"Libel Tourism" and the First Amendment

Ever wonder about the flood of libel cases in the U.K.? You can thank the Internet. We now have the concept of "libel tourism" -- where, for example, a Saudi businessperson might sue me in London for this blog post (authored in New York), simply because my writing was disseminated, via the Internet, worldwide.

But why sue in London, especially since the chances of ever collecting on a judgment there are close to zero? Because it's easier to win a libel claim in the British courts -- and the reputation-enhancing impact of a victory over a defamer is sometimes worth more to the litigant than the damages themselves.

Here's an interesting article from today's New York Times that highlights the phenomenon. A key paragraph:

British courts have always been friendlier to libel claimants than their American counterparts. Until recently that did not matter much to American authors or publishers. But now the Internet makes anything published in the United States almost immediately available in Britain, too.

As the article details, there is a push to bring U.K. media law more in line with the U.S., but I wouldn't expect major changes anytime soon. Besides strictly legal justifications, the reasons to preserve the status quo range from the practical (some parties like having such a ready venue to clear their name in public) to the economic (it is likely a boon to the U.K. legal economy, similar to the way patent cases have benefited certain local economies in the U.S. -- see a 2006 New York Times article on the phenomenon, here). Thus, it may also be the case that other countries put pressure on the United States to bring its own First Amendment in line with international norms (for a discussion of just how free the U.S. is compared to other jurisdictions, see Adam Liptak's excellent 2008 New York Times article, here).

So how can journalists, editors and bloggers navigate a worldwide web of media laws in a environment where you can be sued in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world? One good resource is Charles Glasser's International Libel and Privacy Handbook, 2d Edition, published earlier this year by Bloomberg Press (order a copy, here; for a 2007 article Charles and I co-authored on the topic for The National Law Journal, click here).

Say what you will about the excesses of our First Amendment, but there's little doubt it offers protections in the United States that simply do not exist in other legal systems. I'd submit that such protections may come under attack in years to come, but it is vitally important that we not allow a gradual chipping away at the freedom of speech that is at the core of the American concept of civil liberty.