Restoring Accountability in Freedom of Expression Theory: Public Libel Law and Radical Whig Ideology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As leading common law jurisdictions grapple with the Internet’s impact on defamation law, comparative legal scholarship has revealed long-standing problems with its underlying theoretical justifications. Specifically, public libel doctrine is commonly supported by appeals to democratic theory in the abstract. Accountability concerns most relevant to adjudicating public libel cases are thus routinely overlooked. This article aims to diagnose the causes of these theoretical inaccuracies, describe their impact on public libel law, and translate their significance for law reform. Through exploring eighteenth-century libertarian thought, we highlight the foundational importance of accountability and the checking function rationale to democratic theory and governance. An analysis of competing democratic models demonstrates significant undertheorizing that poses several problems for contemporary political speech and public interest defenses. This article suggests that, before proceeding precipitously with Internet-inspired reforms, we might benefit from reflecting upon defamation law’s impact on all aspects of our democratic values.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.057 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".