Reasonable Review Of Tort Defense

In the face of growing reputation infringement disputes,the special defense of reasonable review plays an important role in achieving a balance between reputation protection and freedom of speech.After years of research,article 1025 of China Civil Code has in fact established China’s reasonable review defense.However,without fully obtaining China’s judicial practice,our country’s defense appears fuzzy and simple,which is hard to meet the needs of rising right consciousness,the protection of personal reputation as well as the protection of speech and public supervision.After comparing our reasonable review defense with statute law and case law of other countries,and studying the actual situation of judicial cases,three problems can be easily found which are the scope of application is vague,the scope of review is narrow,and the determination of reasonable review is strict.To form China’s reasonable review defense,we must take into account the fact that our country focus more on protection of reputation rather than freedom of speech and public supervision.Therefore,current reasonable review should be improved from three sides.In the first place,expand application scope so as to strengthen protecting freedom of speech and press supervision in non-public interest areas.In the second place,include comments within review scope to protect freedom of comments.Above all,re-explain determination standard of article 1025 and article 1026 from three aspects.First,the object of review should be interpreted in a broadened way,including not only information provided by others but also original information.Second,divide review obligation into different levels,and different obligation subjects should perform different level of review obligation.Three,six factors of determination can be divided into two categories:objective factors and subjective factors.Through analyzing objective factors,we can determine obligation level.Through analyzing subjective factors,we can judge whether obligation subject has fulfilled his reasonable review obligation.