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The Terror Finance blog has a fascinating piece on the growing practice of “libel tourism,” where individuals linked to terrorism in books and articles sue the authors in British courts because the Brits lack any serious freedom-of-speech protections in such cases.
Britain has no First Amendment to protect free speech or a free press - and it has recently seen a surge in “libel tourism” - actions by wealthy, nonresident Arabs linked to terrorism who sue in England because its law strongly favors libel plaintiffs.Last year, English legal publisher Sweet and Maxwell reported that the number of such libel cases tripled from the year before to 13 percent of all defamation cases in Britain.
Libel tourism has forced British publishers to pulp (that is, destroy unsold) five books on terrorism, and libel fears led Random House UK to drop plans to publish Craig Unger’s US bestseller, “House of Bush, House of Saud.”