many countries that have regulated of anti-slapp as an effort to protect the rights of public participation. unfortunately they still have many weaknesses in its implementation.
Thank you Bryan. Your insights were helpful. In my jurisdiction, there is no such executive policy or legislative instrument, and that is because, the Constitution does not contemplate suppression of FREE SPEECH RIGHTS and the Right of the Public to participate in governance via meaningful deliberations. The only concept that resembles the SLAPP would be censorship burden the establishment media in Nigeria have imposed on themselves, and which burden I believe they have manufactured without any real inspiration or reference to the Constitution.
Wow... I have to believe the Jurisprudence of Defamation is being strategically turned on its head. First Amendment rights in the US Constitution cannot be restricted by misplaced defamation lawsuits.
To kill this SLAPP legislative framework, the judiciary in Countries where SLAPP applies must be ready to affirm a restatement of the jurisprudence of Defamation and make a distinction between legitimate expression of speech rights and liberties and speech that explicitly and exclusively fall within the spectrum of Defamation as we know it.
Constitutional law jurisprudence cannot afford to conflate Defamation with legitimate expression of speech right liberties however offensive.
I believe what the SLAPP instrument is seeking to accomplish is to perpetuate the understanding that OFFENSIVE SPEECH(although constitutionally legitimate and permissible) should be conflated with or be understood as defamation.
Respectfully, it will Never Work!
By filing Defamation suit under the auspices of SLAPP, plaintiffs seek to introduce through the backdoor a constitutional ban on offensive speech. I believe the the Courts are wiser and can identify this as cheap unconstitutional encroachment of speech rights.
Just how can someone sue me via defamation, for financial loss that he has purposed to generate from a proposal when a legitimate exercise of my speech rights by way of criticism raises questionable issues in his proposal.
It is unthinkable!
The fact that the measure has a name-acronym that is being enforced in lower courts is beyond a Joke.
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