Howard on the Libel Suit Against Joseph Weiler

On a non-aggression note, Jennifer Howard has an article in yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education about Karin Calvo-Goller’s baseless criminal-libel suit in France against NYU’s Joseph Weiler.  It’s an excellent piece — and not just because she is kind enough to quote me.  Here’s a snippet:

If you’re an author confronted with a negative book review, you have several options. You can write an angry letter to the editor. You can complain to friends and family about the reviewer’s lack of discernment. You can decide that bad publicity is better than no publicity at all and let the book speak for itself (often the wisest course, in my experience as a book-review editor).

What you don’t do is sue the editor of the newspaper or journal that published the review.

So it came as a shock to journal editors to learn that one of their own, Joseph H.H. Weiler, editor of the European Journal of International Law, would face a criminal-libel lawsuit in France over a review that he published on a Web site that he also edits, one that posts reviews of scholarly books.

Although the case, set for trial in June, is so unusual that it seems unlikely to set a precedent that would seriously dampen academic reviewers’ freedom of critique, that possibility still has editors worried. And it has left observers scratching their heads over why a scholar would choose to dispute a review in court and not in the usual arenas of academic debate.

The article is only free to non-subscribers for another four days.  So read it while it’s hot!