What if David Irving had won the trial against Deborah Lipstadt?

Mr. Flay

Gone Fishin'
What would the public response be? Could Lipstadt recover from the incident? Where would Irving be today, publically?
 
The main effect will be that the embarrassment probably causes Britain to revise its libel laws to be more similar to the American system (which is much less favorable to the plaintiff).

Holocaust denial won't become more respectable (deniers will cite the court case, but it won't convince anyone who wasn't already convinced). Publishers will be more reluctant to publish books on the Holocaust in the UK (probably the most significant negative effect). Irving will end up with a substantial pot of money, but will still be reviled by most historians, they'll just be quieter about it. I assume Lipstadt's employer would pay her share of any judgement, and Penguin is big enough to survive.
 
On the subject of British vs. American libel law, see http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/irvings-war/read-the-instructions.shtml where Yale F. Edeiken argues that if anything Irving would actually have been better off filing the suit in the U.S. I don't agree with this--in particular, I am not convinced by Edeiken's argument that Irving would not necessarily be found a "public figure"--but Edeiken does make at least two important points: (1) in the U.S. Irving would have been able to cross-examine Lipstadt personally, as he obviously wanted to do; and (2) *Sullivan* (and the cases which extended it from "public officials" to "public figures") was hardly a grant of absolute immunity to the press. "Actual malice" in the sense used by *Sullivan* (especially "reckless disregard") can and has been proven by public officials and public figures in U.S. courts. It is not *solely* out of conscientiousness that US newspapers and magazines have fact-checkers (and libel lawyers). Irving's problem was not that U.S. law makes it impossible to win a libel case--it's just that he had a weak case, whether in America or Britain.
 
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