English libel law

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的assignment代写范文- English libel law，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了英国诽谤法。英国诽谤法有着悠久的历史，对近代各国诽谤法制的发展完善产生了重大影响。在数百年的发展历程中，诽谤法不断寻求着名誉权与表达自由之间的妥当平衡。2013年英国通过了新的《诽谤法案》，该法案重新审视了传统诽谤法中主要抗辩事由的构成，并吸收了近十年来普通法的最新发展成果，首次系统阐释了英国诽谤法的抗辩体系。

English defamation law has a long history, and has a significant impact on the development and improvement of defamation law in modern countries. Over the centuries, defamation law has sought to strike the right balance between reputation and freedom of expression. On April 25, 2013, Britain passed a new defamation act. The act reexamines the composition of the main defenses of traditional libel law and draws on the latest developments in common law over the past decade to systematically explain the defenses of libel law in the UK for the first time.

The English common law gradually shapes the character of modern defamation law through the accumulation of precedents, and the legislative efforts to normalize libel law into culture have also contributed. The mutual promotion and complementarity between common law and enacting law have made English libel law stable, flexible and adaptable in centuries of development.

English defamation laws date back to the 11th century to protect "important figures in the kingdom" from scandalous stories, mainly through harsh penalties. After the common law came into being in the 12th century, the jurisdiction of the royal courts was mainly through the issuance of writs, but the writs of infringement arising in the 13th century did not apply to libel action. It was not until the 14th century that English magistrates provided redress for reputational damage through verbal libel. Since the 16th century, it has been common for ordinary courts to hear libel cases through class-action tort suits. In 17th and 18th centuries Britain, dueling was considered the primary way to defend one's reputation, and resorting to the courts was seen as cowardly and inefficient. It wasn't until the 19th century that the constellation court banned the practice of dueling remedies that it gradually allowed civil action against libel. The rise of libel cases has allowed defamation laws to flourish under common law. In 1668, the court made a distinction between written libel and oral libel, affirming the justiciability of written speech; In 1796, the court affirmed the legitimacy of reporting on court proceedings "open to the world", leading the development of the common law's relative privilege defence for centuries; In 1887, the court put forward the defense of justifiable reasons and just comments, laying the foundation for the construction of the defense system of defamation law. In 2001, the Supreme Court created "Reynolds privilege" designed to protect the news media from responsible reporting for the public interest. The common law enriches the connotation of libel law through classic cases, and provides theoretical accumulation and practical experience for the culture of libel law.

Although the United Kingdom adheres to the common law tradition of case law, the law of defamation is often included in the area of written law. As early as 1792, the UK enacted the libel act to weaken the judicial decision on libel against publishers. Later, in 1952, the British parliament enacted the defamation act, which was mainly applicable to civil areas, and established the basic framework of defamation law. In 1996, parliament amended the defamation act to meet the need to strengthen the protection of freedom of expression. Although Britain ratified the European convention on human rights as early as 1951, it was not until 1998 that the bill of rights was passed by the British parliament and came into force in 2000, which formally incorporated the protection of freedom of expression into the British constitutional system, which was of landmark significance. In this context, domestic calls for defamation law reform are growing. On the basis of Lord Lester's 2010 libel amendment, the ministry of justice published a draft amendment to the libel law in March 2011. After deliberation and discussion by both houses, a new defamation act was passed in 2013, ushering in a new era of English libel law. The act greatly expands the immunity of libel litigants to meet the requirements of the European convention on human rights for the protection of freedom of expression and the freedom of opinion and information dissemination in the context of the development of domestic and international democratic trends and the rapid development of modern information technology. Different from the constitutional reform of defamation law in the United States, Britain has adopted a progressive reform within the traditional foundation and framework of the defamation law, so as to adapt the defamation law to the challenge of the new era on the basis of maintaining stability.

Regardless of the common law or the enactment of the law, the UK has always adhered to the principle of strict liability for defamation infringement, focusing on the protection of victims with damaged reputation. The plaintiff only needs to prove that the defendant's statement refers to him, is defamatory and has been published, libel infringement is established, and the attacker must prove that his statement is true. But the broad defence that English law affirms that libel defendants can claim actually ACTS as a counterweight to freedom of expression and right of reputation, and has been the focus of several libel reforms. In 2013, the reform of defamation law involved almost all the defenses, and the defense system of libel action was reintegrated. The second chapter of the act systematically sets out the defenses that a defendant can invoke, including authenticity, honest opinions, public interest, website operator defenses, peer academic review opinions, and reporting privilege defenses. This revision of the defamation law not only gives a new look to legitimate reasons and fair comment defenses that have been in operation for hundreds of years, further strengthens the internationalization of reporting privileges, but also absorbs and remold the Reynolds privilege created by common law to protect freedom of expression. The defence system of English libel law has taken on a "new look".

According to the British defamation law, defamatory speech adopts the presumption of false rules, and the defendant can only justify his or her infringing reporting behavior by proving the authenticity of the content of the report. Article 6 of the Campbell defamation act of 1843 states that a defendant must prove that the mere truth of a defamatory accusation does not constitute an effective justification, that the speech is in the public interest and that the report is for public purpose. Article 5 of the defamation act of 1952 formalizes it as a defense, called a justification. The reason of legitimation includes not only the factor of authenticity, but also the element of public interest. The element of the public interest is to prevent the arbitrary disclosure of private wrongdoing that harms others. This understanding has substantial legitimacy without strictly distinguishing between reputation and privacy. With the perfection of the concept of privacy and the protection system, the practical significance of the elements of public interest tends to decline. British academics also argue that the formulation of a justification can be misleading, since it seems to imply that the defence must be premised on a requirement of some public interest, which is not always the case. Nevertheless, wanton disclosure in the name of truth may constitute a violation of privacy. In order to understand the scope of the defense, a new defamation law article 2 clear abolished 1952 libel law article 5 "justify reason", formally known as the "defense" authenticity, cancelled the original libel law for legitimation for elements of "public interest", think that as long as the defendant to prove that it generally true speech, the defense can be established.

