Judicial Independence and Media Freedom: Defamation Litigation Trends in Russia, 2004-2010

Russian fist instance courts decide about 5,000 defamation cases a year, the majority of them against media outlets.  The per capita rate of defamation trials is over five times higher in Russia than in Britain, which is known for its high volume of defamation litigation (Popova, 2012).  The high volume of defamation cases has serious implications for media development and freedom and whether the impact is positive or negative hinges largely on the independence of the courts. Independent and impartial judicial output probably increases the reliability of disseminated information.  By contrast, judicial output that systematically reflects the preferences of politicians or other powerful and rich plaintiffs is likely to curtail freedom of speech and serve as an indirect censorship tool.

In previous research, I examined defamation cases decided in the 1998-2004 period and found that regional politicians and members of Russia’s law enforcement organs had an advantage over other defamation plaintiffs (Popova, 2012).  In this paper, I propose to replicate my previous analysis on a new data set (2004-2010) to find out whether judicial output patterns in defamation cases have changed over time.  Russia’s political regime moved away from democratic political competition and freedom of the press significantly declined during the second Putin presidential term and his premiership.  Thus, we would expect judicial output in defamation cases to be more reflective of the preferences of the incumbent federal regime in the latter period than in the previous period.  The paper will present quantitative analysis of 400+ first instance court decisions.