Underlying the American model of political campaign communication are the US Constitutional guarantees of free speech, which secure the rights of citizens to support political candidates of their choosing and express that support in various forms, from bumper stickers to television advertising. Courts have at times struck down measures regulating political advertising, including limits on the amounts of such advertising and the amounts of funds which candidates, parties and individuals may spend on election‐related speeches and advertising as infringements of these rights. With few exceptions, in the USA, government may not limit the number of spots a candidate airs in an election. In Europe, international norms concerning free expression and fair elections appear in a number of legal instruments, including, most recently, the UK's Human Rights Act 1998 and the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. This paper compares the role and development of American First Amendment doctrines in limiting restrictions on political advertising in the USA with the development of comparable norms of free expression under the European Convention on Human Rights, European Union treaties and legislation and national laws of the member states and accession countries. In particular, this paper addresses the validity and enforceability of European legal limits on number, timing, placement, quantity and content of political advertisements under applicable human rights rules and similar regulations. The paper concludes that (1) a combination of European legal instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Community Treaty, the European Community's ‘Television Without Frontiers’ Directives and the Council of Europe's Convention on Transfrontier Television offer protections of a kind and type which broadly track the protections of the USA's First Amendment; that (2) it seems that governmental justifications for restricting these freedoms are more readily accepted in Europe than they might be in courts in the USA; and that (3) certain restrictions on political advertising identified in previous studies as existing throughout Europe will face increased judicial scrutiny and some of them are probably illegal under European Human Rights principles. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications
No abstract
The right of individuals who have suffered loss from infringements of competition rules to bring private damages claims, long a mainstay of antitrust enforcement in the United States, is increasing in viability in the European Union as a result of judgments of the European Court of Justice, new legislation such as Regulation 1/2003, and numerous policy statements by the Commission and the European Parliament. Further remedies legislation may be forthcoming at EU or Member State level. However, some feel that private antitrust cases are undesirable from an economic and policy perspective and should be discouraged even as supplemental enforcement. This article argues that private enforcement has great value as a supplement to public enforcement and as the primary means of compensating victims of infringements whose interests are to be protected by national courts. Academic arguments against private enforcement based on misapplication of economic theory do not justify elimination or discouragement of private actions. The theoretical economic arguments presented in favour of such elimination or discouragement are weak, insufficient, and lack an observable basis in the real world.
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