Whores, Thieves and Rebels: A Beginner’s Guide to the Early History of the Law of Defamation

The law of defamation has an unusually colourful history, not least because of the many varied ways in which people have defamed each other. This talk explores the origins of the common law of defamation, and the light that this history might shed on current legal controversies. Issues such as the scrutiny of allegedly excessive awards of damages, or line-drawing between ’trivial’ and ’serious’ defamation, have been of recurrent interest to common law judges, but the particular response to those issues has varied markedly over time.