question is: Did Smith favor defamation laws (libel, slander) that reached beyond simple reputation, so as to cover some …We interpret Adam Smith on reputation, commutative justice, and defamation laws. We address two major questions. The … first question concerns whether Smith thought that “one’s own” as covered by commutative justice included one’s reputation …

In Smith there is something of a contrariety, or double doctrine, on justice: Much of his writing leaves us with the … impression that we should use justice and its cognates to mean commutative justice, and only that. But much also authorizes the … conclusion that we should embrace and talk of three different senses of justice. I exposit the three senses of justice, but leave …

rationalism, the natural law school, and Hobbes’s contractarianism. Unlike natural moral sentiments, the sense of justice is … classic conventions of justice—stable possession, transference of property by consent, and the obligation to fulfill promises …. In a scenario of scarce external resources, Hume’s central idea is that the development of the rules of justice responds …