Document Type

Article

Abstract

The 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan established the “actual malice” rule in libel law, requiring that in order to win a libel suit, a public official must show that a defamatory statement was false and that the speaker made the statement knowing that it was false or “with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

Sullivan involved a libel suit brought by segregationist Alabama officials against the New York Times (“Times”) and leaders of the civil rights movement. Sullivan arose from sectional battles over civil rights and integration in the 1960s. An all-white jury awarded Sullivan $500,000. The purpose of the lawsuit was to attack the civil rights movement directly, and also indirectly, by stifling press coverage of civil rights protest activities. The Times and the civil rights leaders appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that Alabama’s strict libel laws, which were similar to most libel laws at the time, violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech.

Sullivan has been memorialized as a case that was principally about the First Amendment. Even though observers at the time saw it as a “civil rights case,” Sullivan’s connections to the civil rights movement were lost over time. This Article tells the story of New York Times v. Sullivan as both a First Amendment story and as a “civil rights story.” Sullivan grew out of the civil rights movement and transformed the course of that movement. The Supreme Court’s efforts to assist the civil rights movement resulted in a decision that broadly protected the freedom to comment on government and public affairs. Situating Sullivan in its civil rights context not only complements our understanding of the ways that civil rights and freedom of speech have been intertwined in American history, but may also help to strengthen the image of Sullivan when the ruling is under assault. Many of the attacks on Sullivan are premised on Sullivan as a “press case,” one that primarily protects the institutional press. Sullivan is vulnerable in an era when the public’s opinion of the press is generally low. These attacks might be countered if the public were reminded that Sullivan not only protects the press but also individual dissenters and critics, as the history of Sullivan makes clear.