Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 20, Issue 1, pp. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 20, Issue 1, pp. The European Court of Human Rights requires a distinction to be drawn between statements of fact and value-judgments in defamation law, arguing that the former are susceptible of being proved to be true, but the latter are not. Moreover, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights is breached when the only defence available to value-judgments is for the defendant to prove that the statement is true.
English law draws a similar distinction between statements of fact and statements of opinion.
However, this distinction differs from the distinction between statements of fact and value-judgments. Consequently, situations can arise when English law would categorize a value-judgment as a statement of fact, meaning in the majority of cases that the defendant can only successfully defend the defamation action by proving that his statement is true. In such circumstances, English law breaches Article 10. This article concludes that the best solution to this problem is not for English law to adopt the European Court of Human Rights' distinction between statements of fact and value-judgments, but rather for English law no longer to require a statement to be one of opinion in order to benefit from the defence of fair comment.