Talk:Lamb v Benoit

Draft

@Levivich: I think the start of the draft is okay? I don't really have any expertise in legal cases. If you know anyone who does who might be willing to take a look, that might be a good idea. Or if you think I should submit it through AfC. Most of the sources I'm citing are available through the Wikipedia Library. The second source specifically can be seen from Google Books. The main reason I remember this case is because it was mentioned in a high school law class I took a few years ago and I remember thinking it was relevant to my life for obvious reasons. Because I don't really have any expertise in law I'm not sure if I can do much beyond this, but I think I've demonstrated notability and it's more than a single sentence, at least. I'd add stub categories if it was moved to mainspace. Clovermoss (talk) 18:48, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Also the second source contradicts the third, stating that she wasn't charged with anything. I'm inclined to believe the actual legal case summary, though I'm not sure if there's a standard practice for inclusion of contradictory information? Clovermoss (talk) 18:51, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the start of the draft is great!

The case is definitely notable, without a doubt. I was able to determine that very quickly with a Google Scholar search [1]; there are a number of law reviews and such that discuss the case, e.g. (in addition to what's already cited in the article) [2] [3] [4].

I don't think the second and third source contradict each other; the second source says "...and held over a weekend ... without having charges brought against her"; it doesn't mention that charges were brought against her, but only after that initial weekend. As I understand it (from the various sources), she was arrested, held without charges over a weekend, then offered to be released if she signed the liability waiver, and when she declined, then she was charged. Further, it seems this was part of the court's decision that the officer (Benoit) was not acting in "good faith" and thus couldn't get the protection of the six-month limitations period. (I presume the court figured if he were acting in good faith, he would have not have charged her only after she declined to sign the release.)

I think it can be moved to mainspace as-is (with the categories, as you mentioned).

I'm not sure if you've already looked at Wikipedia:Featured articles#Law for examples of other articles about cases? I bet you could expand it if you wanted to -- lack of legal expertise be damned! FWIW, I noticed when skimming these sources that they seem to place this case in the context of a series of Canadian cases about JW and/or individual rights (see the links above). That's one avenue for expansion. I'd say you don't need to be a legal expert or write this Wikipedia article as a law review article, analyzing all the legal minutiae. The reader we're writing for is a "general reader", not a law school student looking for deep legal analysis. The general reader is probably going to benefit from learning not just the procedural, legal history, but from learning about the social impact that the case had, or about the broader "movement" or rights involved.

But even if you do nothing more on this particular article and move on to something else, I think it's a perfectly good stub. And I definitely do not see even a hint of any kind of bias in this article.

Hope this helps! Levivich 03:25, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

@Levivich: Thanks, that does help a lot. Your confidence in me means the world. I will try to expand it a bit later. Clovermoss (talk) 12:40, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Background

@Levivich: The background section is a good idea, right? I feel like it gives more context to what JWs were experiencing in Quebec at the time. Clovermoss (talk) 03:08, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I would say absolutely, but only with background that is cited to sources about Lamb v Benoit, to avoid WP:SYNTH. For example, United States v. Joseph#Background has background info about Trump's immigration policies, but only so much as was told by sources that were about the Joseph case--I didn't cite other sources about Trump's immigration policy that weren't about the Joseph case. I did this so I'd be confident it was the sources' background I was summarizing, and not my own ideas about what the relevant background was. Levivich (talk) 03:35, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Levivich: Okay, I'll work on that. It might be harder to find sources that talk about Lamb v Benoit specifically in regards to the other cases, but I see your point about synth.

This actually reminds me of another concern of mine. What's your opinion on combined JW publications being used as sources for content like in Jehovah's Witnesses and the United Nations? Stuff like the Watchtower, Awake, Questions from Readers, Golden Age, etc are used and are JW publications. There's a general reliance on primary sources in the main Jehovah's Witnesses article too. Am I getting this out of nowhere or do you also see this as potentially problematic? I'm more concerned about the latter because it's a GA and the main article, while the other is an obscure piece of doctrine most people outside of JWs have never really heard of. Clovermoss (talk) 03:44, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

IIRC some of the sources I remember looking at about this (linked above?) talked about this case and the others mentioned in the background section; iirc at least some of them talked about Lamb as part of a trilogy of cases? So I think the sourcing is there and it's not actually synth. IOW you might just need to add some different citations to what you already had.

Boy that JW article is a mess, starting from the jargony sea-of-blue first sentence. I imagine there is no lack of tier 1 sources about JW from the field of religious studies, and that article ought to be rewritten with heavy reliance on those sources. Generally speaking, an organizations own publications would be fine WP:ABOUTSELF sources and could be used to fill in gaps about the org that aren't in the independent sources (I would say "independent" rather than "primary" v. "secondary"), but is there anything significant to be said about JW that hasn't been said by some religious studies scholar? I doubt it. Levivich (talk) 04:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

The sourcing was the way it was here because I was copying text from another article and attributing it. The original intention was to give a broader overview of persecution of JWs at the time because Lamb's situation wasn't really an isolated event. R v Boucher involves a JW distributing Quebec's Burning Hate (the pamphlet Lamb was accused of sedition for distribution of), Saumar v Quebec City (of) involves distributing religious literature, and then there's Roncarelli v Duplessis, among others.

I'm fairly certain I could find sources talking about these cases in relation to Lamb v Benoit, though. I'm curious specificially about its relation to Roncarelli v Duplessis because they were both heard by the Supreme Court in the same year. I wonder if the two might be literally connected in some way. I really am interested in expanding all of this, though. Clovermoss (talk) 09:15, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Louise Lamb

I don't know if it's a peculiarity of Canadian legal writing to omit the full name of a defendant in a case but it seems unharmful to mention that "Lamb" was Louis Lamb. Pascalulu88 (talk) 03:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

@Pascalulu88: I didn't add it because the specific sources I cited at the time didn't explain what her name was. But a single mention to her full name would be fine if you can cite a source for it. Referring to people by their last names afterwards is pretty standard practice on Wikipedia (see MOS:LASTNAME). I'll try to look into this in the near future regardless. I've been doing a lot of editing of JW-related articles lately but I'm also trying to pace myself, so it might take awhile. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:38, 10 December 2024 (UTC)