Post-Mortal Protection of the Right to Reputation – A Comparative View

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The paper discusses post-mortal protection of the right to reputation, with the aim of detecting similarities and differences in the legal treatment of this issue in European countries, and understanding the position of the European Court of Human Rights. The current theoretical standpoints as well as legislative approaches are quite diverse. Common law countries do not recognise a cause of action for posthumous defamation at all, and civil law jurisdictions regulate it quite differently. In this paper the authors attempt to provide a comprehensive overview and elaborate in detail the practical and theoretical aspects of the post-mortal protection of the right to reputation in order to answer some of the existing dilemmas. The authors also suggest the optimal method of post-mortal protection of reputational interests in modern society, bearing in mind the difficulty of achieving a balance between the exercise of freedom of expression and the right to reputation.