Act of Parliament | |
![]() | |
Long title | An Act to amend the Law respecting defamatory Words and Libel. |
---|---|
Citation | 6 & 7 Vict. c. 96 |
Territorial extent | England and Wales and Ireland [2] |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 24 August 1843 |
Commencement | 1 November 1843 [3] |
Status: Amended | |
Text of statute as originally enacted | |
Text of the Libel Act 1843 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk. |
The Libel Act 1843, commonly known as Lord Campbell's Libel Act, [4] was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It enacted several important codifications of and modifications to the common law tort of libel.
This Act was repealed for the Republic of Ireland by section 4 of, [5] and Part 2 of Schedule 1 to, [6] the Defamation Act, 1961.
The preamble was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1891.
This section was repealed by the Schedule to the Larceny Act 1916.
This section formerly provided:
If any person shall maliciously publish any defamatory libel, knowing the same to be false, every such person, being convicted thereof, shall be liable to be imprisoned in the common gaol or house of correction for any term not exceeding two years, and to pay such fine as the court shall award. [7]
This section was repealed for England and Wales and Northern Ireland by section 178 of, [8] and Part 2 of Schedule 23, [9] to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.
This section was replaced for the Republic of Ireland by section 12 of the Defamation Act, 1961. [10]
Alternative verdict
See Boaler v R (1888) 21 QBD 284, (1888) 16 Cox 488, (1888) 4 TLR 565
This section formerly provided:
If any person shall maliciously publish any defamatory libel, every such person, being convicted thereof, shall be liable to fine or imprisonment or both, as the court may award, such imprisonment not to exceed the term of one year. [11]
This section did not create or define an offence. It provided the penalty for the existing common law offence of defamatory libel. [12]
This section was repealed for England and Wales and Northern Ireland by section 178 of, [8] and Part 2 of Schedule 23, [9] to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. The repeal of this section was consequential on the abolition of the common law offence of defamatory libel by section 73(b) of that Act. [13]
This section was replaced for the Republic of Ireland by section 11 of the Defamation Act, 1961. [14]
This section allowed the defendant to prove the truth of a libel as a valid defence in criminal proceedings, but only if it also be demonstrated that publication of the libel was to the "Public Benefit". [15] Proving the statement's truth had previously been allowed only in civil libel defences inasmuch as the criminal offence against the public at large was considered to be provoking a breach of peace via printing malicious statements rather than the defamation per se; the truth or falsity of the statement had therefore been considered irrelevant in criminal proceedings before the Act.
This section was repealed for England and Wales and Northern Ireland by section 178 of, [8] and Part 2 of Schedule 23, [9] to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.
This section was replaced for the Republic of Ireland by section 6 of the Defamation Act, 1961. [16]
This section did not apply to seditious libel. [17]
In England and Wales and Northern Ireland, this section now reads:
Whensoever [in Northern Ireland], upon the trial of any indictment or information for the publication of a [blasphemous] libel, under the plea of not guilty, evidence shall have been given which shall establish a presumptive case of publication against the defendant by the act of any other person by his authority, it shall be competent to such defendant to prove that such publication was made without his authority, consent, or knowledge, and that the said publication did not arise from want of due care or caution on his part.
The words in square brackets were inserted by section 177 of, and paragraph 66 of Schedule 21 to, the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. [18]
This section was replaced for the Republic of Ireland by section 7 of the Defamation Act, 1961. [19]
This section, in its original form, applied to a prosecution for blasphemous libel. [20]
This section permitted a defendant who had been charged by a private prosecutor to recover the costs of his legal defence if found not guilty. [21]
This section was repealed by the Schedule to the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1908.
Oscar Wilde was bankrupted under this provision when he abandoned his libel prosecution against Lord Queensberry and was ordered to reimburse him for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred for legal representation and private detectives.
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place, or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal definition of defamation and related acts as well as the ways they are dealt with can vary greatly between countries and jurisdictions.
Blasphemous libel was originally an offence under the common law of England. Today, it is an offence under the common law of Northern Ireland, but has been abolished in England and Wales, and repealed in Canada and New Zealand. It consists of the publication of material which exposes the Christian religion to scurrility, vilification, ridicule, and contempt, with material that must have the tendency to shock and outrage the feelings of Christians. It is a form of criminal libel.
