Latest Important Cases Judge based his action upon an article published in Mr. Nelson's paper which said that Judge Guthrie had refused to dismiss a divorce suit, which had been settled out of court, until the litigants paid their attorney fees. The editor's lawyers saved him from jail by obtaining a writ of habeas corpus. The case was taken to the Court of Appeals and thence to the Supreme Court. A Special Commissioner was appointed to take testimony for the Supreme Court. The Commissioner held that the article was "substantially true," and that it "was as correct a report of court proceedings as a lay man could make." The Supreme Court (Woodson, J.) said: — "We are clearly of the opinion that the publi cation was not literally or substantially true, but is highly contemptuous to both the Court and the Judge thereof." Referring to the trial before Judge Guthrie, the Court called it "a pretended hearing": — "I use the words 'pretended hearing' advisedly because no disinterested and unbiased mind can come to any other conclusion from reading the record but what the real trial took place on the night of Jan. 31, and that the proceedings in the Court the next morning were solely for the purpose of breathing life and validity into the unquickened and void judgment written the night before." Court Proceedings in Camera. Divorce Cases Must be Heard in Open Court — Civil and Crimi nal Contempts — Appeals under English Judica ture Act. England. The House of Lords, in a decision rendered May 5 in Scott v. Scott, held that courts of justice have no power to hear cases in camera, even by consent, except in the special cases in which the court is permitted by law to recognize that a hearing in open court might defeat the ends of justice. The Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division (Bargrave Deane, J.) had adjudged Mrs. Scott guilty of contempt on circulating among her friends the report of a case heard in camera, in which she had been accused of infidelity, but had been vindicated. The Lord Chancellor's opinion, in which the other law lords concurred, reversed the judgment for con tempt which a majority of the Court of Appeal (107 L. T. Rep. 211; (1912) P. 241) had sus tained. The tribunal held that in any case an order for a hearing in camera extends only to the hearing, and it is not a contempt to publish the facts subsequently if it is done bona fide and without
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malice. Such publication is not a criminal cause or matter, in which no appeal lies under sect. 47 of the Judicature Act. Freedom of the Press. Federal Newspaper Publicity Law — Regulations Governing Admis sion of Publications to the Mails —. Unfair Dis crimination. U. S. The validity of the so-called newspaper pub licity law was upheld by the United States Supreme Court June 10, in an opinion delivered by the Chief Justice. The Court said: — "That Congress, in exerting its power con cerning the mails, has the comprehensive right to classify, which it has exerted from the begin ning, and, therefore, may exercise its discretion for the purpose of furthering the public welfare as it understands it, we think it too clear for anything but statement, the exertion of its power, of course, at all times and under all conditions.being subject to the express or necessarily implied limitations of the Constitution. From this it results that it was and is in the power ot Congress in 'the interest of the dissemination of current intelligence' to so legislate as to the mails, by classification or otherwise, as to favor the widespread circulation of newspapers, periodi cals, etc., even although the legislation on that subject, when considered intrinsically, apparently seriously discriminates against the public and in favor of newspapers, periodicals, etc., and their publishers. "The attack on the provision in question as a violation of the Constitution because infringing the freedom of the press, and depriving of prop erty without due process of law, rests only upon the illegality of the conditions which the provi sion exacts in return for the right to enjoy the privileges and advantages of the second-class mail classification. The question, therefore, is only this: Are the conditions which were exacted incidental to the power exerted of conferring on the publishers of newspapers, periodicals, etc., the privileges of the second-class classification, or are they so beyond the scope of the exercise of that power as to cause the conditions to be repugnant to the Constitution? "Under the statute, as we have seen, for a long series of years a publication, primarily devoted to advertisements, was not entitled to the benefit of the second-class classification, and by a long administrative construction, embodied in the regulations, the disclosure of the names of the proprietors as well as of the editors of a publica tion, which has sought to be entered as secondclass matter, was required.
