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In the controversy that predictably followed publication of his remarks, few voices were raised in his defense. The New York Post, a self-anointed bastion of civil liberty, regretfully declined to "follow him on to this dubious high ground." Said the Post: "The Justice's position must surely seem fantastic. It would literally deprive both the highest and the lowest citizen of the right to serious recourse against reckless defamation. It would place in the hands of the press an almost unlimited power to destroy." "My own view," said R. Newton Rooks, president of the Chicago Bar Association, "is that I would hope that the law would never fully support Black's view." In San Francisco, David E. Snodgrass, dean of the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, felt that "Black has gone off the deep end on this one." Against such critics Justice Black preserved the traditional silence of the nation's loftiest bench. But few newspapers and magazines are likely to follow his lead and challenge the libel laws. The press is well aware that Justice Black's extreme position is—to put it in lower case—a minority opinion.
* The Acts empowered the President to export any alien deemed dangerous to the country and to punish journalists for printing anything detrimental to the national interest. A journalist, John Peter Zenger, was brought to trial under the Sedition Act, but a jury found him innocent. By 1801, both laws had vanished from the federal statute book.