New York Times V. Sullivan Case Study

12. New York Times v Sullivan (502)- First off you need to know that libel is the written defamation of character. A person who believes their name and character have been harmed can sue. In this case, the supreme court declared that freedom of the press takes precedence—at least when the defamed individual is a public official.

As of today, the supreme court has interpreted the first amendment to say “The First Amendment provides no protection for obscenity, child pornography, or speech that constitutes what has become widely known as “fighting words.” The First Amendment provides less than full protection to commercial speech, defamation (libel and slander), speech that may be harmful to children, speech broadcast on radio and television (as opposed to speech transmitted via cable or the Internet), and public employees’ speech.”(Ruane, Kathleen Ann) with this loose definition in mind many people have begun to think whether freedom of speech should be further limited to several cases seen in recent years such as what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court. Roth ran a business in New York by selling books, photos, and magazines. Roth was charged with 4 counts for sending inappropriate circulars and an inappropriate book. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Roth’s appeal. Alberts was prosecuted for the sale of lewd books, and for writing inappropriate advertisements within the books. Albert’s conviction was upheld by a lower court. The Court must decide if indecent material is protected by the freedom of speech and press in the First Amendment. All ideas, even the most foolish, controversial, and intolerable, are protected by free speech. The only exception is when they interfere in more important safeties. However, indecency has been demonstrated to have no redeeming

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, lawful case in which, on March 9, 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court governed consistently (9–0) that, for a slander suit to be effective, the complainant must demonstrate that the guilty proclamation was made with " 'genuine perniciousness', with learning that it was false or with neglectful failure of whether it was the truth or not." Specifically, the case included a notice that showed up in The New York Times in March 1960 that sketched out how African Americans had been persecuted and that requested that perusers contribute cash to the battle to end racial isolation in the South.

The court case of New York Times vs Sullivan was a case that involved public officials and how they were libeled in the press in the year of nineteen sixty four. L.B. Sullivan was one of three elected commissioners of Alabama. The respondent was L. B. Sullivan was a public official from Alabama and brought a lawsuit against an clergymen, a negro and against a petitioner of the New York Times Company. L.B. Sullivan sued all of these people because he felt that he was libeled in a advertisement of the New York Times. The case had to deal with if the constitutional protections of speech and press limit the states power to award damages for the libel action brought by a public official against the critics of his official conduct.

New York v. Sullivan (1964) involves the petitioner the New York Times Company and the respondent City Commissoner L.B. Sullivan and was decided on March 9th 1964. According to Oyez, a brief history the case was “decided together with Abernathy v. Sullivan (1964), this case concerns a full-page ad in the New York Times which alleged that the arrest of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. for perjury in Alabama was part of a campaign to destroy King 's efforts to integrate public facilities and encourage blacks to vote. L. B. Sullivan, the Montgomery city commissioner, filed a libel action against the newspaper and four black ministers who were listed as endorsers of the ad, claiming that the allegations against the Montgomery police defamed him personally. Under Alabama law, Sullivan did not have to prove that he had been harmed; and a defense claiming that the ad was truthful was unavailable since the ad contained factual errors. Previously, according to the Alabama Encyclopedia, “Under Alabama law, belief in the truth of statements did not excuse libel, although it could be used as a factor when determining punitive damages. During the trial in Montgomery 's circuit court, six local residents testified that they believed the statements in paragraphs three and six referred to Sullivan personally. Therefore as a remedy sought in the lower courts, the jury awarded Sullivan $500,000, which was affirmed by the State Supreme Court after an appeal by the NYT, The New York Times

The case New York Times Co. Vs United States in summary was a first amendment battle between the United States government and the prominent newspaper cooperation New York Times in 1971. The premises of this legal battle was based on the New York Times reporter Daniel Ellsberg publishing in excerpts illegally leaked, classified documents containing the United States involvement in the Vietnam War specifically on the anticipated death counts (Institution, 2015, p. n .p). However, The United States government finding out about leakage placed a prior restraint also known as “government action that prohibits speech or other expression before it can take place” on New York Times cooperation based on National Security grounds (Prior Restraint, 2015). The case, despite the over powering strength of the nation and the accusations against the New York Times Cooperation the case was ruled in favor of the New York Times by the Supreme Court (Curry, Riley, & Battistoni, 2015, p. 458).

What does freedom of expression really mean? Why is it important to our democratic society? In the landmark case of R. v. Keegstra (1990), the issues of freedom of expression

The issue of Tinker v. Des Moines ISD was that students were to wear black arm bands to school in protest of the Vietnam War; however the school warned that anyone wearing the armbands would be would be suspended, but the Tinker children wore their armbands to school (they were the only ones of the group to do so) and were suspended leading to Mr. and Mrs. Tinker filing a law suit claiming that the school violated the children's right to freedom of speech and expression. The court ruled against the school district saying that "students do not shed their constitutional rights at the school house gates. In doing so the court protected what has come to be known as "symbolic speech." In the case of Engle v. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruled that prayers in schools were considered unconstitutional, leading to a ban of all prayers led by teachers in school, even if the prayer was considered voluntary, stating, in a way, that there was some sort of “separation of church and state” which is not true. Lastly, New York Times v. Sullivan focused more on the freedom of the press, ruling that “actual malice” must be proven to support a finding of libel against a public figure.

