Intimidating opponents

This chapter makes a principal distinction between the ways in which jurisdiction offers a stage or a podium to participants. The distinction between podium and stage implies fundamentally different technical characteristics and the affordances these offer. Four cases serve to indicate how parties using jurisdiction to their own interest like to see things staged as a show of power. What they oppose and fear is that jurisdiction is truly a podium on which all can participate equally. The chapter focuses on the ways in which jurisdiction is used to not so much protect individual citizens against frivolous and abusive defamation lawsuits but precisely to attack them with the charge of defamation in order to stifle legitimate criticism. The first case considers a “shadow of the law” that is apparent in the fear to meet Disney in court; the second case concerns the accusations brought forward against the editor-in-chief of Delta TU , the university journal of the Delft University of Technology. The other two cases concern the ways in which corporations – India-based Tata Steel and Italy-based Eni – tried to silence Greenpeace India and Greenpeace Italy, respectively. The cases are considered as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP), as attempts to undermine the podium-potential in jurisdiction.