Montgomery libel case led to major change
Fifty years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York Times v. Sullivan. The decision was extraordinary because it changed fundamentally the way the press and the people could criticize public officials. It is a case we should remember, if only to understand why our system of government can at times be so exceptional. And it started in Montgomery.
The case arose when, in 1960, the Times ran a full-page advertisement supporting Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Even though he was neither named nor harmed by the ad, L.B. Sullivan, a Montgomery city commissioner, claimed he had been libeled. When the Times refused to print a retraction, Sullivan filed a defamation charge against the paper and four black ministers who had endorsed the ad.
The case therefore pitted against each other two important legal principles. The first, long recognized by the common law, was that libelous statements constitute a civil wrong that can be redressed by awarding damages. The other, enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, was that the press formed an essential check on the coercive powers of government — but only if it could function freely.
Two facts complicated the case. First, states still resisting those challenging racial discrimination in the 1960s used libel law as a tool of suppression, to restrain dissent or dampen public discourse by creating a “chilling effect” on the press’ political criticism. Second, libel law was a state matter and, in many jurisdictions, plaintiffs such as L.B. Sullivan had only to show that the statements were in some way false.
Alabama courts found small inaccuracies in the Times ad and awarded Sullivan $500,000 in damages. But in a 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that Alabama’s rule, as applied to an action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct, abridged the freedoms of speech and press guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Mindful of the need for both libel law and a free press, Justice William Brennan, writing for the court, first noted that the First Amendment “was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people” and represented a “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”
The court maintained that in a republic “the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people,” and therefore debate “may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
Accordingly, the court distinguished public officials, such as L.B. Sullivan, from other plaintiffs alleging defamation. Like other government officials, the court said, “elected city commissioners” must be “men of fortitude, able to thrive in a hardy climate.” Most importantly, “Criticism of their official conduct does not lose its constitutional protection merely because it is effective criticism, and hence diminishes their official reputations.”
In this way Sullivan made two sweeping changes: It constitutionalized libel actions, placing them under the strict review of the federal courts and shouldered public officials with a higher standard of proof in such cases.
Public officials could still bring actions for defamation. But because such actions had been misused and represented a threat to the free flow of debate, the court ruled that the First Amendment required public officials to prove “actual malice” on the part of the defendants — that they had published the libel with “knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Under such a standard, evidence of small inaccuracies or even of negligent reporting would not be sufficient to meet the burden of proof.
Sullivan reminds us that a democracy depends on the free, open and rigorous exchange and critical examination of ideas, on robust discussion and debate, on the slow creep toward truth that happens only when ideas are confronted. Granted, in an age of propaganda, error and distortion can always be found, even hateful information and lies about leaders we oppose. But accountability comes in the endless battle between the best information and the worst, the reasonably accurate against the false. Let’s have the debate, Brennan and the court seemed to say, not rig the game.
Ron Manuto writes on civil rights and legal issues in California. Sean Patrick O’Rourke teaches courses in freedom of speech and communication law at Furman University.