Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Judicial shamanism


 * 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 redirect to Judicial activism, no merger. Side note: I'm a jurist and frankly, the whole idea sounds like drug-induced nonsense to me – perhaps unsurprisingly so, given this theory's origins in postmodernism and in 1968. Sandstein (talk) 22:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Judicial shamanism

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The only uses of this term that I can find in academic works are by Stanislovas Tomas (here and in this Google Scholar search). Note that searching for “judicial shamanism” yields no Google Book Search hits. I conclude that this topic is not notable as it is the pet theory of Stanislovas Tomas. Therefore, this article ought to be deleted. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr (talk) 11:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * After reading the article, it seems like it should Redirect to Judicial activism as a special case. "Judicial shamanism" seems to be an almost vacuous term which is not widely used and doesn't need its own article. The Bearded One (talk) 07:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm… I’m not sure I agree. Judicial activism is about judges’ “usurping” extrajudicial power by ignoring precedent, ruling against laws as unconstitutional, and such; whereas judicial shamanism seems to claim that there is no difference between modern, fairly rationally-grounded legal processes and shamans’ contacting various spirits in drug-altered mental states. Perhaps my personal opinion on a theory matters little to what treatment it gets on Wikipedia, but IMHO, the quality of Tomas’s argumentation is spurious at best, seeming to rely entirely on an extremely simplistic false analogy; this would probably explain why he is the only one using the term. I still believe the article should be deleted, but maybe it can fit in as a suggestion in some related article (though judicial activism seems inappropriate). Raifʻhār Doremítzwr (talk) 13:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * As an aside, I found through the Shaman article that one of a shaman's roles was, er, judge. So modern judicial processes are based on ancient shamanic processes anyway. I'm against deletion, but in favour of a severe trim. JustIgnoreMe (talk) 17:55, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I don’t think that is contested. What judicial shamanism claims is that the judicial processes of shamans and of modern court judges are not appreciably different. The rôle of impartial arbiter is ancient, but that does not mean that it has not changed radically in its form in all that time. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr (talk) 13:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, you're right: despite the supposed references (which I can't be bothered to verify) there is no evidence this concept is notable. Delete. JustIgnoreMe (talk) 18:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to judicial activism page. —Qit el-Remel (talk)


 * 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.