To sum, the case is about an advertising the newspaper included some inaccurate story about the civic leaders, civil right events, and Sullivan. Sullivan (a public official) believed that the defamatory comments that were made of him were making a negative impact on his life, thus he sued the New York times. The court in Alabama at the time ruled “The law … implies legal injury from bare facts of publication itself, falsity and malice are presumed, general damages no need to presume.” Thus, the court from Alabama gave Sullivan a compensation of five hundred thousand dollars. New York times decided to take this case to the supreme court because they believe their 1st amendment rights were being violated. Therefore, a new question arose whether the first amendment protects defamatory, false statements concerning public officials? The court ruled that the 1st amendment does protect the publication of all statements, even false ones, concerning the conduct of a public official except when the statement was made with actual malice. Once again, we notice the irony of freedom of speech the issue is citizens are not informed that under the 1st amendment there is sufficient rights guarantee. It is not solely having the right to express our emotions towards the government, it is to expose information to citizens and have the citizens decided for themselves. Democracy does not work if the government or public official try to hide information from its citizens. Democracy function when there is a clear majority of press that expose the truth and allow people to determine what the issue is. Press must be able to protect us against an overreaching government. Sometimes executive power tries to control the press because they do not want to inform the truth about that for example the Watergates scandal, Edward Snowden, Wiki leaks and

The outcome of the case was that it was submitted to the jury on the theory of breach of contract and misrepresentation (“Case Briefs”). The jury that was on this case found liability on both counts and awarded $200,000 in compensatory damages and $250,000 in punitive damages against each newspaper for misrepresentation. The Court of Appeals set aside the misrepresentation damages, but affirmed the compensatory damages. The State Supreme Court affirmed the setting aside of punitive damages. Also, decided that the compensatory damages were not enforceable under standard breach of contracts theory. In regards to the Supreme Court, it found that, in a majority decision, that against respondent’s claims that it had no jurisdiction. They cited the Orr v Orr case of 1979 of whether the arguments in

Justice William J. Brennan, who wrote the Opinion of the Court for New York Times v. Sullivan, demonstrated that he strongly supported civil rights around the time of the case. In 1962, Brennan openly expressed that he admired NAACP leader Thurgood Marshall, and congratulated him in a personal letter on his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Just after the Freedom Summer Murders in 1964, Brennan referred to the deaths of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney as “full cause for national mourning”, but wrote that the event was “cause for satisfaction in the thousands of other students who worked for civil rights… even if not without fear and anxiety at times.” These two expressions of sympathy and encouragement for the Civil Rights Movement demonstrate that Brennan thought of context predominantly as he wrote his Opinion. He even confirmed his perspective in his writing, as he stated, “The present advertisement, as an expression of grievance and protest on one of the major public issues of our time…” Evidently, Brennan’s history of supporting blacks in their journey towards school desegregation, voting rights, and freedom of speech rang true in this case as well.

In the past, there has always been conflict between the free press and the government. This conflict was very evident in the Pentagon Papers case, also known as New York Times Co. v. United States. Historically, the Supreme Court has disagreed on the limitations that can be placed on the First Amendment. The Supreme Court faced these issues in the case of The New York Times. The newspaper obtained a copy of a Defense Department report that explained government deception in the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers emerged when the American people disagreed on the United States involvement in the war. Under the First Amendment, The New York Times argued

In the book Freedom for the Thought that we Hate, author Anthony Lewis takes a simply phrased law, the First Amendment and shows how complex freedom of speech really is once put into the real world of freedom, as we know it. He shows through his rejections of absolutism, strong support towards freedom restriction, and objective analysis of Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, that the United States press is unlike any other in the world.

The New York Times V. Sullivan case took place during the Civil right movement in the 1960s. At this time African-Americans were protesting and marching for equality in the south. During this time, several Civil rights leader reached out to the New York Times to post a full-page statement claiming "officials in the south states had used violent and illegal methods to suppress the marches" (Trager, et al, p. 164). The headline for the article was "Heed Their Rising Voices". L.B. Sullivan, police commissioner of Montgomery, Ala., felt offended about the allegations in the ad and filed a libel suit against the New York Times and the Civil rights leaders for defaming his reputation. Sullivan sought $5,000 in damages. The New York Times Co. V. Sullivan is an important case because of the access to free speech of expression, the press can cover stories about public officials and public officials that are the plaintiffs, have to prove actual malice against the defendant.