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Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court establishing the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals.
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.
In 2009, The New York Times reported that Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania had laws that made reference to blasphemy. [1] Pennsylvania's blasphemy law was found unconstitutional in 2010. [2] Some U.S. states still have blasphemy laws on the books from the founding days.
Actual malice is different from common law malice, a term indicating spite or ill will. It may also differ from malice as defined in state libel law, as reflected in the 1983 case of Carol Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc., although states may not define a lower threshold for defamation claims than that required by the First Amendment. [5]
The five men, now known as the “Exonerated Five,” accuse Donald Trump of making “false and defamatory statements” during his […]
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restrict the ability of public officials to sue for defamation.
The organic source of state law is the Constitution of Pennsylvania.Although the original Constitution of Pennsylvania was ratified in 1776, more than ten years before the Constitution of the United States, the U.S. Constitution has legal supremacy in matters relating to (or, in pursuance thereof...