Evening Post. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1923. RIGHTS OF FREE SPEECH

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 137, 7 December 1923, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1923. RIGHTS OF FREE SPEECH

What is described as "one of the most unusual cases of American jurisprudence" was reported in a message from Washington on Wednesday. The case is of bo much interest and importance, has created such excitement 1 throughout the United States, and so intimately affects fundamental rights which every other democracy is just as deeply concerned to maintain as the people of America that a fuller report would have been welcome. The report supplied is excellent as far as it goes, but is so condensed as to leave one or two material points in doubt. Mr. Charles Craig, Comptroller of New York, and therefore, we are told, " the chief financial officer of the city," published a letter in which he "criticised a Federal Judge for his decision dealing with a public service corporation." In so doing, Mr. Craig was held guilty of contempt of Court, and he was sentenced to sixty days' imprisonment. Through how many stages Mr. Craig's appeal from this decision has had to pass, and how many months have been devoted to technicalities and sidetracks, we do not know ; but it is quite in accordance with the slow pace which is one of the most grievous defects of American administration that the final adjudication upon a sentence which was passed two years ago has only just been given.

The Courts have now said their last word in the judgment of th& Supreme Court of the United States confirming the aentenoe. " A storm of popular protest " followed. "The Press everywhere declared that free speech had suffered the severest blow since the foundation of the Republic," and it is a safe conjecture that the indignant eloquence of competing editors would have supplied material for keeping the Courts busy with contempt cases for many years, if anybody had been willing to take them on. But even Mr. Craig was not allowed to set the final seal upon his martyrdom and grasp the halo which doing time would have conferred. He declared his willing^ ness to go to gaol, but his friends objected. They appealed to President Coolidge, and he, realising that the procession which would follow the popular hero to the gaol would be inconveniently large, remitted the sentence. It was probably the best way out of a conflict which could have done the Courts no good if it had been carried to the bitter end, but the AttorneyGeneral does not come so well out of the business as the President.

It is upon the advice of the At-torney-General that the President has acted, but there appears to be a good deal more politics than law in the advice that Mr. Daugherty has given, and the politics are not of a bind to carry conviction. The opinion " scathingly attacks Mr. Craig, and advises the remission only because New York City is the sufferer from lack of Mr. Craig's services." Whether Mr. Craig deserved to be scathingly attacked is tho most important poiut which is

left in doubt by our report. Apart from the Attorney-General's opinion, we are merely told that he " criticised " the Federal Judge. If Mr. Craig's criticism was of the nature of a scathing attack upon the Judge, it may be that he deserved the retort courteous of the Attorney-General, and even the sixty days' sentence of the Court. The Attorney-General was, however, right in refusing to treat Mr. Craig's demerits as of the essence of the matter. But what right had he to make the needs of New York City the ground of his decision? His legitimate concern was with the administration of justice and the rights of free speech, and not with the finances of New York.

The essence of the offence with which Mr. Craig was charged is ' that it is against the public, not against the Judge—an obstruction to public justice." This was made quite clear about ten years ago in the cause celebre- in which the "New Zealand Observer" was charged with contempt of Court for " the publication, after final adjudication, of scandalous cartoons of a Judge of th© Supreme Court of New Zealand, reflecting on the said Judge's conduct at the trial of a divorce suit in Auckland." The Full Court, while declaring the cartoons to be objectionable and probably libellous, held that they "were not calculated to interfere with the due administration of justice, and did not therefore amount to contempt of Court." This decision showed that the Courts of today, while rightly as jealous as ever of comments upon proceedings still pending, are rightly very tolerant even of severe criticism ; after the case has been concluded. " If," said Mr. Justice Williams, "a Judge so conducts himself at a trial as to suggest undue bias in favour of one party or the other, the public are at liberty to say so." Mr. Justice Denniston was equally broad-minded and even more emphatic.

Public opinion nowadays has, he said, a strong and, in my opinion, a wholesome suspicion of privileged, self-ccnstituted, and co-operative tribunals. You cannot compel public respect for the administration of justice by flouting publio opinion. Judges, like all other public men, must rely on their own conduct to inspire respect.

The peril of free speech in America and the unfortunate conflict between the Courts on the one side and the Press and the politicians on the other should make us additionally grateful to our own Judges for the wisdom and the self-re-straint with which they have subordinated their own feelings to the public interests, and reconciled the due administration of justice with the rights of free speech in as liberal a manner as any sane popular Legislature could possibly have devised. America would be thankful to be equally; we'll served. '