Further to my earlier post on libel tourism, I’ve recently come across two interesting footnotes.

First, there is a rather pointed short film, called The Libel Tourist, about Rachel Ehrenfeld’s legal travails with Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz here and here (YouTube) (hat tip: the always excellent Critical Mass; also Overlawyered and Reason).

Second, Mahfouz’s own website proudly proclaims:

Ireland

Q: Do the family have Irish citizenship?

A: In 1990, Khalid Bin Mahfouz availed himself of the opportunity under the laws of the Republic of Ireland to obtain Irish citizenship for himself and other members of his family.

Yikes!

A little while ago, Brian Tamanaha on Balkinization raised the question of what is the right response where professors insult in class; his post began as follows [with some added links]:

The November issue of National Jurist has an article about a recent spate of law professors getting into trouble for comments inside or outside of the classroom that apparently offended students. According to the article, a Wisconsin professor made comments about Hmong men [IHT] in the context of discussing cultural practices that might be invoked as a defense against criminal charges. A Quinnipiac professor sent an email to students on his distribution list that “derided� them “for their concepts of how poor people and ethnic minorities are represented within the American legal system� [Quinnipiac Chronicle]. A John Marshall professor was reprimanded for asking a Jewish student “whether his religious training contributed to Jews passing the bar at higher rates than African Americans� [De Paul]. The article did not mention the most recent example of such controversy, involving a professor at Connecticut who showed a film in class, pausing at a scene that offended a few of the students [Law.com].

I was reminded of this as I listened last night to Dean Rod Smolla’s Inaugural Lecture at WLU (poster above) on

Freedom of Expression and Religion on the Modern Campus: Academic Freedom at Public and private Universities

His basic theme was that First Amendment doctrine is capable of explaining and guiding the development of the principles of academic freedom in the modern American university. Read the rest of this entry »

I have already discussed on this blog the decision of the Irish High Court in Leech v Independent Newspapers [2007] IEHC 223 (27 June 2007) which all but copperfastened the defence of reasonable publication (or responsible journalism in the public interest) to libel actions at Irish law. Now, in Cusson v Quan [2007] ONCA 771 (13 November 2007) (also here), in a case concerning an article in the Ottawa Citizen, the Court of Appeal in Ontario has allowed Canada to begin to get in on the act too. Joe Rayment saw this coming last January (also here). Now battle lines are being drawn, with Andrew Scott weighing in with an excellent post in favour of this development on MediaPal@LSE, and Mark McQueen contributing an equally impressive critique against it. Fagstein says that in Canada, the libel chill is warming slightly (with interesting further links; see also Cavanagh Williams | Editor & Publisher). Two paragraphs of Sharpe JA’s judgment in particular are worth focussing on. Read the rest of this entry »

Three free speech stories in the BBC News and Guardian websites caught my eye this morning. Indeed, the first two were almost side by side on both sites. In the first, there is widespread dismay at the arrest of a British school teacher in the Sudan accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad (BBC | Guardian). In the second, protests are expected later outside the Oxford Union (see also wikipedia) when Nick Griffin (see also wikipedia), Chairman of the British National Party, and David Irving (see also BBC | Holocaust History | Kizkor | wikipedia), Holocaust denier, arrive for a forum on The Limits of Free Speech (BBC | Guardian).

There is an inconsistency here; and the incongruous but serendipitous placement of these two stories side by side demonstrates it: we cannot be outraged both at the arrest of the teacher and at the speech of Nick Griffin and David Irving. Society cannot have it both ways, it is not free to pick and choose which speech to support. Those in favour of speech must afford it both to the teacher and to Griffin and Irving. Of course, those against speech would deny it both to the teacher and to Griffin and Irving. But if the arrest of the teacher doesn’t illustrate the absurdity of that position, the third story on the BBC and Guardian websites that caught my eye this morning graphically illustrates the danger of repressing disfavoured speech: it all too easily and rapidly leads to totalitarianism. Former world chess champion and Russian opposition figure Garry Kasparov has been jailed for five days, as he and other opposition figures were detained during rallies organised by Kasparov’s Other Russia coalition (BBC | Guardian).

Indeed, the controversy over these three otherwise unrelated events demonstrates the importance of the process of free speech. Read the rest of this entry »

On 14 December 2007, the Frances Lewis Law Center, of the School of Law, University of Washington and Lee, Lexington, Virginia, USA, in association with the University of Washington and Lee Law Review, will host

A Roundtable on Restitution and Unjust Enrichment in North America.

The main point underpinning the Roundtable is to get North American (ie, Canadian and US) Restitution scholars, practitioners, judges and others with an interest in the subject, together in one place, talking about current legal issues in the Law of Restitution and Unjust Enrichment. There seem to be too few opportunities to do so, except on the margins of other more generally focussed events. The hope is that this informal Roundtable will provide just such a context. Given that the American Law Institute’s current project on a Restatement (Third) on Restitution and Unjust Enrichment is at a crucial stage, and that the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent case law is proving controversial, this would seem an opportune time.

