Pub Date : 2020-04-09DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197509197.003.0012
W. Bird
A number of conundrums are explained by the fact that an expansive understanding of freedom of press and freedom of speech prevailed and became dominant in Britain and America after the mid-1760s, and are unsolved by those who claim that the narrow Blackstone-Mansfield definition of freedoms of press and speech was universally or generally accepted during the late eighteenth century. Those conundrums include why those freedoms would be defined as mere protection from licensing that ended nearly a century before, why there was a steady stream of essays championing a broad definition and opposing a narrow definition, why American colonists and English radical Whigs threatened with prosecution would advocate narrow instead of broad freedoms, why there was such a wide chasm between restrictive law and permissive practices of speech and press, why nine of the eleven new states that adopted new fundamental law found it necessary to protect freedom of press, why every one of those declarations of rights gave the broadest protection without express exceptions rather than using Blackstone’s language, why the federal Bill of Rights similarly used the broadest language and rejected common law limitations, as well as why Fox’s Libel Act was able to attract majority support in Parliament.
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