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Sedition In Nova Scotia: R. V. Wilkie (1820) And The Incontestable Illegality Of Seditious Libel Before R. V. Howe (1835), Barry Cahill

Dalhousie Law Journal

Given its primacy and exceptionality in the Nova Scotian context, Wilkie both exemplifies the judiciary's role in official repression, and instantiates the importance of what Wright calls "the ideological mechanisms of the criminal law" in prescribing the outer limits of legitimate political discourse. This paper examines the first known use by the government of Nova Scotia of the eighteenth-century, judicially-invented misdemeanour of seditious libel in order to silence and punish criticism of the ruling eite. As Nova Scotia had neither indigenous caselaw, nor statutory legislation to supplement and reinforce the common law offence-Upper Canada's SeditionAct (1804) was still in full …