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Seditious libel is a criminal offence under common law of printing written material with seditious purpose – that is, the purpose of bringing contempt upon a political authority. It remains an offence in Canada but has been abolished in England and Wales .
The crime of seditious libel was presumed to persist, although last prosecuted in 1901. [39] [40] After the common law offence of blasphemous libel was ruled in 1999 to be incompatible with the constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech, jurists argued that seditious libel was similarly unconstitutional.
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.. It is an alternative name for the common law offence which is also known (in order to distinguish it from other offences of libel) as "defamatory libel" [1] or, occasionally, as "criminal defamatory libel".
The Case of the Dean of St Asaph, formally R v Shipley, was the 1784 trial of William Davies Shipley, the Dean of St Asaph, for seditious libel.In the aftermath of the American War of Independence, electoral reform had become a substantial issue, and William Pitt the Younger attempted to bring a Bill before Parliament to reform the electoral system.
The trial of Thomas Paine for seditious libel was held on 18 December 1792 in response to his publication of the second part of the Rights of Man. The government of William Pitt, worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might spread to England, had begun suppressing works that espoused radical philosophies.
Seditious conspiracy is a crime in various jurisdictions of conspiring against the authority or legitimacy of the state. As a form of sedition , it has been described as a serious but lesser counterpart to treason , targeting activities that undermine the state without directly attacking it.
The Blasphemous and Seditious Libels Act (or Criminal Libel Act) (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4. c. 8), [7] toughened the existing laws to provide for more punitive sentences for the authors of such writings. The maximum sentence was increased to fourteen years' transportation. The Newspaper and Stamp Duties Act (60 Geo. 3 & 1 Geo. 4. c.
Seditious libel, a criminal offence under English common law, related to attacks on the government or the church; Blasphemous libel, a former common law criminal offence in England and Wales; Blood libel, sensationalized allegations that a person or group engages in human sacrifice; Libelle (disambiguation), various meanings