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

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.