Freedom of Expression and the Construing of Defamation Under the Ethiopian Civil and Criminal Law

Andualem Ambaye

doi:10.7176/jlpg/109-01

Abstract

Defamation is defined as the act of communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of a person, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation [1] . To constitute a defamation, an act must generally be intentional whether it is truth or false statement and must have been made to someone other than the person defamed. Some common law jurisdictions also distinguish between spoken defamation, called slander, and defamation in other media such as printed words or images, called libel [2] . Under this work defamation is seen from its liability aspects against the free use of freedom of expression. The laws in relation to freedom of expression such as the ICCPR, ICESCR, UDHR, and the municipal laws such as: the FDRE Constitution, the Press and Media laws, the Criminal and Civil laws of the country that expressly or tacitly dealing with freedom of expression and the consequence of defamation. DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/109-01 Publication date: May 31 st 2021 [1] LeRoy Miller, Roger (2011). Business Law Today: The Essentials. United States: South-Western Cengage Learning. p. 127. ISBN 1-133-19135-5 . [2] Linda L. Edwards, J. Stanley Edwards, Patricia Kirtley Wells, Tort Law for Legal Assistants, Cengage Learning, 2008, p. 390.

Highlights

The Dichotomy of Freedom of Expression and Defamation as a Limitation Most of the rights in international human right documents are defined to be a human innate right that are given as a born right leading to the free exercising of such rights with full freedom
For reasons of collective interest and for general public goods the exercise of freedoms and rightscan be limited in some grounds
Expressing one's ideas freely without anyone's interference sometimes entails the risk of the probability or danger of damaging others' reputation. This implication leads to the issue of how to reasonably reconcile the conflict between freedom of expression and defamation as a legal limitation thereof

Summary

Introduction

Freedom of expression is one of the rights that can be limited to protect other higher interest in comparison to the individual interest. This implication leads to the issue of how to reasonably reconcile the conflict between freedom of expression and defamation as a legal limitation thereof.

Results

Conclusion