And there are lots of places to do that, if you don’t like mine.

But Britian seriously needs to fix its libel laws. the worst example is the david irving trial. some american professor called him a holocaust denier. as i understand it, he is not a british subject, but he sued in Britain, saying pretty much, “that is libel. the holocaust didn’t happen.”

Now if i was the judge i would have found that he just confessed that the supposedly defamatory statement was true. i mean even if the holocaust didn’t happen (and i mean big if), he doesn’t stop being a denier. he is just suddenly correct. I mean we are now in the twilight zone of hypotheticals, but you see my point.

But the court for some reason decided it should determine as a matter of law that the holocaust did indeed happen, egged on by the defendants, and so that happened. that entire silly excercise happened. months of a case to determine a fact so well established that i would have been tempted to take judicial notice of it, and irrelevant to the real question–whether or not he has denied it occurred. so this whole thing happened, at the taxpayers expense, which if i was the judge it would have been killed on whatever is the british equivalent of a motion to dismiss or demurrer.

Oh wait, it does.

That’s a good point. As I understand English libel law (which seems rather murky), it is true that expressions of “opinion” are actionable as well as expressions of fact, with the difference that the defense of “fair comment” is available in the case of “opinion” but not in the case of “fact”. Public relevance is one of the necessary factors for the success of the defense of “fair comment”. However, as I understand it, the distinction between fact and opinion is not the same as in American law, and statements of pure opinion, with no factual implication, are not actionable. For example, the statement: “Marks and Spencer is an awful store” is a pure statement of opinion, no more actionable in English law than in the US. To be actionable, there must be some factual content. How this line is drawn in English law is unclear to me.

I understand that is a requirement under US law but is that also the case in the UK? I was under the impression that merely putting someone in a bad light without being able to prove actual truthfulness along with public relevance was sufficient.