OUR learned friends in the Inns of Court were rubbing their hands this week at the prospect of a new source of income.

News that Richard Perle, the architect of America’s attempts to unseat Saddam Hussein, has chosen to sue the journalist Seymour Hersh in London rather than in the United States was welcome news to English barristers.

If the case ever reaches court, Perle v Hersh will prove highly entertaining, although the meat of the action is rather lean. Mr Hersh claims that Mr Perle, an unpaid Pentagon adviser who used to work for President Reagan, met Adnan Khashoggi and another Saudi businessman in Marseilles in January to talk about shuffling the Iraqi President into exile.

The businessmen were under the impression that they were also going to be invited to invest in a company Mr Perle created after September 11, which sells anti-terrorist advice and material to governments. As it turns out, the investment opportunity was not raised and Mr Perle denies that the meeting was set up for that purpose.

The dispute is a proxy battle, part of the ideological war between the Republican Right and the liberal media, which reached its peak in the Watergate affair. The attempt by Republicans 20 years later to impeach President Clinton, as Nixon was impeached, was seen by Democrats as tit-for-tat. These old skirmishes have taken on new significance since war patriotism has smothered traditional political debate.

Some of the kerfuffle surrounding Perle v Hersh may be little more than posturing, but what is of note is that Mr Perle has decided to sue Mr Hersh in London. The standards of proof in libel cases are so generous to the plaintiff in England that he stands a chance of winning. He would not bother to resort to litigation in America where, thanks to the constitutional guarantee of absolute freedom of speech, anything can be said, whether true or false, about people in the public eye.

In England, the laws of libel and slander are such an inhibition to the truth that a crook such as Robert Maxwell was left unchecked because all attempts to unravel his corrupt empire were smartly slapped with a gagging writ. In France, needless to say, politicians are a protected species and the press cannot mention anything amusing about anyone of any interest, which is, perhaps, why French journalists continue to write about Johnny Halliday.

The notion of libel has been transformed by the internet, where everything is published everywhere simultaneously.

Mr Hersh’s piece appeared in The New Yorker, but as the magazine is sold in London and the contents are on the internet, Mr Perle can claim that he was libelled in England. In America, where Mr Perle is a public figure, it would be impossible to libel him. Public figures are fair game.

Or so it has always been thought. The recent case of Gary Condit v Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair suggests that freedom of speech in America should not be taken for granted. Mr Condit, who was hounded by the press when his lover, the intern Chandra Levy, went missing, is claiming almost £7 million in damages from Mr Dunne, who he claims repeated scurrilous allegations about the circumstances in which Ms Levy died.

Details of the case cannot be published in England for fear of attracting a writ from Mr Condit, but they are available on The New York Times online archive. On January 28, 2003, the paper ran a full account of the lurid allegations.

The estimable “Nick” Dunne, 77, is a journalistic phenomenon. An ex-Hollywood screenwriter, he has blossomed late as the chronicler of celebrity criminal trials for the magazine Vanity Fair.

If you are a true celebrity in America, Mr Dunne will attend when you appear in court. Even for those in the deepest trouble, there is some compensation in knowing that Mr Dunne has deemed them to be worthy of his attention.

Mr Dunne is not impeccable in his judgment, if his gushing accounts of meeting British royals are anything to go by. Like many Americans, he misses the point about the Royal Family, considering them to be super-celebrities rather than a mixed-up haut-bourgeois family stuck in a reality television show that can never end. Like most Americans, Mr Dunne is largely uncritical, treating anyone with any connection to the Queen as of similar worth. He has, of course, only kind words to say about Diana, Princess of Wales.

Mr Dunne has been quiet since Mr Condit’s writ landed in December, when he was besieged by celebrity interviewers wanting a piece of the action. The case is the stuff of one of his screenplays, a celebrity reporter who becomes the subject of his latest story.

Having spent so long hanging around courtrooms, Mr Dunne has let it be known that he has little appetite for appearing as a star witness. If his lawyer does not negotiate away Mr Condit’s claims, the case will progress slowly towards the top court in the land. The notion that a jour- nalist can repeat gossip, however libellous and unfair, is so central to the US Constitution’s guarantee of free speech that, if the case proceeds, the Supreme Court will eventually be asked to pronounce.

British barristers may like the thought of picking up libel business from across the Atlantic, but they would do well to avoid inviting a written constitution. The American example suggests a political landscape in constant turmoil, where no issue is ever finally settled and where the arguments for and against social reforms such as abortion and the death penalty remain active long after their time.

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