早在12世纪,英王室就已经意识到言论对于其政治统治稳定性的重要影响,并通过各种立法压制那些被认定为煽动性诽谤的言论。经过数百年的历史发展,至17世纪初,英国普通法已经确立了惩罚煽动性诽谤言论的几项重要的司法审判原则,即言论诽谤对象无论是普通个人、政府官员或是公众人物,都必须受到惩罚;言论的真实性不能作为无罪抗辩的依据;陪审团的作用仅限于确认有关犯罪的事实问题,如何确定言论性质及如何量刑定罪,则必须由法官决定。这几项司法审判原则的确立,直接影响了近代英国宪政民主的发展与公民自由精神的成长。 As early as the 12th century, the British royal family was already aware of the significant impact of speech on the stability of its political dominance and, through various kinds of legislation, repressed those statements that were found to be seditious defamation. After hundreds of years of historical development, by the early seventeenth century, the common law of Britain had established several important judicial principles for punishing seditious defamatory statements: defamatory objects, whether ordinary individuals, government officials or public figures, Must be punished; the truth of the speech can not be used as the basis for innocence defense; the jury’s role is limited to the confirmation of the factual question about the crime. How to determine the nature of the speech and how to take the sentence should be decided by the judge. The establishment of these principles of judicial adjudication directly affects the development of constitutional democracy in modern England and the growth of the civil libertarian spirit.