[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 10973]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          INTRODUCTION OF COHEN-ISSA LIBEL TOURISM LEGISLATION

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                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 22, 2008

  Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, today, I, along with Congressman Darrell 
Issa, introduced a bill that would address the phenomenon of ``libel 
tourism,'' which occurs when plaintiffs seek judgments from foreign 
courts against American authors and publishers for making allegedly 
defamatory statements, often to get around first amendment-based 
constraints on American defamation law. This phenomenon threatens to 
undermine our Nation's core free speech principles. U.S. law places a 
higher burden on certain defamation plaintiffs and with respect to 
certain types of allegedly defamatory speech in order to safeguard 
first amendment-protected speech. Other countries, including those that 
generally share our legal tradition, provide no such protection, and 
American authors and publishers should not be forced to restrict their 
speech to comport with more limited foreign standards.
  Our legislation will codify the principle that, while U.S. courts 
will normally enforce the judgments of foreign courts, they should not 
do so when foreign judgments undermine our Constitution. Specifically, 
our bill prohibits U.S. courts from recognizing or enforcing foreign 
defamation judgments that do not comport with the first amendment. This 
is a straightforward solution that is designed to discourage foreign 
defamation plaintiffs from filing suit against American authors and 
publishers in foreign courts and instead encourage them to tile suit in 
the United States.
  I would like to thank the Association of American Publishers and the 
Media Law Resource Center for their valuable feedback during the 
drafting of this bill and for their support for this legislation. I 
urge my colleagues to become cosponsors of this bill.

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