Actual malice in US law is defined as "knowledge that the information was false" or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." This is only the definition in the United States and came from the landmark 1964 lawsuit New York Times Co. v. Sullivan that ruled that public officials needed to prove actual malice in order to recover damages for libel. Wikiquote quotations related to: United States Wikinews has news related to this article: United States United States government Official website of the United States government - Gateway to governmental sites White House - Official site of the US President Senate. ... Law (a loanword from Old Norse lag), in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments for those who do not follow... Information is a term with many meanings depending on context, but is as a rule closely related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, instruction, communication, representation, and mental stimulus. ... 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Holding The First Amendment, as applied through the Fourteenth, protected a newspaper from being sued for libel in state court for making false defamatory statements about the official conduct of a public official, because the statements were not made with knowing or reckless disregard for the truth. ... In English and American law, and systems based on them, libel and slander are two forms of defamation (or defamation of character), which is the tort or delict of making a false statement of fact that injures someones reputation. ...

This term was not newly invented for the Sullivan case, but was a term from existing libel law. In many jurisdictions proof of "actual malice" was required in order for punitive damages to be awarded, or for other increased penalties. Since proof of the writer's malicious intentions is hard to provide, proof that the writer knowingly published a falshood was generally accepted as proof of malice, under the assumption that only a malicious person would knowingly publish a falshood. In the Sullivan case the Supreme Court adopted this term and gave it constitutional significance, at the same time defining it in terms of the proof which had previously been usual.

Actual malice is different from common law malice which indicates spite or ill-will. This article concerns the common-law legal system, as contrasted with the civil law legal system; for other meanings of the term, within the field of law, see common law (disambiguation). ... Malice is a legal term referring to a partys intention to do injury to another party. ...