English Court of Appeal blasts a path for free speech

The eagerly awaited appeal judgment in BCA v. Singh was published today. It's quite a bombshell (in a good way!) - it cites Milton, refers to classic ECHR Article 10 standards, gives Orwell a nod, adopts a marketplace of ideas philosophy and concludes by proposing a bit of a rethink around the defence of fair comment.

The Lord Chief Justice is playing a blinder here.

On opinion, he says:

"The opinion may be mistaken, but to allow the party which has been denounced on the basis of it to compel its author to prove in court what he has asserted by way of argument is to invite the court to become an Orwellian ministry of truth. Milton, recalling in the Areopagitica his visit to Italy in 1638-9, wrote:

"I have sat among their learned men, for that honour I had, and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning among them was brought; …. that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old a prisoner of the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."

That is a pass to which we ought not to come again."

He goes on to say the following, about the nature of "evidence" (in the scientific sense - the case concerned allegations whether or not chiropractic works):

"What "evidence" signifies depends heavily on context. To a literalist, any primary fact – for example, that following chiropractic intervention a patient's condition improved – may be evidence of a secondary fact, here that chiropractic works. To anyone (and not only a scientist) concerned with the establishment of dependable generalisations about cause and effect, such primary information is as worthless as evidence of the secondary fact as its converse would be. The same may equally well be true of data considerably more complex than in the facile example we have given: whether it is or not is what scientific opinion is there to debate. If in the course of the debate the view is expressed that there is not a jot of evidence for one deduction or another, the natural meaning is that there is no worthwhile or reliable evidence for it. That is as much a value judgment as a contrary viewpoint would be."

He then goes on to adopt a US marketplace of ideas standard:

"We would respectfully adopt what Judge Easterbrook, now Chief Judge of the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, said in a libel action over a scientific controversy, Underwager v Salter 22 Fed. 3d 730 (1994):

"[Plaintiffs] cannot, by simply filing suit and crying 'character assassination!', silence those who hold divergent views, no matter how adverse those views may be to plaintiffs' interests. Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation. … More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models – not larger awards of damages – mark the path towards superior understanding of the world around us.""

And he concludes that the entire common law concept of 'fair comment' is in dire need of relabeling if not a wholesale rethink:

"In an area of law concerned with sometimes conflicting issues of great sensitivity involving both the protection of good reputation and the maintenance of the principles of free expression, it is somewhat alarming to read in the standard textbook on the Law of Libel and Slander (Gatley, 11th edition) in relation to the defence of fair comment, which is said to be a "bulwark of free speech", that "…the law here is dogged by misleading terminology… 'Comment' or 'honest comment' or 'honest opinion' would be a better name, but the traditional terminology is so well established in England that it is adhered to here".

We question why this should be so. The law of defamation surely requires that language should not be used which obscures the true import of a defence to an action for damages. Recent legislation in a number of common law jurisdictions - New Zealand, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland - now describes the defence of fair comment as "honest opinion". It is not open to us to alter or add to or indeed for that matter reduce the essential elements of this defence, but to describe the defence for what it is would lend greater emphasis to its importance as an essential ingredient of the right to free expression. Fair comment may have come to "decay with … imprecision". 'Honest opinion' better reflects the realities."

All here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/350.html