More than one hundred academics – including CAF Director Edward Skidelsky, signing on behalf of our organisation – have written to the Prime Minister calling for universal anti-SLAPP protections in the forthcoming King’s Speech, warning that aggressive legal threats by wealthy and powerful individuals are beginning to deter, and in some cases distort, academic research in Britain.
The letter argues that, without protections extending beyond the current focus on economic crime, clearer safeguards for non-peer-reviewed academic work, and stronger early filtering of vexatious claims, critical research on matters of public interest will increasingly be chilled, with serious implications for academic freedom.
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation – or SLAPPs – are legal actions or threats of litigation intended less to succeed in court than to silence critics by imposing the financial and psychological burden of defending a claim. In recent years the tactic has become notorious following a series of high-profile cases in the UK courts targeting journalists and media organisations.
But while SLAPPs are most commonly associated with attempts to intimidate journalists, academic researchers are increasingly encountering similar threats from companies and wealthy individuals unhappy with critical scholarship. The threat of costly litigation can, as the letter puts it, “encourage self-censorship, deter scholars from investigating powerful interests, raise the cost of undertaking sensitive research because of the legal advice required, and make it harder for academics to disseminate their findings to the public and policymakers”.
The letter also highlights a second, more institutional effect: litigation threats can foster risk-aversion within universities. In practice, an academic’s ability to pursue critical research into powerful actors often depends on whether their institution is willing to stand behind them. Yet many universities offer little in the way of insurance, legal review, or other safeguards capable of mitigating these risks, leaving scholars to shoulder the costs themselves.
In a climate in which scholars are encouraged to pursue public engagement and demonstrable “impact” beyond the academy, the signatories warn that those scrutinising powerful interests may find themselves increasingly vulnerable to costly and stressful legal pressure.
The legal design of anti-SLAPP regimes, however, raises a longstanding procedural difficulty. Most proposed frameworks rely on some form of early strike-out or summary dismissal mechanism, enabling courts to terminate claims that appear abusive at a preliminary stage. Yet this necessarily confronts what might be described as the “motive problem”: determining whether litigation has been initiated for an improper purpose before the factual record has been fully developed through disclosure and evidential testing.
In other words, a regime that is too permissive leaves critics vulnerable to strategic litigation… but one that is too aggressive risks curtailing the legitimate right of claimants to seek redress before the courts. One model UK legislators might look to is the EU’s 2024 Anti-SLAPP Directive, which attempts to navigate that tension by providing for early dismissal of “manifestly unfounded claims”, alongside procedural safeguards designed to protect access to justice. Yet even here the difficulty is not entirely resolved, since the threshold question of what counts as “manifestly unfounded” ultimately remains a matter of judicial interpretation.
You can read the letter here. CAF Research Manager Freddie Attenborough has also written about how the UK has become the leading jurisdiction for cross-border SLAPPs for The Critic here.
This article forms part of the Committee for Academic Freedom’s monitoring of developments in UK higher education. To receive monthly updates and analysis on cases affecting academic freedom, click the link and subscribe to our newsletter.