New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), argued 6 Jan. 1964, decided 9 Mar. 1964 by vote of 9 to 0; Brennan for the Court, black, Douglas, and Goldberg concurring. In this case, the Supreme Court for the first time considered the extent to which the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and the press limits the award of damages in a libel action brought by public officials against critics of their official conduct. Sullivan, an elected commissioner of the city of Montgomery, Alabama, brought a civil libel action against four black clergymen and The New York Times alleging that he had been libeled by statements in a full‐page advertisement that was carried in the Times. The advertisement, which was entitled “Heed Their Rising Voices,” described the civil rights movement in the South and concluded with an appeal for funds.

It was uncontroverted that several statements contained in the text of the advertisement were inaccurate. For example, the advertisement stated that students protesting racial segregation sang “My Country, 'Tis of Thee” on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol, but they had actually sung “The Star‐Spangled Banner”; it also said that several students were expelled from school for leading that protest, but they were actually expelled for demanding service at a segregated lunch counter in the Montgomery County Court‐house on another day; finally, the advertisement claimed that “the entire student body” of Alabama State College protested the expulsions, but only a majority of the students, not the “entire” student body, had protested the expulsions.

The trial judge submitted the case to the jury under instructions that these statements were libelous per se, that falsity and malice were presumed, and that general and punitive damages could be awarded without direct proof of pecuniary loss. Under these instructions, the jury returned a judgment for Sullivan in the amount of $500,000 against each of the defendants.

The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the rule of law applied by the Alabama court violated the First Amendment. At the outset, the Court confronted its own past declarations to the effect that libelous utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942) and that they are not constitutionally protected speech (Beauharnais v. Illinois, 1952). In rejecting these prior declarations, the Court explained that, like “the various other formulae for the repression of expression that have been challenged in this Court, libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations”; to the contrary, libel “must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment” (p. 269).

Turning to the task of articulating these standards, Justice William J. Brennan observed in an oft‐quoted passage that “we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide‐open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials” (p. 270). Drawing upon history, the Court analogized the civil law of libel, as applied by the Alabama court, to the Sedition Act of 1798, which had been invalidated “in the court of history” because of the restraint it “imposed upon criticism of government and public officials” (p. 276).

The essential difficulty, Brennan explained, was that “erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate,” and even false statements must therefore “be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the ‘breathing space’ that they ‘need … to survive’” (pp. 271–272). Thus, the Alabama rule of law could not be “saved by its allowance of the defense of truth,” for a “rule compelling the critic of official conduct to guarantee the truth of all his factual assertions” would lead to intolerable “self‐censorship.” Indeed, under such a rule, “would‐be critics of official conduct may be deterred from voicing their criticism, even though it is believed to be true and even though it is in fact true, because of doubt whether it can be proved in court or fear of the expense of having to do so.” Such a rule, the Court concluded, “dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate” (pp. 278–279).

With these considerations in mind, the Court held that public officials may not recover damages for defamatory falsehood relating to their official conduct unless they can prove actual malice; “that the statement was made with … knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not” (pp. 279–280).

New York Times revolutionized the law of libel and, equally importantly, it signaled a critical shift in our general First Amendment jurisprudence. New York Times abandoned the traditional approach, which concentrated solely on whether libel was “protected” or “unprotected” speech, and embraced a more speech‐protective analysis, which focused on the danger that actions for libel might deter expression that lies at the very heart of First Amendment concern. By fashioning its First Amendment standards in light of these “chilling” effects, the Court took an important step toward a more sensitive, less formulaic mode of analysis, a mode of analysis that is the hallmark of contemporary First Amendment jurisprudence.