Since authenticity has the property of objective judgment, this defense mainly applies to statements related to facts, while opinions or comments apply to fair comment defenses. For a defendant to assert a defense of authenticity, the content of his evidence must be based on the slanderous allegation of the facts themselves. In other words, if the disputed report is a repetition of the third party report or a report of hearsay and rumors, the object of proof should be the substance of expression, and only the proof of the existence of hearsay or the corresponding report of the third party does not constitute a defense of authenticity. Since the judgment of authenticity is against the defamatory fact itself, the judgment of authenticity should include not only the evidence at the time of publication, but also the evidence collected during the proceeding of litigation.

If the defendant is required to prove the authenticity of the contents of the finger-pointing, the exact content of the report should be clarified first to clarify the object of the defendant's proof. In general, the definition may not be the intended meaning of the utterance, nor is it necessarily the accusation implied by the defamatory statement interpreted by the discredited one, but should be the usual meaning understood by the ordinary and reasonable reader. However, a reasonable understanding of the content of the report still needs to be understood as a whole.

Under common law, the defendant is responsible for the authenticity of the content, but does not have to prove that every detail of the statement is true, as long as the defamation speech as a whole is true to its substance. In this regard, article 2 (1) of the new defamation law provides that the defense of authenticity can be established as long as the defendant proves the truth of the statement in question. Given the limitations of media investigative capability and society's expectation of the rapidity of news reporting, it is inappropriate and in fact unnecessary to require the verification of the authenticity of the content. Because real forever only relatively true, not only the media cannot reach guarantee details are accurate standard, the court investigating the fact that they also can't be perfect, the social public reading news media content can't hang media as long as you can prove that the main part of authenticity is enough to satisfy the requirement of the real defense proof. For litigation-related speech contains two or more than two different kinds of defamatory allegations, which prescribed in paragraph 3, even if some alleged unproven generally true, but as long as the comprehensive consideration has proved the general real part, not confirmed that the real part of the serious damage to the plaintiff's reputation, authenticity defense can also be set up. Clearly, the new bill expands the scope of the authenticity defense. However, where the plaintiff has brought a lawsuit against only a number of defamatory statements, the defendant shall not be justified in defending the claim of authenticity by proving that the portion of the complaint that was not made constitutes a key point of the defamatory statement as a whole.

In addition, in order to avoid the plaintiff's private life was excessively in the trial by the media exposure, authenticity proof of defense due to certain restrictions, namely the defendant shall not, in the defense as a cover, and thus not included in the reported in other but that the fact that the plaintiff "misconduct" overall to avoid or mitigate the responsibility. But recent rulings in British courts have appeared to soften, favoring evidence that allows a defendant to present "a contextual link directly related to the conduct of the disclosure". How to strike a balance between the defendant's claim for authentic defense and the protection of the plaintiff's respected rights in his private life requires judicial exploration.

While reputational damage is often caused by misrepresentations, the expression of opinion can also be defamatory, as evidenced by a fair comment defense at common law. Fair comment and protection of opinions play an important role in protecting freedom of expression and promoting the exchange of information. According to the principle of common law, a statement should satisfy the following four elements: the statement is an opinion, not a fact; The comments are relevant to the public interest; The comments are based on valid facts and are made public with the comments, except as already known to the public; The sole purpose of comment is not to damage the reputation of others.

The strict application of the elements of fair comment greatly limits the scope of its function. First, in a fair comment defense, the facts on which the comment is based play an important role. The court held that the commenter had to provide sufficient detail of the facts on which the comment was based to enable the reader to judge whether the comment was appropriate. 3 but the Supreme Court has recently reflected that the requirement for "sufficient detail" of facts is unreasonable and should be amended to read "comments must be made either explicitly or implicitly, or at least in general terms, to indicate facts on which they are based". 4. Secondly, the term "justice" is highly misleading, any person may have some kind of prejudice, and the exaggeration or obstinacy of the opinion itself cannot be the reason for the law school to take responsibility. In the end, the commenters are not free of any prejudice, and may even be motivated to advance a cause or to disparage a particular person, but these motives are not sufficient to exclude the formation of a fair comment defense.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has recognized that the Internet has become an important platform for the exchange of information and the expression of opinions on public events. Article 3 of the defamation act of 2013 officially amended the fair comment stipulated in the defamation act of 1952 to an honest opinion, and specified the conditions of application of the defense and specific rules to protect the freedom of expression of opinions. In fact, the formulation of the honest opinion defence has been widely used in some areas, and the claim better reflects the true meaning of the defence, for the question is not whether the comment is fair or true, but whether the comment is made without malice on the basis of some true facts. It is worth mentioning that the honest opinion defense provided for in the new bill deletes the element of "comment matters related to public interest" required by the impartial comment, and reduces the burden of proof for the defendant to claim the defense. But this does not mean that the law protects the baseless accusations of private life, but rather that it aims to "simplify and clarify the elements". The violation of private life can be protected by privacy.

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