claim: Expanding defamation law is misguided. He contends that such expansions overlook crucial "audience effects," where stricter laws can paradoxically harm reputations by making any remaining false statements appear more credible. This increased believability means attempts to fight "fake news" by strengthening defamation law could backfire. Arbel challenges the fundamental assumption that defamation law inherently protects reputation, suggesting it can even undermine it by altering how audiences...

evidence_quote: [p. 6] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM 458 ALABAMA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 71:2:453 ful. But it can have negative and deleterious effects when the occasional statement proves to be false, as audiences are more likely to believe it to be true than they would absent strict defamation law.20 Hence, we conclude that strict defamation law may damage reputational interests. The framework presented here offers another dimension to standard analyses of defamation law.21 In the standard bilateral-tort model, courts and commentators see expansions to defamation law as involving a simple balance between better protection of the victim’s reputation and the chilling effect of such laws...

citation: Yonathan A. Arbel, The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws, Alabama Law Review (2019).

confidence: machine-linked

limitations: Machine-linked claim. Use the evidence quote and PDF before treating it as a quotation or as a complete statement of the paper's position.


claim: His co-authored article, "The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law," examines the objectives and workings of defamation law, its relationship with reputation, and, critically, how "audience effects"—the way audiences perceive statements—shape the law's effectiveness and its appropriate boundaries.

paper_title: The Case Against Expanding Defamation Laws

evidence_quote: [p. 2] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM THE CASE AGAINST EXPANDING DEFAMATION LAW Yonathan A. Arbel & Murat Mungan* It is considered axiomatic that defamation law protects reputation. This proposition—commonsensical, pervasive, and influential—is faulty. Underlying this fallacy is the failure to appreciate audience effects: the interaction between defamation law and members of the audience. Defamation law seeks to affect the behavior of speakers by making them bear a cost for spreading untruthful information. Invariably, however, the law will also affect members of the audience, as statements made in a highly regulated environment tend to appear more reliable than...


claim: The widely held belief that defamation law safeguards reputation is flawed because it ignores "audience effects"—how the law shapes audience perception. He argues that stricter defamation laws can paradoxically damage reputations by making statements seem more reliable, implying that expanding these laws to combat fake news could prove counterproductive.

evidence_span: [p. 2] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM THE CASE AGAINST EXPANDING DEFAMATION LAW Yonathan A. Arbel & Murat Mungan* It is considered axiomatic that defamation law protects reputation. This proposition—commonsensical, pervasive, and influential—is faulty. Underlying this fallacy is the failure to appreciate audience effects: the interaction between defamation law and members of the audience. Defamation law seeks to affect the behavior of speakers by making them bear a cost for spreading untruthful information. Invariably, however, the law will also affect members of the audience, as statements made in a highly regulated environment tend to appear more reliable than...


claim: Concurrent political pressures to bolster libel laws, exemplified by figures like then-President Trump, and a new American Law Institute project on defamation, signal potentially imminent, significant changes to the law. He notes these calls for expansion, involving reduced safeguards and higher damages, are largely based on the prevailing theory that defamation law's primary function is reputation protection.

evidence_quote: [p. 3] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM 2019] The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law 455 of his public communications, and he promised decisive action: “We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws, so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts . . . .”4 At the same time, in January of 2019, the American Law Institute (ALI) announced the start of a new Restatement project for defamation law.5 The confluence of political will, support on the Supreme Court, and the ALI project suggests that, indeed, writers and critics who prophesize with their pens should...


claim: The prevalent "reputation-protection theory" suggests stricter defamation laws, by penalizing falsehoods, protect reputations from damaging comments. His article, however, critiques this theory, highlighting its failure to account for significant "audience effects" – how the audience's perception of statements is influenced by the legal framework itself.


claim: Traditional defamation law is deficient as it neglects the "audience effect," meaning harm isn't direct but mediated by third-party perception of negative statements. Applying signaling theory, he explains that stricter defamation laws can enhance the perceived reliability of statements, because the higher cost of falsehoods (due to increased legal risk) makes these "signals" appear more credible than "cheap talk."

evidence_quote: [p. 5] 4 ARBELMUNGAN 453-497 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/4/2019 7:18 PM 2019] The Case Against Expanding Defamation Law 457 traditional torts, such as assault and battery, reputational harms are not immediate. Rather, they are mediated by third parties, namely, the audience.14 Reputational harm is the result of the audience believing, at least to some extent, in a negative statement. As a result, any legal analysis of defamation is incomplete without considering audience effect. As communication theorists agree, audience effects can be complex: “The modern view, informed by decades of empirical research, supports an understanding antithetical to the assumption of direct and uniform effects [of...