Criminal libel is a legal term, of English origin, which may be used with one of two distinct meanings, in those common law jurisdictions where it is still used.
Sedition and seditious libel were criminal offences under English common law, and are still criminal offences in Canada. Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel. Libel denotes a printed form of communication such as writing or drawing.
The Offences against the Person Act 1861 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It consolidated provisions related to offences against the person from a number of earlier statutes into a single Act. For the most part these provisions were, according to the draftsman of the Act, incorporated with little or no variation in their phraseology. It is one of a group of Acts sometimes referred to as the Criminal Law Consolidation Acts 1861. It was passed with the object of simplifying the law. It is essentially a revised version of an earlier Consolidation Act, the Offences Against the Person Act 1828, incorporating subsequent statutes.
Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment, made "gross indecency" a crime in the United Kingdom. In practice, the law was used broadly to prosecute male homosexuals where actual sodomy could not be proven. The penalty of life imprisonment for sodomy was also so harsh that successful prosecutions were rare. The new law was much more enforceable. It was also meant to raise the age of consent for heterosexual intercourse. Section 11 was repealed and re-enacted by section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956, which in turn was repealed by the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalised male homosexual behaviour.
Loitering is the act of standing or waiting around idly without apparent purpose.
Defamatory libel was originally an offence under the common law of England. It has been established in England and Wales and Northern Ireland. It was or is a form of criminal libel, a term with which it is synonymous.
Modern libel and slander laws in many countries are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the Statute of Gloucester in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). The law of libel emerged during the reign of James I (1603–1625) under Attorney General Edward Coke who started a series of libel prosecutions. Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of duelling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbade libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be obviously facetious. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.
The Slander of Women Act 1891 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Sale of Goods Act 1893 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which regulated contracts in which goods are sold and bought. Its purpose was to define the rights and duties of the parties, while specifically preserving the relevance of ordinary contractual principles. The Act remains in force in the Republic of Ireland.
The Short Titles Act 1896 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaces the Short Titles Act 1892.
In Ireland, "publication or utterance of blasphemous matter", defamatory of any religion, was a criminal offence until 17 January 2020. It was a requirement of the 1937 Constitution until removed after a 2018 referendum. The common law offence of blasphemous libel, applicable only to Christianity and last prosecuted in 1855, was believed to fulfil the constitutional requirement until a 1999 ruling that it was incompatible with the constitution's guarantee of religious equality. The Defamation Act 2009 included a provision intended to fill the lacuna while being "virtually impossible" to enforce, and no prosecution was made under it. The 2009 statute increased controversy, with proponents of freedom of speech and freedom of religion arguing for amending the constitution. After the 2018 constitutional amendment, a separate bill to repeal the 2009 provision and residual references to blasphemy was enacted in 2019 by the Oireachtas (parliament) and came into force in 2020. The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989, which includes religion among the characteristics protected from incitement to hatred, remains in force.
The Punishment of Offences Act 1837 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It abolished the death penalty for a number of statutory offences and replaced it with transportation for life.
The first signs of the modern distinction between criminal and civil proceedings were during the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The earliest criminal trials had very little, if any, settled law to apply. However, the civil delictual law was highly developed and consistent in its operation.
The Defamation Act 2013 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which reformed English defamation law on issues of the right to freedom of expression and the protection of reputation. It also comprised a response to perceptions that the law as it stood was giving rise to libel tourism and other inappropriate claims.
This article is about the firearms policy in the Republic of Ireland. Irish law allows firearm possession on may-issue basis. With approximately seven civilian firearms per 100 people, Ireland is the 107th most armed country in the world.
The Curtesy Act was an act passed by the Parliament of England in 1226 and extended to the Lordship of Ireland by Poynings' Law. It governed courtesy tenure, i.e. the life interest which a widower may claim in the lands of his deceased wife. The short title was assigned in the Republic of Ireland in 1962, shortly before the act was repealed by the Succession Act, 1965.
Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform v Murphy, [2010] IESC 17; [2010] 3 IR 77, is an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court determined that inpatient treatment with a restriction order attached to it in a European Arrest Warrant came within the meaning of "detention order" in s.10(d) of the European Warrant Act 2003. This gave the definition of "detention order" a wide meaning. The case involved an appeal against extradition to the United Kingdom.
public benefit.
libel act 1843.