ABSTRACT
What is the set of defamation-based laws designed to do? What are these laws protecting? In what kinds of cases does the state feel the need to play a part? The laws that employ the “defamation principle”—laws involving insult, slander, and libel-are peculiar legally because they do not address the question of truth at all. They are crimes primarily of words adjudged by their potential effect, and according to the motives of their authors. There is no evidence in the normal sense of the word, no issue of alibis, material evidence such as fingerprints or DNA, or mitigating circumstances. There are but the words, and the suspected intention. If the crime of defamation succeeds, it succeeds in the minds of those who heard or read the scurrilous words.
