Excerpt from Article
A Clear Legislative Solution Is Needed In This Area
The best solution, however, is the one Lisa Brown urged: State legislatures ought to address the gap in the law regarding the reputations of the dead. Rhode Island has a law to this effect, albeit a very limited one. And many civil law jurisdictions -- Quebec is one example -- allow such actions.
Some may respond that this would "chill" freedom of speech under the First Amendment. No more so, however, than for the living.
Moreover, unlike the living, the dead have lost the power of counterspeech -- the power to respond. The underlying philosophy of the First Amendment is that there must be a open marketplace of ideas, where the truth will emerge from "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" debate. But the dead are not in a very good position to participate.
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