Perhaps the most important question remaining after New York Times was whether the privilege it recognized governed only libel actions involving the official conduct of public officials or whether it extended to other persons. In Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts (1967) and Associated Press v. Walker (1967), the Court, in a sharply divided set of opinions, extended the New York Times holding from public officials to figures such as movie stars, athletes, industrialists, and other individuals who, though they are not officials, are nonetheless well known to the public. In reaching this result, the Court rejected the argument that New York Times was premised on, and thus limited by, the analogy to seditious libel. Rather, the Court reasoned that New York Times rested on a profound national commitment to uninhibited, robust, and wide‐open debate on public issues. The Court therefore concluded that libelous utterances concerning public figures, like libelous utterances concerning public officials, must be governed by the New York Times privilege.

Several years later, however, in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), the Court, again sharply divided, recognized an important limitation on the scope of New York Times, holding that it did not extend to libel actions brought by private individuals, even where the defamatory statement related to a matter of “public concern.” The Court explained that, unlike public officials and public figures, private individuals are usually unable to rebut the libel effectively and they usually have not gone out of their way to seek the public's attention. The Court reasoned that, because private individuals are more vulnerable to injury and more deserving of recovery than either public officials or public figures, they may recover damages for libel merely by showing that the publisher or broadcaster had acted negligently in disseminating the defamatory material.

New York Times and its progeny have been criticized as both overprotective and under‐protective of free expression. Some critics maintain that New York Times failed adequately to protect the press because its “reckless disregard” standard implicitly authorized highly intrusive inquiries into the thought processes of reporters and editors and because it failed to preclude large and potentially “chilling” damage awards whenever a jury would find that the press has acted with “reckless disregard.” These critics, echoing the views expressed by Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Arthur Goldberg in their concurring opinions in New York Times, argue that the press should have absolute protection against actions for libel. Other critics maintain that New York Times gave too much protection to the press and failed to protect the innocent victims of libel. These critics fault New York Times for denying innocent victims reasonable compensation for the harm they suffer and for preventing such victims from obtaining a judicial declaration of falsity, which would at least set the record straight.

Several proposals have been offered in recent years in an effort to “cure” these “deficiencies.” The most intriguing of these proposals calls for the creation of a new civil action in which the alleged victim of a defamatory falsehood could sue for a judicial declaration of falsity upon waiving the right to sue for damages. The theory is that such an action would reduce litigation costs and enable the victims of libel to vindicate their reputations without intruding into the editorial process or threatening the press with potentially devastating damage awards. Although this approach would avoid some of the problems identified with New York Times, it would effectively empower the judiciary to decide on a case‐by‐case basis whether specific statements made by the press are “true” or “false.” It is questionable whether such a relationship between the judiciary and the press would comport with the underlying theory and assumptions of the First Amendment.

New York Times cannot be fully understood without recognizing that it was driven not only by concerns about free expression but also by the unique historical circumstances in which it arose. New York Times was, in short, a product of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Like other devices designed to obstruct the civil rights movement, the libel judgment against the New York Times and the African‐American clergymen named in the advertisement was designed to dampen the drive for civil rights. After all, if this Alabama jury's massive damage award could be sustained on the basis of such minor inaccuracies, then no person or institution would be free to challenge racial segregation in the South. New York Times, one of most important decisions in the history of the First Amendment, was thus not only a triumph for free expression, it was a triumph for civil rights and racial equality as well.

Bibliography

David A. Barrett , Declaratory Judgments for Libel, California Law Review 74 (1986): 847–888.
Harry Kalven, Jr. , The New York Times Case: A Note on ‘The Central Meaning of the First Amendment,’ Supreme Court Review (1964): 191–221.
Rodney A. Smolla , Suing the Press (1986).

Geoffrey R. Stone

NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN

Sticks and Stones

The law of defamation deals with injury to a person's reputation and good name by false statements. One form, libel, is commonly associated with the printed word, though it can consist of statements made over other durable and widely disseminated mediums, such as television. In a libel action a person who has been defamed before a third party can sue the publisher of the statement for damages. The standard for libel claims was traditionally one of strict liability. If a person published a false statement, they were liable for damages even if they had not acted unreasonably, thus, it was easier to sue a person for libel than for most other wrongs. The justification was that great harm can result from the broadcast of false information about a person. Up to 1964 strict liability in the law of libel had been largely ignored by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was left to the states and their courts to deal with the question of what constituted libel and what standards of proof were required. But in that year the high court, pulled along by the rush of events in the civil rights movement, made changes which would have an enormous effect on the relationship between the press and public figures.

