topic, (in)validity in logic & (in)validity in statistics?  I'm cheating a bit because no one will argue that invalid isn't perfectly defined by valid - a logical argument can't be simultaneously valid & invalid - but the case of justice / injustice is pretty darn close, if you ask any random person with a dictionary.  I don't see much in your above links that doesn't seem like it wouldn't be a reasonable source in a "justice" article or spinoff, e.g. Justice according to Kant.  Kant thinks that justice is the mean and injustice is the extremes; is it meaningful to separate those facts into two separate articles with no context?  Your proposed solution would be for an Injustice article to say "Kant says injustice occurs at the extremes" and for a Justice article to say "Kant says justice is the mean."  That seems a terrible division to me; Kant's thoughts should be in one article, as he himself discusses what exactly he thinks about justice & injustice in the same sentences in his book you linked.  To understand one, you must understand the other, for Kant.
 * Now, the one link of yours that seems on-point for a separate article is the first one, since Heinze is clearly arguing that an act can be simultaneously just & unjust. But - without reading his book - I strongly suspect he's cheating a bit and switching up "meanings" of justice in the middle.  e.g. Valjean steals a loaf of bread, and is punished, and this is (legal) justice, but (economic) injustice because the societal system is rigged against the French peasant, or the like.  Interesting perhaps, although from the table of contents he appears to be more a literary theorist type and they're notorious for being adversarial to standard terminology to get published and be provocative... but I might not be too adverse to some kind of "Injustice according to Heinze" article if it's truly notable enough.  But I'd likely be in favor of that being at Injustice (Heinze) and having the disambiguation page sit at Injustice, because most people are thinking of the standard "reverse of justice", and will find what they're looking for somewhere in the Justice article or category.
 * To put things on a more productive note, I'm not opposed to expanding articles! If you want to use sources to expand, say, trade justice or social justice or Rawlsian Justice, etc., please, go nuts.  It doesn't make any sense at all though to make an "injustice" article that is a quote farm of "here's something someone said about injustice in trade justice, here's something someone said about injustice in social justice, here's a sentence John Rawls said that included the word "injustice." SnowFire (talk) 00:32, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
 * There are cases where the meaning of a word is itself a notable topic. This case, where there is book length treatment, is likely one of them. My instinct is that a disambiguation page would fail to do justice to this topic. I don't think AfD is a satisfactory forum to discuss this. (The normal procedure for mergers doesn't have a deadline). James500 (talk) 05:14, 8 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. Most encyclopedic. Widely covered in numerous academic and scholarly secondary sources. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 04:03, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep WP:DICDEF explains that "One perennial source of confusion is that a stub encyclopedia article looks very much like a stub dictionary entry, and stubs are often poorly written." There are obviously sensible alternatives to deletion per our editing policy. Andrew (talk) 10:03, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep Reliable sources found and many others out there do talk about this. It is a notable concept.   D r e a m Focus  15:55, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep A real existing thing. Nothing gained by destroying the article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:25, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The article in question has been greatly expanded since this AfD began. I don't think there is any prospect of it being deleted now. I suggest invoking WP:SNOWBALL and closing this AfD as a clear "keep". James500 (talk) 19:20, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
 * By sheer !vote counting, 6:3 is actually a perfectly vanilla AFD result, Snowball is intended more for like 6:1. Also the expansions done by FeydHuxtable - while commendable - do not deal with the fundamental problem an Injustice article has, so I'm not withdrawing my objection - I'm sure people could write articles on just & unjust too (which currently redirect to justice & injustice), but it just doesn't make sense to write separate articles for every single prefix / suffix / synonym / antonym of a term.
 * Also, I've said so several times already, but since the above Keep votes still appear to be arguing against it: notability was never mentioned. Read my original nomination again, notability is a straw man.  Injustice is obviously a hugely notable topic, which is why it's covered in the entire Category:Justice and its many subcategories & subarticles, and why the Justice article itself is still a far more useful link than the new Injustice article.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with discussing injustice in the justice articles, and then we're not duplicating material. SnowFire (talk) 22:07, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
 * There have been five keeps in a row. The delete vote and the redirect vote were both based on the poor state the article was formerly in. It does look like this is snowballing. The many sources now cited in the article argue that injustice is not just an antonym and some argue that it is the primary topic (to which Justice should be redirected by that logic). I'm not seeing any duplication. James500 (talk) 23:43, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. While this could be a dab page, as it is written it seem to show potential for explaining the concept. I don't think we need to get rid of it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 13:21, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep - whole volumes of jurisprudence have been written about the concept. Several users have noted additional sourcs that can beef up the article. Bearian (talk) 22:58, 11 February 2014 (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.