The first proposition was based on an historical argument that was interesting and informative, but in my opinion ineffectual. Western Australia, on its foundation, inherited the common law. The Supreme Court there gets its authority to punish for contempt because it is a superior court of record: it has a jurisdiction similar to that which the Court of Queen's Bench had and exercised in 1861 (Supreme Court Act, s. 16 (1) (a)): the Criminal Code, s. 7 recognizes its authority "to punish a person summarily for the offence commonly known as "Contempt of Court" but so that a person cannot be so punished, and also punished under the provisions of the Code for the same act or omission". The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in relation to contempt is thus the same as that which the courts at Westminster had and exercised in 1861. But it was boldly argued that those courts could not then lawfully deal summarily with contempts, except those occurring within the court room or in the precincts, or arising from interferences with the officers of the court in the performance of their duties. Other forms of contempt, including the publication of matter likely to prejudice a trial, must, it was argued, have been tried by a jury. But, even if one assumes the provision in the Criminal Code Act to be less comprehensive than, at first sight, it seems to be, this argument conflicts at once with a multitude of English decisions running from the eighteenth century until the present time. Mr. Burt met all these by asking us to say that the courts had consistently defied, or at least disregarded, the Act passed by the Long Parliament in 1641, 16 Car. I c. 10, "for the Regulating of the Privy Council and for taking away the Court commonly called the Star-Chamber". It enacted "that the said court commonly called the Star Chamber, and all jurisdiction, power and authority belonging unto or exercised by the same court or by any judges, officers or ministers thereof, be from the first day of August in the year of our Lord God 1641, clearly and absolutely dissolved, taken away and determined ". This, the Act recited, was done: "forasmuch as all matters examinable or determinable in the court commonly called the Star Chamber may have their proper remedy and redress, and their due punishment and correction, by the common law of the land, and in the ordinary course of justice elsewhere". The summary procedure for contempt of court was, as a matter of history, the creature of the Star Chamber. Therefore, the argument ran, its adoption by the King's Bench in the eighteenth century was in contravention of the Act. The enacting provisions of the Act when read to-day certainly suggest there is force in this. But I am not persuaded that it is their true meaning and intent if they be read in the atmosphere of Restoration times or against the background of legal and political opinion of the eighteenth century. The King's Bench did undoubtedly much enlarge its jurisdiction by assuming some of the powers and adopting much of the doctrine of the Star Chamber; and this was thought to be lawful, as various statements, including that of Blackstone (4 Comm. 266), show. An important part of the inheritance of the King's Bench from the Star Chamber was the law of libel, criminal and civil. And the question of the jurisdiction to punish criminal contempts arising from printed works is related to the eighteenth century controversies about libels. Mr. Burt would then have found an ally for his argument in Junius, who said, in Letter Number 61, 17th October 1771: "The liberty of the press may be abused but let the abuse be submitted to a jury - a sufficient, and indeed the only legal and constitutional check upon the licence of the press". So far as libel is concerned, the legal contest was ended in 1792 by Fox's Libel Act, 32 Go. III c. 60; and the jury remained in full possession of the field. But the jurisdiction of the King's Bench to punish contempts was not affected; and it had come to be accepted that it could do so without the intervention of a jury. That this was a departure from the methods of the early common law now seems certain. Sir John Fox, in his notable series of articles in the Law Quarterly Review, exposed the historical inaccuracies in the judgment that Wilmot J. had intended to deliver in R. v. Almon [1] . Of that judgment Sir William Holdsworth has said that it was "a decision for which there was little if any authority". But he added that "in spite of this fact, it was accepted as correct, and it forms the basis of the modern law on this subject": Holdsworth, History of English Law, iii, 394. The case itself had arisen out of an attack on Lord Mansfield. It thus dealt with a different species of contempt from that with which we are here concerned. The opinion of Wilmot J. has, however, been taken as justifying the use of a summary procedure to punish all forms of contempt, not only the scandalizing or unlawfully disparaging of courts, but all conduct that impedes or interferes with the performance by a court of its duty to administer justice according to law. Creating prejudice that may prevent the impartial consideration of a pending cause, civil or criminal, is thus summarily punishable as a contempt of court. The power to punish a newspaper for contempt was invoked in 1742 by Lord Hardwicke (Roach v. Garvan [1] ): and by the Court of King's Bench in R. v. Clement [2] . Since then there have been innumerable instances of newspapers being attached for contempt, in England, in Australia and other British Dominions, and in the United States of America. It is far too late now to overthrow all this, even if its historical foundations can be made to appear insecure. In the United States the scope of the jurisdiction to deal summarily with contempts has been the subject of differences of judicial opinion, because of the constitutional assurances of due process and freedom of speech and of the press. But that the jurisdiction exists is accepted by the Supreme Court of the United States. Frankfurter J., when a professor at Harvard, joined with Professor Landis in an article asserting that the foundations of the jurisdiction were unstable: 37 Harvard Law Review 1010, at p. 1046 et seq. But later he was constrained, as a judge, to say: "The fact that scholarship has shown that historical assumptions regarding the procedure for punishment of contempt of court were ill-founded, hardly wipes out a century and a half of the legislative and judicial history of federal law based on such assumptions": Green v. United States [3] .