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It is unusual to see a work that treats reputation as a topic in its own right, but reputation matters and merits our attention. We rely on reputation—the social distillation of opinion about an individual, product or service—to decide whom to trust or what to buy, and our own reputation precedes us, shaping our interactions and opportunities as it does so. Reputation is not only important, but problematic; it is circulated through formal channels such as credit scores and also through erratic, unaccountable channels of gossip and rumour, breeding grounds for discrimination and incrimination.

The internet can magnify both the formal and informal channels for conveying reputation, in ways that are sometimes useful, sometimes dismaying. In this collection of essays, Lior Strahilevitz asks us to “imagine if every plumber, manufactured product, cell phone provider, home builder, professor, hair stylist, accountant, attorney, golf pro, and taxi driver were rated.â€...