Intent in Criminal Libel: Statutory Interpretation or Judicial Imagination?

Abstract

The Defamation (Prohibition) Law, 1965, deals both with civil and criminal liability for defamation. While the definitions of defamation, its privileges and defences are common to both forms of liability, the section defining criminal liability is more restrictive than the civil liability provision. The civil liability provision requires only publication of defamation to one or more persons other than the defamed person (sec. 7); while the criminal liability provision requires not only that the defamation be published to two or more persons other than the defamed, but that it be published with the intent to injure (sec. 6). The meaning of this intent to injure was the issue in Borochov v. Yefet recently decided by the Supreme Court.