Not the least peculiar aspect of libel and slander as a tort lies in the fact that, while it is spoken of as a personal tort 1 to which the maxim actio personalis moritur cum persona applies, it is one of the most inherently torts known to the law. Adequate as a workable deduction, any statement which tends to confine the theory of this tort to an affirmation of the interest which each member of the community has in the opinion of his fellow men concerning his reputation is merely declaratory of a confluence of preconceived premises. Rather than a mere legal exertion of an effort to safeguard the integrity of one's reputation, the law, by affording the remedy of an action on the case for defamatory statements, recognizes (a) the value of an individual's status, (b) that status is amenable to impairment, (c) that it is beyond the power of an aggrieved individual to cope effectively with defamatory interference with his status by means of counter statement, and (d) that the exigencies of the social order make it desirable to hinder such interferences and alleviate their consequences. Thus regarded, the current law of libel and slander in essence articulates the reality of a social relationship involving the impact of exterior influences on an individual's status: rendering status fully exposed to the forces of uninvited public scrutiny and censure in some fields, while partially protecting or totally immunizing it against such attacks in other spheres of social contacts by means of legal sanction. Our familiar patterns of absolute privilege, qualified privilege and redressable libels respectively correspond to and reflect areas of interhuman relationships in which a maximal exertion of public interference with an individual's status is encouraged; those in which there is a more or less equal balance of conflicting social conveniences; and, finally, those