Criminal Libel in US

Criminal libel in US law? UCLA law prof. Eugene Volokh in a June 8 posting in VC took special note of criminal libel cases in Virginia. To those who are familiar with UW-Milwaukee journalism prof. David Pritchard's "Rethinking Criminal Libel: An Empirical Study," 14 COMM L. & POL'Y 303 (2009) and with Ga. State U journalism prof. Greg J. Lisby's "No Place in the Law: The Ignominy of Criminal Libel in American Jurisprudence," 9 COMM L. & POL'Y 433 (2004), Volokh's posting is not as "remarkable" as some people might think. When it comes to criminal law, indeed, the United States is not as liberal as Mexico, England, and Ireland. In recent years, Mexico and several other countries have decriminalized libel in an effort to expand freedom of expression.

Libel Tourism

For a while "libel tourism" was accepted as an occupational hazard for the transnational US media. More recently, however, it has emerged as an insidious way for the rich and famous to do an end-run around the media-friendly US law by suing American media in England. Americans are now fighting back. Six states (California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Utah) have passed anti-libel tourism law, and Congress considers following suit. Anti-libel tourism law prevents foreign libel judgments from being recognized and enforced in the US if they are incompatible with the First Amendment law.

Media Law Globalizing

Globalization is coming to media law, whether US or not, so inexorably. Google is appealing a trial court's privacy ruling against its executives in Italy. A New York law professor is being sued in a criminal court in Paris for libel by an Israeli book author for a book review published in a law journal. Wikileaks is based in Sweden, not in the U.S., because the Swedish shield law is one of the world's most protective.
Not surprisingly, more American scholars in journalism and law pay attention to the globalization of media law. Roy Moore and Michael Murray's MEDIA LAW AND ETHICS is the latest example. The fourth edition of the book (forthcoming 2010) will have a new chapter on international and foreign media law. David Kohler and Lee Levine's MEDIA AND THE LAW (2009) is another good example.