Criminal Libel after Garrison

Abstract

Criminal libel traces its history to ancient Babylonia where it was designed to prevent insults to women. As criminal libel law evolved, it has often been applied against the press, until the Garrison case in which application of the New York Times' “actual malice” rule allowed a prosecutor reasonable freedom to criticize judges. Today, only 21 states have criminal libel statutes, and some of these are of dubious constitutionality. Is the criminal libel threat to the press dead? Perhaps; perhaps not, this study finds.