Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media

by Jacob Mchangama

Continental—and in particular, Catholic—censorship had a basis in late classical heresy laws like the severe Theodosian and Justinian codes mentioned in Chapter 1. They were ideological in nature and aimed at the wholesale eradication of “thought crimes”: wrong ideas that clashed with orthodox doctrine. English defamation and libel laws, on the other hand, were based on older Roman law, such as in the ancient Law of the Twelve Tables that prescribed the death penalty for libelous poems and songs in the Early Republic, and the law of iniuria (a form of defamation with no exact equivalent in modern law).89 English restrictions on speech were adopted piecemeal as a response to specific moral panics or crises rather than as a wholesale attempt to control every word spoken or printed.