Legal Commentary

For those of you at SEALS and looking for something at 4:30 to build an appetite for dinner, there will be a very good panel on the enforcement of foreign defamation judgments, the anchor panel for the two-day First Amendment Workshop. Speakers will critique the pending Free Speech Protection Act of 2009 (a subject I have written about previously) and general principles of how the First Amendment should affect domestic enforcement of foreign judgments against speech, where that speech is fully protected under U.S. law.

Enforcement of Foreign Defamation Judgments

The Free Speech Protection Act of 2009 would create a federal tort out of the filing of a defamation lawsuit in a foreign tribunal. In addition to the compelling speech interests involved in this libel tourism debate, there are a significant number of other relevant legal concerns (i.e., foreign relations, the viability of the Hague Conferences attempt to formulate a multilateral treaty on the recognition of civil judgments, etc.). In addition, the ALI has recently completed the final draft of its Foreign Judgment Recognition Act including a lengthy reporter?s note regarding foreign libel judgments.

Moderator: Professor Benjamin Means, University of South Carolina School of Law.

Speakers: Professor Doug Rendleman, Washington & Lee University School of Law; Professor Robert McFarland, Faulkner University, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law; Professor Howard Wasserman, Florida International University College of Law; Professor Michael Broyde, Emory University School of Law; Professor Louise Teitz, Rogers Williams University School of Law.

I will discuss some First Amendment and Article III problems with the proposed federal law.