By George K. Werner (former education minister)
In the last day or so, thoughtful lawyers and commentators have pushed back against my position on the Supreme Court’s citation of Prophet Key. Their arguments deserve to be taken seriously, not dismissed. They raise four principal claims: first, that freedom of expression in Liberia is not absolute; second, that offensive speech may still constitute defamation, harassment, or disorderly conduct; third, that repeated abusive language—especially against women—may amount to psychological or gender-based violence; and fourth, that Facebook Live is a public space where speech carries legal responsibility.
All of these propositions are broadly correct. None of them, however, resolves the narrow constitutional question at issue: whether public ridicule of the Supreme Court, by itself, can justify contempt of court.
Liberia’s Constitution is clear that freedom of expression is not absolute. Article 15 allows limitations to protect the rights and reputations of others, public order, morality, and national security. But that same Article also insists that there shall be no limitation on the public right to be informed about the government and its functionaries. Judges and courts are government institutions. The Constitution therefore anticipates criticism of them—and protects it—subject to carefully defined legal limits.
The mistake in much of the current argument is the collapsing of categories. Offensive speech is being treated as if it were automatically defamation. Ridicule is being treated as if it were automatically contempt. Vulgarity is being treated as if it were automatically criminal.
That is not how constitutional law works.
Take defamation first. It is true that accusing a person of theft, corruption, or other criminal conduct carries a burden of proof and may be actionable if false and presented as fact. But defamation is a civil cause of action, not a shortcut to contempt. Liberia’s own jurisprudence and legislative reform have moved decisively away from criminalizing such speech. Where reputation is harmed, the remedy lies in civil defamation proceedings, not in invoking the coercive powers of the Supreme Court to protect institutional dignity.
The precedent often cited here—the civil defamation litigation involving Rodney D. Sieh and Christopher J. Toe, then Minister of Agriculture—illustrates precisely this point. Chris Toe did not seek contempt sanctions to punish speech he considered insulting or reputationally damaging.
He pursued civil remedies through the courts. Judicial authority did not collapse. Public order was not threatened. The system worked as constitutional design intends. That precedent does not support contempt for ridicule; it undermines it.
Next, harassment and disorderly conduct. Liberia’s Penal Law does address conduct intended to alarm, provoke, or disrupt public peace. But again, intent and effect matter. Not every abusive word, even when repeated, rises to the level of disorderly conduct. Courts have always required a showing of actual disturbance, imminent breach of the peace, or targeted intimidation. Mere offense—even widespread offense—does not suffice. If it did, political speech would always be one angry audience away from criminal sanction.
The argument that Facebook Live constitutes a public space is also correct—but incomplete. Being a public space does not lower constitutional protection; it heightens the need for restraint. Modern constitutional law treats social media as a principal forum for political expression. Speech does not lose protection because it is amplified. If anything, the danger of chilling effects is greater when courts reach into digital public spaces to punish speech that is offensive but non-obstructive.
More serious is the invocation of gender-based violence and psychological abuse. Liberia’s Domestic Violence Act rightly recognizes non-physical harm, including verbal degradation and public humiliation, particularly when directed at women. That framework is essential and must be defended.
But it is also context specific. It is designed to protect victims from coercive, targeted abuse—not to convert every vulgar insult uttered in political speech into criminal gender-based violence. To do so would stretch the statute beyond its purpose and risk instrumentalizing gender-protection laws to police political expression.
None of these excuses the language used. Calling a public official’s mother immoral or evil is morally wrong and socially indefensible. It should be condemned. But constitutional law insists on a further question: what is the appropriate legal response?
That brings us back to contempt.
Contempt of court is not a general power to punish bad speech. It is an exceptional doctrine, justified only where speech or conduct interferes with the administration of justice itself—by disrupting proceedings, intimidating judges or litigants, inciting violence, or encouraging defiance of court orders. Public ridicule does not meet that threshold. Emotional harm to institutional esteem is not the same as obstruction of justice.
The historical roots of “ridicule” as a punishable concept lie in English common-law doctrines of seditious libel and early contempt, where speech that brought the Crown or courts into “hatred, contempt, or ridicule” could be punished even if true. That logic has been deliberately rejected by modern constitutional systems because it places institutional dignity above public liberty.
Liberia has rejected it too—through constitutional interpretation, through legislative reform, and through painful experience. When contempt and libel powers were used expansively in the past, the result was not greater respect for the judiciary, but backlash, international condemnation, and eventual reform.
In my penology and social deviance classes, as I wrote earlier, I often told students that not all conduct that is socially deviant, offensive, or unacceptable is illegal or criminal. Societies routinely condemn behavior the law deliberately chooses not to punish. The law intervenes not to enforce civility, but to prevent concrete harm. That principle is not a loophole; it is a safeguard.
The Supreme Court of Liberia does not preserve its sanctity by responding to ridicule with coercion. It preserves it through restraint, reasoned judgments, transparency, and fidelity to constitutional limits. Courts that can endure insult without reaching for contempt demonstrate strength, not weakness.
Public ridicule may be corrosive. But using contempt to punish ridicule is corrosive in a far deeper way. It shifts the judiciary from guardian of justice to arbiter of respect, and that shift—more than any vulgar speech—poses the real threat to constitutional order.
The constitutional line remains clear and unchanged: where reputation is harmed, civil law is the remedy; where justice is obstructed, contempt may lie; but where speech is merely offensive, the Constitution requires endurance, not punishment.
Remembering that distinction—especially when emotions are high—is how courts protect justice without doing harm in its name.
