Contrastive Study Of Defamation Liability Methods In China And The United States Of America

Right of reputation is one of the important personal rights of civil subject, which guarantees social appraisal of civil. Every person has the obligation of not inviolate reputation right of others. Activity that harms social appraisal of others is defamation, and people should undertake the liability of it. Defamation liability method is the final barrier of protecting reputation right of people. American Tort Law has made detailed discussion on methods about how to undertake liability, of which it especially requires the compensation for damage for the infringed and has created the unique liability method system for damage compensation. American Law has its special system except for damage compensation on liability method of reputation defamation, such as retraction, etc. The academic circle also has disputes on injunction and declaratory judgment, whether it is the existed system or discussion on the argumentative liability method, they have referential meanings to the defamation liability method in China. It mainly includes cessation of infringement, rehabilitation, effect elimination, as well as apology and damage compensation. Damage compensation has economic nature; the other four methods are non-property liability methods. However, how to use juridical practice to implement these five liability methods is not so complete.This paper is mainly composed of four parts. The first part is introduction, which proposes problems and illustrates topic meanings, overview research state of Chinese theory field and research range of this paper. The second part illustrates the basic problems of defamation liability method, including its concept and connotation, legislation state and juridical practice of China. The third part introduces the defamation liability method in American Tort Law, mainly are damage compensation, retraction etc., as well as relevant research on declaratory judgment by some American scholars. The fourth part emphasizes on the comparison between Chinese and American Law as well as the referential meanings of American Law for Chinese Law through introduction of American Law in the preceding part. Based on the comparative law, the author chooses American Law that has big difference with legislation of Chinese relative system as comparative object, aiming at putting forward perfect suggestion for the legislation and practice of defamation liability method.