Nothing New Under the Sun, Here as to Rules That Focus on a Defendant’s Being Motivated by Ill Will
From Thomas Starkie’s 1813 libel law treatise, pp. 199-200 (some paragraph breaks added): Were every malicious and oppressive act to be considered illegal, the law would be very agreeable to the theorist, but utterly unfit for the practical purposes of society, on account of the infinite perplexity and uncertainty which would occur in distinguishing between […]