A Controversial Advertisement

The case that brought about this shift resulted from an advertisement placed by a civil rights group in the New York Times on 29 March 1960 under the headline "Heed Their Rising Voices." The ad described conditions of political and racial unrest in Alabama and listed several actions which police and state authorities had taken against demonstrators at the Alabama State College campus. The ad contained a number of inaccuracies. It made reference to the police ringing the campus in response to protests when they had in fact only been deployed nearby. It stated that padlocks had been used to keep students who had pro-tested out of the campus dining hall, when in fact no padlocks had been used. The only students excluded from the dining hall were those who had not registered for classes. The ad also said that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been arrested seven times, when he had actually only been arrested four times. It stated that police had assisted enemies of King in bombing his house, when in fact they had attempted to find the guilty parties. These and other inaccuracies formed the basis of a lawsuit by L. B. Sullivan, the Montgomery city commissioner who supervised the police department.

Sullivan Goes to Court

Sullivan claimed that he had been injured by the errors in the story. The major difficulty was that he had never been mentioned by name in the ad. But, Sullivan claimed, the references to the Montgomery police were sufficient to cause people to associate him with the abuses mentioned in the ad. The case was tried in an Alabama court in a racially charged atmosphere. The seating of spectators was segregated and the facts of the underlying civil rights controversy were on everyone's mind. The trial lasted three days. The court found that references to the police were sufficient to imply Sullivan's involvement and thus to injure his reputation. It also came to light that the New York Times had possessed information in its news files which contradicted some of the facts set forth in the ad. Under Alabama law, as under the libel law in most states at that time, once it was proven that the defendant had published a falsehood, it was liable for damages whether it had acted reasonably or not. The New York Times was found to be liable for five hundred thousand dollars in damages. This large award was an ominous sign, since the newspaper was facing a number of similar lawsuits based upon the same advertisement.

A Vulnerable Case on Appeal

The New York Times appealed. After the verdict was upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court, the case moved to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the past the high court had rarely reviewed libel cases. However, this case was different because of its relationship with the civil rights movement. A string of such verdicts could be used to silence papers such as the New York Times, which were important allies of civil rights activists. If this decision was allowed to stand on appeal, future publication of politically controversial articles or ads would be discouraged. Moreover, Sullivan did not have a particularly strong case. Few people actually associated him with the ad. And in the political climate of Alabama at that time, any such association was likely to enhance his reputation rather than harm it.

A New Direction

New York Times v. Sullivan became the vehicle for a major change in defamation law. The Supreme Court explicitly tied the limits of libel law to the guarantee of freedom of the press in the First Amendment. In an opinion written by Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. the Court imposed a heavy burden on public officials who sue for libel. These plaintiffs now had to prove not only that a falsehood had been printed, but also that the publisher knew the information was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was in fact the truth. Proof of negligence, as in ordinary damage suits, was not enough. The Court held the Constitution permits recovery of damages for libel by a public official against a private citizen only when there is evidence that the citizen published the false statements with "actual malice." Justice Brennan felt the now higher standard was fair, since existing rules required private citizens to prove actual malice when suing state officials for libel. Thus the fact that the New York Times published the advertisement without checking its accuracy against information in its own files was not sufficient evidence of actual malice. The reliance of the newspaper on the reputations of those individuals who vouched for the accuracy of the advertisement satisfied the Supreme Court that the newspaper had acted, at most, merely negligently.

