Libel Tourism
Historian Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, was sued for libel in a British court in 2000 -- and, surprisingly, won -- after she pointed to statements by David Irving that she deemed holocaust denial.

Next stop in the British courts? Muslims seeking to make free western societies a little less free and western -- on the way to making them a whole lot less free and western.

Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism, writes for Scripps News of a new trick for silencing criticism of Islam and terrorists that's sure to be used more and more -- taking advantage of ridiculous British libel laws in British courts against writers in other countries. Here's how it works:

A book published in the United States names an individual abroad who supports terrorist groups. That individual -- for the sake of discussion, let's say he's a Saudi petro-billionaire with a home in London -- goes online and orders a few copies, which arrive in the mail. He takes those books to a British attorney who files a lawsuit complaining that his client has been libeled.

The billionaire knows it will be much easier to prevail in the U.K. than it would be in an American court, where the First Amendment and decades of case law provide free speech protections. (Under English law, by contrast, the burden in a libel case is on the defendant to prove his innocence -- which can be impossible if he's been using confidential sources or even just sources who don't want to cross an ocean and take part in a courtroom battle.)

The legal costs are chump change for the billionaire, while few nonfiction writers command similar resources. If the writer chooses not to spend months living in a hotel and fighting it out in court, the case will be forfeited and he will be hit with a "default judgment." If he doesn't pay, he'll never again be able to set foot in the U.K. and other countries that enforce British court judgments.

But more important is this: The message gets sent, loud and clear, to journalists, scholars and publishers, that researching and writing about terrorists and those who enable them is verboten -- even in America.

May writes that Congressmen Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) are behind the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008, which would allow Americans sucked into one of these bullshit cases a "federal cause of action to sue back" -- and to recover legal fees and damages if a U.S court decides the foreign suit was a specious scheme to squash First Amendment rights.

The problems, as May sees them:

First, although there is bipartisan support for this approach, not enough backers -- so far at least -- are from the majority party: Of ten sponsors on the House side, only one is a Democrat. Second, we're deep into the presidential campaign season, a time when very little moves on Capitol Hill. Third, never underestimate the ability of the Saudis, their lobbyists, their allies and their courtiers, to kill that which interferes with their interests.

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