Describe and Assess the Impact of the Operation of the Law of Libel in the Uk Through the Use of Two Important Examples from the Last Decade. Use These Also to Examine Recent Attempts to Reform of the Libel Law.

Describe and assess the impact of the operation of the law of libel in the UK through the use of two important examples from the last decade. Use these also to examine recent attempts to reform of the libel law.

The laws of defamation have existed for centuries. In the ninth century, King Alfred the Great ordered that anyone breaching the slander laws would be sentenced to have their tongue cut out. As times have changed however, the punishments for such transgressions such as a libellous statement or a slanderous comment seem to attack the bank accounts of the accused rather than their health. But the principles of the law itself have hardly changed.

‘Shakespeare’s neat summary of those principles (of the defamation laws) in Othello has been prayed in aid by many a plaintiff’s counsel in libel cases:

Who steals my purse steals trash;

‘tis something, nothing;...

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

The legal rationale was expressed less poetically, but with great clarity by Justice Potter Stewart of the American Supreme Court in 1966:

The right of a man to the protection of his own reputation from unjustified invasion and wrongful hurt reflects no more than our basic concept of the essential dignity and worth of every human being – a concept at the root of any decent system of liberty.’(Crone 1995:1)

However it is widely regarded that the laws of libel have been used to shield the better off and wealthy members of society, and have restricted society’s use of free speech. The libel laws were, however, introduced hundreds of years before the ideals of human rights, such as the Human Rights Act (1998), were introduced to the world. It is balance of free speech and protecting a person’s reputation that is widely contested in British society, and even though many will want to prevent a publication from reporting anything defamatory about them, ‘Free speech is internationally...