RUTHFULLY YOURS

June 23, 2010 ι Abby Wisse Schachter Rachel Ehrenfeld, the poster child for being a victim of libel tourism – when people sue for libel for published material they don’t like in countries like Britain, where they have a chance of winning – has come out in favor of legislation proposed by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act (SPEECH Act). “The SPEECH Act will uphold First Amendment protections for American free expression by guarding American authors and publishers from the enforcement of frivolous foreign libel suits filed in countries that do not have our strong free speech protections. Such lawsuits are often used by “libel-tourists” in an effort to suppress the rights of American scholars, writers, and journalists to speak, write and publish freely in print and on the Internet,” writes Ehrenfeld.

In announcing the legislation, Leahy and Sessions were adamant about protecting Americans’ free speech rights . “This bipartisan legislation guarantees that a foreign defamation judgment cannot be enforced in the United States if that country’s libel standards are inconsistent with American law,” said Leahy. And Sessions declared that “the bill is ‘a needed first step to ensure that weak free-speech protections and abusive legal practices in foreign countries do not prevent Americans from fully exercising their constitutional right to speak and debate freely.’”

Now if we could only get US publishers to protect free speech rights as vigorously.