Conflicting Rights

The decision marked a shift in priorities. The law was now willing to allow certain types of falsehoods to go unrectified in order to provide a margin of safety for the press. The Court's rationale was that the free exchange of ideas would be unduly restricted if papers were automatically liable every time inadvertent errors occurred. The Court noted that a certain amount of mistakes inevitably occur in free debate. It felt that the cost to our society if the press were constrained by fear of suits far outweighed the cost to those individuals whose reputations were tarnished. As with many constitutional issues, the decision was ultimately based on a balancing of conflicting rights. Some scholars have felt that the Court went too far. Others have felt that it did not go far enough. Whatever one's opinion, New York Times v. Sullivan stands as an enduring legacy of a single advertisement from the civil rights era.

Sources:

Everette Dennis and Eli Noam, eds., The Cost of Libel: Economic and Policy Implications (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989);

Richard Labunski, Libel and the First Amendment (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1987);

Rodney Smolla, Suing the Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

NEW YORK TIMES CO. V. SULLIVAN

A landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S. Ct. 710, 11 L. Ed. 2d 686 (1964), extended the first amendment's guarantee of free speech to libel cases brought by public officials. The Supreme Court sought to encourage public debate by changing the rules involving libel that had previously been the province of state law and state courts.

New York Times v. Sullivan grew out of events occurring during the 1960s civil rights movement in Alabama. In 1960, martin luther king jr., and other civil rights leaders conducted protests against segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. Their efforts met fierce resistance from Montgomery public officials. Civil rights leaders placed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times seeking contributions for civil rights causes in the South. Signed by sixty-four prominent leaders in public affairs, religion, trade unions, and the performing arts, the advertisement, entitled "Heed Their Rising Voices," stated that thousands of southern African American students were engaging in nonviolent demonstrations in positive affirmation of the right to live in human dignity. The ad went on to charge that these demonstrations had been met with a "wave of terror" by state and local governments. Alleged events that backed up this charge were described, but no particular public official was named.

L.B. Sullivan, the Montgomery city commissioner responsible for supervising the city police department, filed a libel suit against four African American clergyman and the New York Times in Alabama state court. Sullivan alleged that the advertisement implicitly libeled him. Libel is a civil tort and consists of injuring someone's reputation by reporting falsehoods about that person.

At trial Sullivan proved that the advertisement contained a number of minor inaccuracies about described incidents. The jury had to determine whether the statements in the advertisement were "of and concerning" Commissioner Sullivan. The judge instructed the jury that under Alabama law, if the statements were found libelous, falsity and malice were presumed, and damages could be awarded without direct proof of financial loss. The jury concluded that the statements did concern Sullivan and awarded him $500,000 for injuries to his reputation and profession.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that the rule of law applied by Alabama violated the First Amendment. Justice william j. brennan jr., in his majority opinion, placed the legal issues in the context of "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." Brennan maintained that erroneous statements are inevitable in free debate and must be protected if freedom of expression is to have the "breathing space" it needs to survive.

The advertisement was squarely a public expression and protest, and fell within constitutional protection. Neither the allegedly defamatory content of the ad, nor the falsity of some of its factual statements, nor the negligence of anyone in preparing or publishing it forfeited this protection. Brennan dismissed the idea that courts were free to conclude that libelous statements were made "of and concerning" a particular person when the statements on their face did not make even an oblique reference to the individual. Brennan stated that there is "no legal alchemy" by which a court constitutionally can establish that "an otherwise impersonal attack on governmental operations was a libel of an official responsible for those operations."

Brennan then set out the rule that reshaped libel law. A public official could recover in a libel action only if and when a court found that the libelous statement about the official was made with " 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." As long as the press has an "absence of malice," public officials are barred from recovering damages for the publication of false statements about them.

In separate concurring opinions, Justices hugo l. black and william o. douglas differed with Justice Brennan over whether the press should ever be held liable in defamation of public officials. They concluded that the First Amendment provided an absolute immunity for criticism of the way public officials do their public duty. Anything less than absolute immunity encourages "deadly danger" to a free press by state libel laws that harass, punish, and ultimately destroy critics.

