Leahy-Chaired Panel Holds Hearing On Libel Tourism And The Growing Threat To American Journalists
2010-02-23

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to examine libel tourism, a growing threat to American journalists’ First Amendment rights. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) presided at the hearing.

Permissive libel laws in other countries have resulted in foreign law suits against American journalists, publishers and authors. A widely-publicized case in Britain in which an American author, Rachel Ehrenfeld, was sued in British courts by a Saudi businessman led the United Nations Committee on Human Rights to warn that British libel laws have “served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as libel tourism.” Neither party in the Ehrenfeld case resides in England, and the work cited in the case was neither published nor marketed in Britain. Similar cases have been filed against American journalists in Britain and other countries around the world.

About Senator Leahy: Patrick Leahy of Middlesex was elected to the United States Senate in 1974 and remains the only Democrat elected to this office from Vermont. At 34, he was the youngest U.S. Senator ever to be elected from the Green Mountain State. Leahy was born in Montpelier and grew up across from the Statehouse. A graduate of Saint Michael's College in Colchester (1961), he received his Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center (1964). He served for eight years as State's Attorney in Chittenden County. He gained a national reputation for his law enforcement activities and was selected (1974) as one of three outstanding prosecutors in the United States. Leahy is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is a senior member of the Agriculture and Appropriations Committees. He ranks third in seniority in the Senate.