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Defamation law has a long history stretching back to classical antiquity. While defamation has been recognized as an actionable wrong in various forms across historical legal systems and in various moral and religious philosophies, defamation law in contemporary legal systems can primarily be traced back to Roman and early English law.
Truth is an absolute defense against defamation in the United States, [1] meaning true statements cannot be defamatory. [ 2 ] Most states recognize that some categories of false statements are considered to be defamatory per se , such that people making a defamation claim for these statements do not need to prove that the statement caused them ...
The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the Statute of Gloucester in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). [1] The law of libel emerged during the reign of James I (1603–1625) under Attorney General Edward Coke who started a series of libel ...
(Under the law prior to this decision any false statement could, if found to be defamatory, be grounds for damages.) Instead it raises the question of whether factual errors were made in good faith. "Actual malice" means then that the defendant intentionally made false statements of alleged facts, or recklessly failed to verify alleged facts ...
For the first two hundred years of American jurisprudence, the basic substance of defamation law continued to resemble that existing in England at the time of the Revolution. An 1898 American legal textbook on defamation provides definitions of libel and slander nearly identical to those given by William Blackstone and Edward Coke.
The legal burden of proof in defamation actions is thus higher in the case of a public figure than in the case of an ordinary person. Libel laws vary considerably on this matter from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Even within a cultural grouping, the libel laws of the UK are quite different from those in the US, for example.
A judge says controversial social media personality Andrew Tate 's defamation lawsuit against a Florida woman who accused him of imprisoning her in Romania can move forward, but he threw out Tate ...
The legal rule itself – how to apply this exception – is complicated, as it is often dependent on who said the statement and which actor it was directed towards. [6] The analysis is thus different if the government or a public figure is the target of the false statement (where the speech may get more protection) than a private individual who is being attacked over a matter of their private ...