Internalizing European Court of Human Rights Interpretations: Russia\u27s Courts of General Jurisdiction and New Directions in Civil Defamation Law

The manuscript examines the steps that Russia\u27s courts of general jurisdiction have taken since 2002 to fashion major changes in Russia\u27s civil defamation law. The critical element in this process has been the courts\u27 internalization of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights in interpreting the freedom of expression provisions in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Russia acceded in 1998. The internalization movement in the Russian courts began in 2002 in isolated lower court decisions, and culminated in a generally-applicable Decree of the Russian Federation Supreme Court in 2005. The manuscript examines a number of those lower court decisions, as well as the 2005 Decree, to identify the substantive changes in defamation law and the process by which the European Court\u27s practice has been used to fashion them. The manuscript also assesses the prospects for the courts’ further extension of the European Court\u27s positions to remaining unresolved questions in civil defamation law. In this inquiry, I seek to identify the methodology for implementation of the Supreme Court\u27s 2005 directive that the lower courts take into account the European Court\u27s practice in deciding defamation disputes

Kinetic Roughening in Deposition with Suppressed Screening

Models of irreversible surface deposition of k-mers on a linear lattice, with screening suppressed by disallowing overhangs blocking large gaps, are studied by extensive Monte Carlo simulations of the temporal and size dependence of the growing interface width. Despite earlier finding that for such models the deposit density tends to increase away from the substrate, our numerical results place them clearly within the standard KPZ universality class.Comment: nine pages, plain TeX (4 figures not included

The Enabling Environment for Free and Independent Media

Monroe Price, of the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Peter Krug of the University of Oklahoma College of Law discuss the interaction of formal law, administrative process and the broader enabling conditions for the effective functioning of healthy media systems. Bad law is not the greatest threat to media freedoms, rather administrative acts which apply the law arbitrarily or beyond its proper legal boundaries. Moreover, audiences need \u27a special kind of literacy..that encompasses a desire to acquire, interpret and apply information as part of civil society\u27. This is essential for the broader enabling media environment. However, more research is required to decode how the many elements of the enabling environment for independent media can be linked to phases of national political transitions

A Module for Media Intervention: Content Regulation in Post-Conflict Zones

During the past decade a number of bloody conflicts have focused international attention on the strategic role of the media in promoting war and perpetuating chaos. The challenges posed by systematic manipulation of the media have been particularly acute in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, East Timor - wherever the international community intervened to prevent atrocities, or stop them, or help rebuild society in their aftermath. Written against this backdrop, Forging Peace brings together case studies and legal analysis of the steps that the United Nations, NATO and other organisations, both governmental and non-governmental, have taken to build pluralist and independent media in the wake of massive human rights violations. Forging Peace maps an important aspect of contemporary peacemaking. It examines current thinking on the legality of unilateral humanitarian intervention, then analyses in graphic detail the pioneering use of information intervention techniques in conflict zones, ranging from full-scale bombardment and confiscation of transmitters to the establishment of new laws and regulatory regimes. As the social and economic role of the media expands and information technology spreads, driving governments in the world\u27s trouble spots to seek more sophisticated ways of controlling public opinion, Forging Peace looks set to influence policy and debate for years to come

Ownership in Russia

The broad strokes of Russian media ownership policy are relatively easy to identify: a commitment, expressed in statutory form, to mass media pluralism, marked by both state and private ownership. Beyond that however, the lines become blurred, as policy formulation becomes subject to competing demands. State domination and control gives way, but not without complex relationships to the past. In this chapter, we examine the process of change by attempting to identify the key elements of this hybrid system, focusing on several aspects of transformation, each of which, in some way, is connected to ownership. We shall first place these matters in historical context, and then describe the framework within which key decisions are made: the sources of law and policy

The Enabling Environment for Free and Independent Media: Contribution to Transparent and Accountable Governance

Throughout the world, there is a vast remapping of media laws and policies. This important moment for building more democratic media is attributable to rapid-fire geo-political changes. These include a growing zest for information, the general move towards democratization, numerous pressures from the international community, and the inexorable impact of new media technologies. Whatever the mix in any specific state, media law and policy is increasingly a subject of intense debate