Dear thread: Clue #1 - How to Accelerate the Decision Timetable by Cecilia Sosa Gomez
I have found one very convenient way to ensure an accelerated release of the anticipated CSJ ruling. Insult both the country of Venezuela and its newest suitor. Better yet, do it with disinformation spread through the internet. Please read the article below and the quote within from Chief Justice Cecilia Sosa Gomez. Don't you just think she would LOVE hearing Assensio's statements about Venezuela and Crystallex, the company about to assist Venezuela in profiting from its mineral resources over the next several decades? My understanding is that reports such as Assensio's have not gone unnoticed in Venezuela . . . you have been warned. :)
We published the following article in The Legal Intelligencer (Phiiladelphia) today. I am
posting it to this list because I thought members might have an interest in it.
Jurists: International Group May Be Needed To Regulate
Internet
By Michael Riccardi
Of the Legal Staff
With even the United States backing away from regulating use of the Internet, high court
jurists from
around the world at an international lawyers' conference yesterday suggested that an
international
body may be needed to oversee developments in communications via computer.
"I am, in a way, frightened stiff by the Internet," said Justice Gabriel Bach of Israel. "Billions
of
people all over the world have access to it. Perhaps we should say [that there should be]
some kind
of international control that would make it possible for cooperation among all states to curb
some
dangers of that."
The jurists cited widespread access to global communication -- with minimal oversight as to
the
truth of statements made or their potential to cause harm -- as having a possible explosive
impact as
access to the Internet grows globally.
"The Internet is, in my view, a unique medium that is not analogous to radio, television and
print
media," said Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube of Canada. "Journalists are bound by
professional
ethics and bound by public scrutiny. They stake their professional reputation on every
published
word. The same can't be said of the Internet, where there is virtually unlimited access to input
and
receive information, with an absence of review and accountability."
The statements came as six appeals jurists from six nations debated a hypothetical case
before a
plenary session of the International Association of Lawyers Congress yesterday.
For the hypothetical, the jurists and lawyers assumed an independent journalist posted on the
World
Wide Web a summary of secret British government documents which tagged the Bosnian
Serb
leader as a covert Islamic fundamentalist and agent of the Iranian government. In the
hypothetical
case, the British government succeeded in its domestic courts in getting an injunction for the
journalist to remove the material from his Website. The journalist, who was represented in the
moot
court exercise by New York lawyer Floyd Abrams, whose clients have included, among
others,
The New York Times, went to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn the
injunction.
Even though the six-member "court" handed down a 5-1 decision against the prior restraint,
even
jurists in the majority expressed concern about the unique communication medium that is the
Internet.
All six agreed there was no national security reason for the British government to force the
journalist
to pull the summary off the Website. But L'Heureux-Dube said that the British government
had a
copyright interest in the substance of the documents that it had a right to protect.
Citing the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the 3rd Circuit special panel's rejection of
the
Communications Decency Act, several jurists said there was no way any one nation could
check
speech on the decentralized global system.
But they mused over whether such a state of affairs is desirable.
Some of the justices were unconvinced that the Internet is all that different a medium.
"Article 10 [the European law protecting free speech rights] protects the right of free
expression, not
any particular medium by which it is transmitted," argued Justice Olga Sanchez Cordero de
Garcia
Villegas of Mexico. "It is not pertinent that the statute does not refer expressly to the Internet,
because it relates to content and not the medium."
Cecilia Sosa Gomez, the president of the Venezuela Supreme Court, argued that the Internet
is very
different from old media and that the world is likely to struggle with its implications.
"It is a medium that is completely different from any other," she said. "The Internet does not
have
any national control in any country, and it seems that there will not be any in the future."
Abrams argued the case for the hypothetical independent journalist, and was able to convince
the
six-jurist panel that it should not allow the UK to encroach on his dissemination of
information.
"Free expression is not protected because journalists are [more] deserving, but because of
what
they do," Abrams said. "In our view, a journalist's work is entitled to greater protection
because of
the role he or she is playing."
In the hypothetical case, Abrams argued, releasing publicly-gathered information that is of
high
public interest is precisely within the zone of activities that are protected and ought not to be
infringed under European laws that carve out exceptions to absolute free speech.
"Two great nations are trying to bring down the full force of their legal arsenals on" the
hypothetical
journalist, Abrams argued.
The session also laid bare differences in advocacy styles in different nations, as well as some
differences between countries whose systems have descended from the common law and
those
whose systems have roots in the civil law.
After an initial fusillade of questions from Guy Canivet, the first president of the Paris Court of
Appeal, as well as L'Heureux-Dube and Bach, Sosa asked the judges to refrain from
derailing the
presentation of the lawyer representing the United Kingdom government, Nicholas Stewart of
London.
"The delay in asking the first question was rather longer than I am used to in the English
courts,"
Stewart chuckled in response.
The Chief Justice of India, J.S. Verma, then immediately interjected with a question for
Stewart, "to
make you a little more comfortable."
Stewart argued that the British government had an interest in removing the offending material
from
the journalist's Website, even if it was true, since the government had a diplomatic and
military
interest in the timing of its disclosure.
The attorney arguing the position of the German government, that the characterization of the
Bosnian
Serb leader as a covert Islamic fundamentalist was "hate speech" that could be suppressed,
was
Belgian attorney Eduoard Jakhian of Brussels.
"I am intervening as a Belgian lawyer on behalf of the German government," he explained.
"This is
paradoxical as I do not know German law, and I do not know the common law any better.
But I
haven't worried about that one way or the other, as this case is covered by principles coming
out of
the European Convention on Human Rights."
Jakhian said that European courts have been tough on the dissemination of racist and other
forms of
hate speech, and those standards applied where speech could give rise to attacks on a
minority,
such as Muslims in Europe.
"Nobody with their head on straight can imagine that this publication ... of the report would
not lead
to a reaction" against Muslims, Jakhian said. "The dissemination of this report constituted a
considerable risk that there would be a reaction of violence."
Arguing that hate speech restrictions in Europe ought to apply to Internet communications as
well,
Jakhian cited American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno, in which the U.S. Communications
Decency Act was overturned.
"The U.S. Supreme Court does not make a distinction between written information and the
Internet," he said. "For me there is no distinction to be made [since] information itself is no
different
on the Internet."
"But the U.S. Supreme Court said it could not limit expression on the Internet,"
L'Heureux-Dube
questioned Jakhian, opening up the discussion among the jurists on Internet regulation and the
lack
thereof. |
