The right to reputation

One of the most powerful ways in which one’s words can impact another person is by influencing their reputation among others. Despite the crucial importance of reputation for our psychological and social lives, however, the idea that we might have a ‘right’ to reputation against the speech of others remains underexplored by philosophers and political theorists alike. While not clearly articulated as such, a right to reputation can be found in the legal and social norms underpinning libel and group defamation legislation, where the strength of the concern for reputation found here can be inferred from the high priority it is given when balanced against the right to freedom of speech. According to this argument, it is wrong for others to sully our standing in the eyes of others in deceptive ways because it interferes with our ability to take part in the market on fair terms. In addition, a more recent category of speech restriction is grounded in concerns that one’s reputation as a member of a group can be negatively impacted by widespread hate speech (Waldron 2012). The existing legal and normative frameworks offered by (individual and group) libel and defamation legislation, however, are not capable of responding to some of the more difficult cases of reputational damage we face today. Crucially, and under existing models, reputation-damaging speech must, in order to count as legally-punishable, be shown to be untrue. But what about those cases where an individual has suffered severe reputational loss for actions that were not the result of deception or lies? In particular, what rights do those who suffer reputational loss for committing actual or perceived wrongs have against those who ‘stir up’ public hostility towards them? Both the ‘standard’ economic model of individual reputation and the ‘public assurance’ model of group reputation, then, seem to provide little recourse for those whose reputational damage is rooted in actions that actually did take place. In response, this paper aims to explore what a ‘right to reputation’ might look like and how it might be put into practice to guard against some of the more pernicious forms of reputation-damage we face today, such as those found in cases of disproportionate online shaming and intimate image abuse (also known as ‘revenge porn’). The argument will be structured as follows. First, I take a critical look at what I take to be the ‘classic’ understanding of the moral right to reputation and show that it is inadequate for dealing with a range of reputation-affecting expression. On my proposed alternative view, reputation is not simply a tool for market engagement, but is an essential component of our equal status. Such a re-framing thus demands that we take seriously those threats to reputation that occur even where individuals can be said to be causally responsible in some way for their reputational loss. It also requires that we tackle those background conditions- the norms, social structures, and practices- that make some more vulnerable to reputational damage than others.