The University Times said it acted in the public interest and cited the High Court’s refusal in 2005 to grant orders restraining RTÉ from broadcasting secret recordings that exposed maltreatment of people at Leas Cross Nursing Home.

But three of the university’s law school professors, David Kenny, Oran Doyle and Neville Cox, have said the legal defence was “fundamentally flawed”.

In contrast, associate law professor Dr Eoin O’Dell said their analysis was “incomplete”.

Dr O’Dell endorsed the newspaper’s argument, which is also supported by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).

The University Times published an article on an alleged ‘hazing’ incident that involved a male-only sports society, the Knights of the Campanile, earlier this month.

Hazing is an often humiliating and abusive form of ritual used to initiate people into a group.

Two investigations have been opened as a result of the incident, the first into the allegations of hazing themselves and the second into how the information was obtained.

Professor Cox, Associate Prof Doyle and Assistant Prof Kenny, writing for Trinity News, another publication based in the university, said it would be hard to imagine any incident occurring in student residences that would be of sufficient importance to allow journalists to breach constitutional privacy protections by bugging the building or eavesdropping.