ABSTRACT
A number of conditions have to be in place for defamation laws and their adjudication to have great social and political impact. In Thailand, at least up to the 1950s, the outcome of the majority of defamation cases had negligible social or political effect. Adjudication of personal defamation cases followed established norms. The Thai Supreme Court laid out standards and criteria on a par with the rest of the world concerning the distinction between an opinion and a fact. A 1936 Supreme Court decision, for instance, clearly spelt out such difference. Broadly speaking, the court said anything that can be proven as true or false can be considered to affirm or deny a fact. An opinion, on the other hand, is something which “each person” might have in “accordance to only their feelings and thoughts,” which might prove to be “contradictory,” “without beginning or end,” and of which “the truth or falsity cannot be proved.” Saying someone is a thief, for instance, is a statement of fact because it can be proved. But suggesting that one “does not see anything wrong with stealing” is an opinion “because its truth or falsity cannot be proved” and depends on one’s own “principles.” However, instances where a defendant can find exclusion through citing the expression of an opinion are few, for in most cases the words are inevitably an affirmation of a fact.1 Jitti Tingsaphat says further that in certain cases even an opinion can be defamatory when, as if it were a statement of fact, it is made with “clarity and certainty” and “without ambiguity or vagueness.”2