Information about the current papers, registration and travel and accommodation, is available on the Roundtable wesbite and blog (see also here and here). The call for papers is now closed. Thanks to the generosity of the Frances Lewis Law Center, there is no charge for attending the Roundtable.

From today’s Irish Times (sub req’d):

Landladies ordered to pay students €115,000 in damages
Simon Carswell

Two Dublin landladies have been ordered to pay damages totalling more than €115,000 to 10 students who were tenants in their house after the Circuit Court found they had kept the students under secret electronic surveillance. …

The students became concerned in late 2004 that their conversations and activities were being monitored when the McKennas referred to details the students had discussed in private in the house. When they raised the issue with the McKennas, the students were evicted. … Judge Gerard Griffin yesterday found that the evidence in the case left him “in no doubt whatsoever that the defendants had kept these plaintiffs under electronic surveillance”. … He found the students’ rights to privacy had been infringed and he awarded them damages varying from €7,500 to €12,500 each.

The Association of European Journalists held their 45th Annual Congress in Dublin Castle over the weekend. On Saturday, 10 November 2007, the morning session considered the theme:

50 years later: The EU in a shrinking world

And they, lucky people, heard a speech by An Taoiseach (blogged here; reported here, here and here (Irish Times sub req’d)) in which he said that a referendum on the Lisbon Reform Treaty is likely be held in the first half of 2008. (He had previously addressed the Irish Branch of the AEJ in 2005 (reported here), as have several of his Ministers since: Minister of State Treacy in 2007, and Minister Ryan in 2007 – also here).

Of greater interest, the afternoon session considered the theme

Freedom of the Media

The special guest was Miklos Haraszti, Representative for Freedom of the Media in the OSCE. According to an article by Marie O’Halloran in today’s Irish Times (sub req’d), he urged that Ireland should “show the rest of the world and create a wonderful example” by becoming the first western EU state to drop legislation that allows for the jailing of journalists for defamation. He said that said section 34 of the Defamation Bil, 2006 was “very progressive” and abolished common law offences of criminal, seditious and obscene libel, but section 35 allowed for a sentence of up to five years for the publication of “gravely harmful statements”. He said that the majority of journalists jailed in central and eastern Europe were imprisoned for defamation and a move by Ireland to drop such legislation would be a “wonderful gesture” and a great example, especially to central and eastern Europe.

The meeting discussed the current state of the law relating to journalists’ sources in Ireland; on how Ireland lines up against the rest of the world (not very well), see Privacy International’s survey Silencing Sources: An International Survey of Protections and Threats to Journalists’ Sources.

Also speaking at the same event, the Press Ombudsman, Prof John Horgan, said a that major issue in the media was privacy, which was “not as simple as journalists or politicians or others need it to be”.

In another important development, the AEJ published its first ever Survey of Media Freedom across Europe, entitled Goodbye to Freedom? (.doc), at the Congress (see press press release | reports here and here (sub req’d)). It covers 20 countries in eastern and western Europe and highlights evidence that media freedom in Europe is threatened by restrictive laws, hidden political and commercial pressures, threats of jail, intimidation and in some cases even murder. OECD Representative Haraszti welcomed the Survey as a warning to people all over Europe of the multiple dangers and threats to media freedom and freedom of expression in their own continent. The chapter on Ireland (.doc), prepared by Joe Carroll, predictably welcomed the Press Council but highlighted concerns relating to the protection of sources.

Taking up some of these themes, speaking on RTE’s The Week in Politics last night (reported in the Irish Examiner today), the Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, said he would move ahead with defamation reforms which have generally been welcomed by the media, and that he would wait to see how the new Press Council operates before deciding whether to reintroduce the more controversial Privacy Bill, 2006. This is an important development, confirming as it does recent supposition as to the fate of both Bills. The enactment of the Defamation Bill cannot come quickly enough.

On Friday 23 November 2007, at 10.00am, the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, in association with the Department of Foreign Affairs, will host a guest lecture by Louise Arbour (former judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, and now UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; see CBC | wikipedia), entitled:

Responsibility to Protect as a Duty of Care in International Law and Practice

The lecture will take place in the Exam Hall (map here); all are welcome to attend; please RSVP.

The lecture will address the historical origins and development of the responsibility to protect norm, its fundamental differences from the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, the legal core of responsibility to protect and when and how the norm is engaged, the role that UN institutions can play in interpreting and applying the norm and mechanisms of cooperation available to the international community.

It promises to be a fascinating lecture, and I am greatly looking forward to it. It is no exaggeration to say that the international community has not dealt very well either with calls for or with cases of humanitarian intervention, especially over the last ten to fifteen years or so. There is no agreement on such fundamental questions as whether a right on the part of one state to intervene by force in the internal affairs of another state on humanitarian grounds actually exists, let alone if and when and how it ought to occur in any given case. Against this backdrop of unfortunate uncertainty, a further norm of international law is beginning to emerge relating to states’ responsibility to protect (ICISS | wikipedia) populations that are at risk in other states and to prevent the occurrence of large-scale tragedies. Depending on your point of view, this norm is either a justification for humanitarian intervention or an illegitimate infringement upon state sovereignty. Either way, what the High Commissioner will have to say will no doubt prove a significant contribution to an important debate.