Law Commons^™

Of Reasonable Readers And Unreasonable Speakers: Libel Law In A Networked World, Lyrissa Lidsky, Ronnell Anderson Jones

Faculty Publications

Social-media libel cases require courts to map existing defamation doctrines onto social-media fact patterns in ways that create adequate breathing space for expression without lincensing character assassination. This Article explores these challenges by investigating developments involving two important constitutional doctrines - the so-called opinion privlege, which protects statements that are unverifiable or cannot be regarded as stating actual facts about a person, and the actual malice rule, which requires defamation plaintiff's who are public officials or public figures to prove that the defendant made a defamatory statement with knowledge of or reckless disregard for, its falsity. Given the critical role …