In the years since New York Times, some critics have argued that Black and Douglas were right. The "reckless disregard" requirement has allowed highly intrusive inquiries into the reportorial and editorial processes of the mass media. In addition, the "chilling effect" of libel suits has not been diminished because of the case. If a jury finds reckless disregard, it can award enormous damage awards against the press.

Other critics of the decision believe it affords too much protection to the press. Public officials unfairly libeled by the press rarely file libel suits because of the difficulty of proving actual malice. This prevents them from establishing in a court of law the falsity of the statements at issue.

further readings

Fireside, Harvey. 1999. New York Times v. Sullivan: Affirming Freedom of the Press. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow.

Kane, Thomas. 1999. "Malice, Lies, and Videotape: Revisiting New York Times v. Sullivan in the Modern Age of Political Campaigns." Rutgers Law Journal 30 (spring).

Whitten, Kristian D. 2002. "The Economics of Actual Malice: A Proposal for Legislative Change to the Rule of New York Times v. Sullivan." Cumberland Law Review 32 (spring).

cross-references

Freedom of Speech; Freedom of the Press; Libel and Slander; New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (Appendix, Milestone Case).

NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN

NEW YORK TIMES V. SULLIVAN, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). Prior to New York Times Company v. Sullivan, libelous speech—speech that defames or slanders—was regarded as a form of personal assault unprotected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Courts assumed that libelous speech injured, and merely "more speech" was an inadequate remedy, since the truth rarely catches the lie. Thus, in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), the Supreme Court ruled that libel was outside the scope of First Amendment protection because it was "no essential part in the exposition of ideas, " and in Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250 (1952), the Court concluded that libelous statements regarding a group were also unprotected.

In Times v. Sullivan, a watershed case in the history of the law of libel and a free press, a unanimous Supreme Court concluded that "libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment." Thus, for the first time since the adoption of the Constitution, the Supreme Court granted the press constitutional protection when sued for damages by public officials because of criticism relating to their official conduct. In Times v. Sullivan, L. B. Sullivan, a police commissioner of Montgomery, Alabama, sued the New York Times and four African American clergymen because of statements contained in a full-page fund-raising advertisement printed in the Times. The advertisement, which did not mention Sullivan by name, contained charges, some inaccurate, of police brutality and harassment aimed at civil rights protesters on the Alabama State College campus in 1960. Similar to many states, Alabama made a publisher strictly liable for defamatory falsehoods, and the state recognized no privilege for good-faith mistakes of fact. The jury granted Sullivan a $500,000 damage award which the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed. Although the outcome was in accord with Alabama law, many interpreted it to mean that the South was prepared to use the state law of libel to punish and stifle the civil rights movement.

In reversing the judgment, the Supreme Court stated that there existed a "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, " and that such debate may well include "sharp attacks on government and public officials." The Court observed that erroneous statements are inevitable in a free debate and that they must be protected if a free press is to have the "breathing space" it requires to survive. The Court noted that although the constitutionality of the Sedition Act of 1798, which imposed criminal penalties upon those who criticized the government or public officials, was never tested in court, "the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history." Because civil damage awards may be as inhibiting of free expression as the criminal sanction, the "central meaning" of the First Amendment requires that the amendment limit the potential devastating reach of a civil libel judgment. Accordingly, the Court ruled that a public official seeking a damage judgment because of a libelous statement critical of his official conduct could only prevail by proving, through clear and convincing evidence, "that the statement was made with 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not."

The Supreme Court's decision in Times v. Sullivan has sparked many debates that still continue over its meaning and application. The Court's "actual malice" standard defies sound summary except for emphasizing that the term "actual malice" as used by the Court should not be confused with the concept of common-law malice that requires evidence of ill will or bias. Subsequent judicial decisions have parsed the meaning of who is a public official, what constitutes official as opposed to private conduct, who is a public figure, and to what extent the underlying meaning of Times v. Sullivan undermines a person's right to keep personal information private.

