udges to due respect and of
the parties to litigation that their causes should not be prejudiced
before trial by outside interference. As the law now stands it is
permissible to publish contemporaneous _reports_ of the proceedings in
cases pending in any court (Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888, s. 3),
unless the proceedings have taken place in private (_in camera_), or the
court has in the interests of justice prohibited any report until the
case is concluded, a course now rarely, if ever, adopted. But it is not
permissible to make any comments on a pending case calculated to
interfere with the due course of justice in the case, nor to publish
statements about the cause or the parties calculated to have that
effect. This rule applies even when the case has been tried and the jury
has disagreed if a second trial is in prospect. Applications are
frequently made to commit proprietors and editors who comment too freely
or who undertake the task of trying in their newspapers a pending case.
The courts are now slow to move unless satisfied that the statements or
comments may seriously affect the course of justice, e.g. by reaching
the jurors who have to try the case.

The difference between pending and decided cases has been frequently
recognized by the courts. What would be a fair comment in a decided case
may tend to influence the mind of the judge or the jury in a case
waiting to be heard, and will accordingly be punished as a contempt. In
_Tichborne_ v. _Mostyn_ the publisher of a newspaper was held to have
committed a contempt by printing in his paper extracts from affidavits
in a pending suit, with comments upon them. In the case of _R._ v.
_Castro_ it was held that after a true bill has been found, and the
indictment removed into the court of queen's bench, and a day fixed for
trial, the case was pending; and it was a contempt of court to address
public meetings, alleging that the defendant was not guilty, that there
was a conspiracy against the defendant, and that he could not have a
fair trial; and the court ordered the parties to answer for their
contempt. In the case of the Moat Farm murder (1903) the high court
punished as contempt a series of articles published in a newspaper while
the preliminary inquiry was proceeding and before the case went to a
jury (_R._ v. _Parker_, 1903, 2 K.B. 432). The like course was followed
in 1905 in the case of statements made in a Welsh newspaper about a
woman awaiting trial for at