Post, Robert C., The Social Foundations of Defamation Law: Reputation and the Constitution, 74 Calif. L. Rev. 691 (1986)

Robert Post published “The Social Foundations of Defamation Law” the month I graduated from high school in a remote and dusty West Texas oil field town. I encountered the article six years later while in law school at the University of Texas. By that time, I knew I wanted to be a scholar, having done a Fulbright at Cambridge to study medieval legal history and jurisprudence. But I felt, and still feel, that it was awfully presumptuous of me to assume the academy would want me. When I read Post’s article for the first time, I was searching for a role model and a way to integrate my interests in history, literature and legal philosophy with the exacting methods of analysis I was absorbing in law school. [This essay is published in 25 Comm. L. and Pol'y 491 2020].