It is difficult to gauge, and perhaps difficult to exaggerate, the impact of Times v. Sullivan on protecting the mass media from damages arising out of defamation claims. Many criticize this development and point to mass-media abuses that allegedly needlessly injure individuals, erode civil discourse, and deter individuals from entering public life out of fear of having their reputations tarnished. Others applaud the development as essential to a vigorous and robust public discourse that strengthens the democratic process by providing the governed with critical information about the governors and their policies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Epstein, Richard. "Was New York Times v. Sullivan Wrong?" 53 University of Chicago Law Review 782 (1986).

Lewis, Anthony. Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment. New York: Random House, 1991.

DavidRudenstine

See alsoLibel ; Mass Media ; New York Times .

NEW YORK TIMES v. SULLIVAN

Opinion of the Supreme Court of Alabama, August 30, 1962 . . . . .355

Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court

Brief for the Petitioner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .376

"Heed Their Rising Voices" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .412

Briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court

Brief for Respondent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .415

Brief for the Petitioners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .441

Brief for Respondent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .465

Opinion of the Supreme Court, March 9, 1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .476

ISSUE

Freedoms of Speech and Press

HOW TO USE MILESTONES IN THE LAW

In this section, the reader is invited to study the court opinions and briefs* that shaped a major facet of First Amendment law. As you read the following pages, you may wish to consider these issues:

• What were the inaccuracies upon which Sullivan's claims of libel were based?
• What about the advertisement made Sullivan believe it was directed at him?
• How did the descriptions of the issues before the Court, and of their significance, differ as presented by the different parties?
• What facts and legal principles did the Alabama Supreme Court rely on for its decision, and how was the U.S. Supreme Court's approach different?
• What sorts of misstatements about a government official do you think would be permissible, and impermissible, under this case?

*The Court heard the cases between Sullivan and the Times, and Sullivan and the four clergymen, together. Both sets of briefs are included.

THIS CASE IN HISTORY

New York Times v. Sullivan, handed down in the midst of the civil rights movement, changed the inquiry for libel actions, strengthening the freedoms of speech and press when directed at government behavior. L. B. Sullivan, a city commissioner in Montgomery, Alabama, sued the Times and four black clergymen over an advertisement placed by the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South. The full page ad, which described abuses that students and civil rights activists had suffered at the hands of police and state authorities in various southern cities, contained several inaccuracies. Though the inaccuracies were minor, the Supreme Court of Alabama upheld a judgment of $500,000 against the defendants. In a unanimous 9–0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that public officials cannot recover damages for false statements regarding their official conduct unless they can prove actual malice—that is, that the defendant or defendants knew the statements were false or made them with reckless disregard as to whether they were true or false. The decision freed the press and others to comment on government conduct by reducing fears of enormous damage awards based on minor inaccuracies.

New York Times Company v. Sullivan case decided in 1964 by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1960, the Times ran a fundraising advertisement signed by civil-rights leaders that criticized, among other things, certain actions of the Montgomery, Ala., police department. Some of the facts in the advertisement were incorrect. Although no names were mentioned, L. B. Sullivan, Montgomery's police commissioner, sued the Times for libel and won $500,000 in an Alabama court. The newspaper appealed. At issue was the protection given press criticism of the official conduct of public officials. In overturning the lower court's ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court held that First Amendment protection of free speech is not dependent on the truth, popularity, or usefulness of the expressed ideas. The decision held that debate on public issues would be inhibited if public officials could recover for honest error that produced false defamatory statements about their official conduct. The court limited the right of recovery to public officials who could prove actual malice (i.e., that the newspaper knew the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of the truth). By emphasizing that First Amendment protection applies to state court cases, the decision eased the way for news organizations covering the civil-rights movement in the South.

Bibliography: See A. Lewis, Make No Law (1991).