Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Law without the state


 * 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. We seem to agree that this encompasses several potentially notable topics and that the previous essay wasn't a good way to cover them. There's no agreement, though, about whether to let the now-stubified article stand as it is. Perhaps an editorial solution will appear in time.  Sandstein  07:08, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Law without the state

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This has been tagged as OR since it was written. It appears to have been cut form whole cloth by an account that looks on the face of it like a shared account for a class project, hence the fact that it looks like a term paper. Guy (Help!) 13:48, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 *  Delete  The article appears to be exactly as Guy characterizes it above. It was written by user, who was only active on Wikipedia for a week, two years ago, right at the end of Fall semester 2014. The creator's chosen handle GradInstLWOTSclass2014 (LWOTS: "Law With Out The State"; it doesn't get any more WP:SPA than that) and the nature of the content makes it very clear it's a term paper consisting almost entirely of original research and opinion.


 * That being said, there probably is some interesting topic, the concept of law in a region in the absence of a formal government, somewhere at the heart of it. For example, the Oklahoma panhandle was in such a state from 1845, when Texas ceded the territory to avoid having to give up slavery, until 1890, when Congress formally made it part of the Oklahoma Territory. In the meantime, for those decades where it was part of the US, but with no form of government, the residents made up their own, and it's actually pretty fascinating. There are likely other similar instances in history. The general topic of law without a formal government is probably worth having an article on, if it can be found to be properly addressed in pre-existing reliable sources. But this is not that article. TJRC (talk) 23:16, 22 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Note; as discussed more fully below, I now think something is salvageable here, so I'm striking my "Delete". There's probably a better course than deletion. TJRC (talk) 22:30, 28 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment parts of this might be salvageable. The section on "History and origins in Europe" is pretty decent, talking about the decentralized nature of law in Europe prior to the development of the modern nation-state. On the other hand, the section beginning with "The internal and the external point of view" and going through "Paradigms in law" seems to be chock full of OR, and not written in an encyclopedic manner. Phrasing section headings as questions seems especially egregious to me. The modern examples the author chooses (international arbitration and EBay) don't necessarily seem like good examples of what the piece is arguing - but that right there indicates this is not a suitable WP article as an encyclopedia article shouldn't be arguing anything.  The piece seems well researched, with good sources, but ultimately it's not an encyclopedia article.  Moreover, I'm not convinced that "Law without the state" is the best title for an encyclopedic article about extra-governmental norms.  There is such a thing as the Stateless law theory, which might be what this article is trying to be.  I'm torn between wanting to have this deleted as it is not an appropriate article, and wanting this kept as there is some good material here for an article on stateless law theory.  If I thought I or someone else would get around to completely rewriting it I'd !vote to move it to draft space, but the fact of the matter is that it needs a complete re-write and I don't feel like tackling that.  So I guess, reluctant delete. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 21:05, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 22:02, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * What would you think of stubbing it down to just a couple of accurate, encyclopedic lines, and noting on the talk page that the prior version, while not an encyclopedic article, may potentially be mined for further expansion? TJRC (talk) 22:20, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That's not a bad idea; reducing it to a stub with a note that previous revisions are ripe for mining. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 14:36, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've reduced it to a stub; little more than a dic-def. I included some of the sources from the prior version as well as a couple I found myself.  I guess now I would say keep. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 15:56, 24 March 2017 (UTC)


 * My immediate reaction on seeing the title was that this was some sort of class project. It's a twist on "This is the State above the Law. The State exists for the State alone." Kipling, A Death-Bed, 1918. I've never heard of "law without the state" before, and am voting delete as WP:OR. Narky Blert (talk) 22:21, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment. That poem is now written up: "A Death-Bed". Narky Blert (talk) 00:40, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: To discuss ONUicorn's edits and new sources

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 04:51, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment. GBooks hits: 80k for Law without the state, but many are misleading (parts of sentences -> "...law. Without state...", etc.); 8 for transnational stateless law, 27 for private legal orderings. There is something out there, but I am not well versed in legal issues to even confirm they refer to the same concept. I am not sure how much of the gutting from to the current stub is justified, but I am not prepared to spend 1-2h researching this, so from a cursory glance I'll abstain. Hopefully a legal expert who is more capable of commenting on this will eventually take a look at this. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  08:11, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * do you think this is encyclopedic? What you have written seems to pass V, RS, NPOV, NOR, and if you thought the topic belongs, I'd certainly be in favor of keeping. Smmurphy(Talk) 17:50, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I do think the topic is encyclopedic; but I'm not entirely sure about handling it at this title or in this format. I think the original article was trying to blend several different ideas together and create a unified theory in a way that I'm not sure is really done much in academic literature. I think the stub I've reduced it to is basically saying, "This could mean X, Y, or Z" which sounds more like a dab page.  I can see developing this into an article with 4 sections, one for each of the last 4 sentences in the stub I made.  On the other hand, I can see individual articles about each of those 4 sections (and indeed, we already have articles on customary law and a whole series on law in medieval Europe - we're missing 2 things: 1. a description of stateless law theory in anarchist political thought, which does look to both indigenous customary law and the legal norms of medieval Europe for its foundations; and 2. any generalized way to handle norms established by non-state actors, which in modern times includes things like the ISO and the Unicode Consortium, but could also be considered to encompass some specialized UN agencies). If we had individual articles to point to perhaps this would better serve as a dab page pointing at those articles, but perhaps not.  My biggest concern is with the title.  I really don't like having this at "Law without the state".  That said I'm really not sure what to do with it. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 18:26, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, ok so I think I kind of understand where the article came from, User:GradInstLWOTSclass2014 was one or more people involved in the Graduate Institute of Geneva class, Law without the State taught by Thomas Schultz probably in 2014 (here is the 2016-2017 syllabus). If the article is not deleted, I like the idea of a DAB page. Conceptually, each of those 4 things seems encyclopedic and a page comparing each of them could work, but the original page was not that and it doesn't look to me like Schultz' work is that, so such a page would, right now, probably by WP:SYNTH/WP:OR. Smmurphy(Talk) 21:47, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I like the principle of what ONUnicorn's done to preserve it; but we're still left with the issue that it describes multiple, loosely-related topics. It's not an encyclopedic article at all, despite ONUnicorn's valiant effort. Maybe we just pick one topic, and stub it down to just that one? Or we do that multiple times and make "law without the state" a DAB. TJRC (talk) 22:20, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment There's a problem with the DAB page idea - anything on it would be a partial title match, so it would fall foul of a DAB page guideline. Narky Blert (talk) 19:59, 30 March 2017 (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.