F03520 THE LAW OF THE PRESS: A DIGEST OF THE LAW SPECIALLY AFFECTING NEWSPAPERS; With a Chapter on Foreign Press Codes; AND AN Appendix containing the Text of all the Leading Statutes. BY JOSEPH R. FISHER, B.A., OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, AND THE NORTHERN CIRCUIT, ESQUIRE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW, AND JAMES ANDREW STRAHAN, LL.B., OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE AND MIDLAND CIRCUIT, ESQUIRE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW; REGIUS LONDON: WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 27, FLEET STREET. 1891. ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN DUKE, BARON COLERIDGE, LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND, IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PAST KINDNESS, THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS Most Respectfully Dedicated BY THE AUTHORS. 353144 PREFACE. CONSIDERING what an important factor in the social and political life of the nation Newspapers have become, it is somewhat remarkable that hitherto no book has been published devoted solely to the law affecting them. It is true that Newspaper law has been dealt with partially in works on the law of Libel and of Copyright, and incidentally in works treating of the law of Literature and of Printers, but so far as the authors are aware there is no book in which the whole law and nothing but the law relating to the Periodical Press is discussed. And yet the tendency of recent legislation has unmistakably been to give the Newspaper a legal status peculiar to itself. It is the custom of writers on Constitutional Law to assert that in England, as distinguished from Continental States, there is no such thing as a Law of the Press, that written words stand in all cases on an equal footing before the law. Mr. Dicey, in his Vinerian Lectures at Oxford,* repeats and strongly emphasises this view. It will be clear, we think, from the following pages that whatever may have been the case in former times, this is true no longer. There is slowly growing up a distinct Law of the Press. Not to mention the provisions as to Registration and Imprint, a special law of Newspaper Libel has come into existence. * The Law of the Constitution,' Third Edition, 225-253. |