Seminar Transcripts
The Authors Guild Foundation conducts programs that educate writers and the general public about current issues in publishing, free speech, and copyright. Transcripts often appear in our quarterly Bulletin.
Rules, Britannia! The Growing, Chilling Reach of Commonwealth Libel Laws
The long arm of the Commonwealth's libel laws was the subject of a panel discussion sponsored by the Authors Guild Foundation at Scandinavia House in New York on September 25, 2006. Longtime Authors Guild Council member Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation, Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, and author of Kennedy Justice, Naming Names, and A Matter of Opinion, served as moderator for a distinguished international panel that proceeded to give, in Mr. Navasky's words, a "master class" on the subject of libel. Participating were Floyd Abrams, a partner in the New York law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindell, the William J. Brennan Jr. Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law at the Columbia Journalism School, and author of Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment; Peter Bartlett, head of the Minter Ellison Media and Communication Group in Melbourne, Australia, chair of the Media Committee of the International Bar Association, and co-chair of the Communications and Technology Committee of LAWASIA, an association of lawyers in the Asia Pacific; Mikaela McDermott, an associate at Kornstein Veisz Wexler and Pollard in New York, and author of the critical brief in defense of Rachel Ehrenfeld, subject of a libel suit filed in the U.K. for her book Funding Evil; and Mark Stephens, partner with Finers Stephens Innocent in London, whose practice covers a wide range of litigation involving the media, including defamation and intellectual property law.
