Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Law and Religion


 * 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. Mojo Hand (talk) 03:06, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Law and Religion

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This is too vague to be an article. It's basically advertising for a new subfield, which seems to have a very wide identity. I see no real documentation for the claims of the number of people involved, or the number of associations: I suspect the counts include everything where the phrase occurs, or even where the title might possibly appear to have  some relation to the concepts

What does seem to be a good basis for an article is the journal Law and Religion, which is in JSTOR, and owned by over 850 libraries.  DGG ( talk ) 20:26, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep Well, new is relative, I guess, but 40 some years is not that new for Wikipedia, and it certainly appears to be established in academia . See also, Law and Economics, Law and Literature, etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:40, 22 February 2014 (UTC) Noting my endorsement of Rjensen's comments below, particularly concerning the rather odd argument suggested in the nomination that the journal is notable but its subject matter is not, also, I completely reject the unsupported advertising claim. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:05, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep it's an established interdisciplinary field with over 1000 scholars from different disciplines who actually signed themselves up. It sponsors four scholarly journals (one of which is over 30 years old now). DGG says it is indeed a respectable journal but somehow he says its contents are not respectable enough  for an article here. His claim of "No real documentation" missed footnote 5 where those numbers are stated by Professor John Witte, Jr.. Witte holds an endowed chair in law and is head of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR) at Emory University School of Law.  That is very prestigious indeed. The "advertising for a new subfield" allegation is poorly informed--the subfield is 40 years old and I wrote the article myself and I have no connection whatever  with the field.   Rjensen (talk) 03:29, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:54, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:54, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:55, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep, this is a good start on an article about a inter-/multi-disciplinary field of research, providing adequate justification for its notability. More work to be done of course, but it isnt easy work. John Vandenberg (chat) 10:12, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment. If the article is kept, I think it might need to be renamed as "Law and Religion studies" or something similar. Title right now is vastly broader than what the article's subject is: a relatively small and recent (Emory's own page, which identifies itself as one of the first program in the United States on the topic, only suggests it was seriously studied after 1982 ) interdisciplinary field. Confusingly, there is already a page at Religious law. Also would like to see some citations for the claim above that "over 1000 scholars" are involved in the area. I know this isn't an argument for deleting the page, but there are many, many other legal interdisciplinary programs that are far better established and have longer histories that do not have WP pages (e.g., law and social work, law and philosophy, law and criminology, law and engineering, law and human development, etc etc.) So I do think there has to be some burden to show that this page meets WP:GNG. Right now, I'm not seeing anything that meets the strict requirements: none of the citations are independent coverage of the topic. I know this is a tricky area to deal with for notability, but still am not sure about the page at all. mikeman67 (talk) 20:37, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * First, all the sources are independent. None of them is owned by the field of Law and Religion. Like Physics does not own any of the sources in its field, they don't become not independent because they concern themselves with the subject matter of the article (in fact, that's almost a requirement).  Second, all those other topics, someone should get busy writing, but just because no one has, does not mean we delete this topic that someone has written (thankfully).  Third, "Law and _______" (see, Law and Economics, all those things you say should be written about, etc.) seems pretty standard (Institute for Law and Religion), but that's a move discussion, not a deletion discussion. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:44, 3 March 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.