Abstract:
How should we criticize public officials, and what are the ethical limits of this criticism? Our convictions about the proper treatment of politicians in public discourse are in tension. On the one hand, robust criticism of public officials is central to a healthy democracy. This insight is fundamental to US law’s higher bar for restricting criticism of public officials; both the tort of defamation and the tort of inflicting emotional distress are harder to establish when the target is a politician. The rationale for this differential treatment is precisely to ensure that criticism of democratic officials is (in the words of Justice Brennan) “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” On the other hand, empirical evidence documents the savage treatment that politicians endure on social media—with special fury directed toward female politicians and politicians of colour. When criticism goes too far, not only does it subject officials to unjustified harm; it deters many others from entering politics in the first place. In this way, a culture of unduly vitriolic criticism toward politicians threatens the talent pool of democratic leadership, transforming politics into a place for only the most calloused personalities. Even so, there is tremendous disagreement about what it means for criticism to go too far, and what should be done when it does. This paper seeks to illuminate the moral duties that should constrain and guide citizens’ critical commentary on politicians, exploring the extent to which those moral duties should be legally codified.