The Politics of Libel: Thomas Erskine, Freedom of the Press, and Transatlantic Legal Culture, c. 1780–1830
Keywords:
Thomas Erskine, transatlantic legal culture, printed texts, newspapers, letters, legal influence, common law, Whig MP, freedom of the press, trial by juryAbstract
This article analyzes how the multidirectional movement of legal and popular printed texts, newspapers, letters, and citizens contributed to the political and legal influence of individual lawyers across the Atlantic. It is based on a case study of leading common law barrister and Whig MP Thomas Erskine (1750–1823). It examines the dissemination of Erskine's legal and political arguments, and other publications in support of freedom of the press and the constitutional importance of trial by jury in libel trials. Erskine's Country Whig politics, key role in the passage of the 1792 Libel Act, and support for American independence were admired by American lawyers, diplomats, and politicians. His disinterested public service as an advocate meant he personified the ideal of a patriot lawyer that underpinned the classical republican model of law, citizenship, and politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Erskine's powerful, often emotive forensic rhetoric was equally admired as part of a shared transatlantic legal culture, linking law, politics and literature. The speeches were reprinted and widely circulated in edited collections, texts on oratory, trial reports, newspapers, and periodicals; key arguments were also referenced in legal treatises on libel. Hence, parts of his most significant speeches in English libel trials came to be regarded as “usable” legal texts studied by students and re-cited by American defense lawyers in court.
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114
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115
A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors, Vol. XXI (London, 1814), 847–1046, notes to Erskine's published speeches 970–71, 1035, 1038, 1045; ibid., Vol. XXII (London, 1817), 29.
116
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121
Ibid., 570–72.
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Ibid., 66, 80. See Barry Cahill, “R. v. Howe (1835) for Seditious Libel: A Tale of Twelve Magistrates,” in Canadian State Trials, eds. Greenwood & White, 547–75 on the significance of the case as a precedent compared to Zenger.
132
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Trial and Acquittal of Edward Shippen, 351–54, 446–47.
134
The Trials of William S. Smith, and Samuel G. Ogden for Misdemeanors, had in the Circuit Court of the United States for the New-York District (New York: I. Riley, 1807), 177–78. Smith (married to John Adams’ daughter) undertook a private mission to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule, which he claimed was sanctioned by Jefferson and Madison.
