Saudis Seeking Friendlier Confines

It's hard to imagine the Saudis getting coddled better anywhere than the U.S., but it looks like they're the next consumer of Britain's so-called "Libel Tourism":

A group of wealthy Saudi businessmen have opened up a new front in the terror wars. Confronted with inquiries into their alleged ties to the financing of Islamic terror groups, they have launched an ambitious campaign to clear their names by filing defamation suits in the British courts.

In a growing phenomenon that lawyers have dubbed "libel tourism," the Saudis are seeking to invoke Britain's plaintiff-friendly libel laws to silence critics in the United States and in the international community.

The legal actions come at a time when American lawyers for the families of September 11 victims are aggressively pursuing a $1 trillion lawsuit in the United States that accuses dozens of Saudi royal princes and wealthy businessmen of providing funding that led to the terror attacks. By targeting U.S. media organizations and others in the British courts, some of the Saudis may hope to shift the focus and win judgments elsewhere.

Well I've been hearing about these British libel laws for some time, and have been wondering how it is that our two countries have developed such disparate systems. I went looking around the internet, hoping to find some explanation based in policy or history. Instead, the only difference seems to be the First Amendment. Looks like I ought to get around to reading that copy of Anthony Lewis' Make No Law.

Thankfully, it appears that those of us with no foreign assets can rest a bit easier:

Writing in the Libel Defense Resource Center's 1999 Cyberspace Project, Kurt Wimmer, a partner specializing in new media at Covington & Burling, and a Harvard law student, Joshua Berman, note, "Even assuming valid jurisdiction, a foreign plaintiff may not, consistent with both international law, U.S. foreign relations law, and U.S. public policy, enforce an Internet libel judgment in U.S. court, so long as that judgment is inconsistent with the requirements of the First Amendment."

Well that's a relief.