Parliamentary Privilege and Libel, Part III: Stockdale v. Hansard

The third of a series of blogs on parliamentary privilege and libel, this one deals with the notorious case of Stockdale v. Hansard

Parliamentary Privilege and Libel, Part II: from Wilkes to 1835

This is a series of three blogs about Parliament and Libel. The first, Privilege, Libel and the long road to Stockdale v. Hansard, Part I: from Strode’s Case to Article IX, dealt with the earliest encounters, in the seventeenth century, between parliamentarians and the court over the publication of material that the parliamentarians believed was…

Privilege, Libel and the long road to Stockdale v. Hansard, Part I: from Strode’s Case to Article IX

In 1836 the House of Commons published a series of reports of the new prison inspectors appointed under an Act of Parliament passed the year before. Their shocked claim that a pornographic book had been discovered in Newgate jail set of a train of unintended consequences that led to a series of law suits that are collectively referred to as Stockdale v. Hansard, a Gilbertian political farce and the biggest crisis in the relationship between the courts and parliament in British history.