Defamation and vilification: rights to reputation, free speech and freedom of religion at common law and under human rights laws

For many years the common law of defamation, and statutory amendments to it, have protected a person‟s reputation in the community, in the sense of the right not be denigrated in the eyes of others. While this involves a restriction on another powerful common law principle of “freedom of speech” (see the discussion in the High Court of Australia decision in Australian Broadcasting Corporation v O’Neill (2006) 227 CLR 57), a complex set of checks and balances have been developed to cope with this clash. The issues as to whether a person has a right not to be “vilified” (and what this means, ranging from “being the subject of death threats” to “humiliated” or “annoyed”) on the basis of their religious beliefs, have a number of connections with the issues dealt with by the law of defamation. In this paper I will explore some of these connections and examine whether a specific law on “religious vilification” is justified, or whether the protection provided by the law of defamation would be adequate for most purposes