Freedom of the press and freedom of speech were clearly established as constitutional rights in the very infancy of the Republic, when the ten amendments collectively known as the Bill of Rights were welded to the U.S. Constitution. Since then, the courts have refereed a seesaw struggle to define the line between freedom and license. Last week, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court unanimously advanced the boundaries of press freedom—and of free speech—farther than they have ever legally reached before.
The decision reversed a $500,000 libel judgment against the New York
Times and four Negro clergymen in Alabama. But it did far more than wipe out the award. It defused a welter of libel cases brought by public officials in the South against assorted critics, including nine other cases against the Times. And by holding that Alabama's libel laws are unconstitutionally broad, the court cast doubt on similar state libel laws all over the U.S.
The decision granted the U.S. citizen dramatic new immunity in the exercise of his classic right to sound off against his chosen leaders. The public conduct of public officials, the court ruled, is henceforth fair game, even if the criticism is misguided, unwarranted, undeserved or untrue. If the injured party expects to collect any damages, he will have to prove that the criticism was deliberately or recklessly false—in short, that malice was involved.
Inflammatory Language. No such caveats had discouraged the five public officials in Alabama who took offense at a full-page ad published in the March 29, 1960 edition of the Times. Paid for by friends of Integration Leader
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the ad solicited funds for Dr. King's defense against charges of state income tax evasion (he was subsequently acquitted). In language any Southern segregationist would find inflammatory, the ad stated that armed Montgomery, Ala., police ringed a local Negro college campus to subdue a student civil rights protest, and later locked students out of the dining hall "to starve them into submission." It also charged "Southern violators" with bombing Dr. King's home and with arresting him seven times.
It is not, always necessary in Alabama—or in many other states—to prove that defamatory statements are false or malicious. In some categories of cases, the defendant must convince the court that the statements are true; otherwise, falsity and malice are presumed. This burden rested on the defendant New York Times.
Soon after the ad appeared, L. B. Sullivan, a Montgomery city commissioner, brought suit for $500,000 in damages. Sullivan's suit was followed by four more: one from Montgomery Mayor-Earl James, two from other Montgomery city commissioners, and one from John M. Patterson, then Alabama's Governor. Perhaps in recognition of his higher office, Patterson asked double damages, or $1,000,000.