Today in Supreme Court History: January 6, 1964

1/6/1964: New York Times Co. v. Sullivan argued.

Comments

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

This is the first NYT v Sullivan post, with no comments yet.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Josh has been uncharacteristically silent recently. Perhaps his clone has taken over and is having (even more) problems with these "Today in Supreme Court History" posts.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Well well. The dup with actual comments disappeared in favor of this one.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well, I'll retype what I wrote earlier today on the other one -- when you look at the actual "libel" in the ad, it's a case of "you gotta be kidding." It's a pity that SCOTUS had to write such a broad opinion and couldn't just limit it to minor "harmless" errors about something that was basically true -- a disinterested reader would have reached the same conclusion upon reading the work without the errors.

Like, ummm, MLK2 was arrested 29 times, or 31 times, or 27 times -- at a certain point, does the exact number really matter???

[Dilan Esper]

Dr. Ed, the problem is libel is a state law issue. So a federal court actually has no power to issue a really narrow ruling saying "you got the state law wrong".

And the fact that the libel case was so transparently phony here and yet a state court system not only awarded substantial damages but then affirmed those damages through its appellate courts, shows you that there was a threat to free speech.

One of the most important parts of Sullivan isn't its actual malice holding that everyone knows but its ruling that where a state court judgment threatens the First Amendment, there is federal jurisdiction to independently review the facts as well as the law to determine if there is a First Amendment violation. That is a breathtaking expansion of federal jurisdiction, but it was a necessary one.

There's a lot of stuff the Warren court did that is legitimately controversial- but this one, Gideon, and Brown seem to me to be the ones that everyone ought to agree upon.